Test!

Last night I had the privilege of attending my first test at Open Sky,
fortunately only as a spectator. 5 people tested: Max--promoted to 5th
kyu, advanced from the youth ranks (purple belt) to go back to being a
white belt; Sarah--promoted to 4th kyu; Cayo and Dan--promoted to 3rd,
and a *surprise* test of Mike, who was "not supposed to test, but did
anyway", promoted to 1st kyu.

My personal test for the evening was sitting in seiza (kneeling) for the
duration of the test, which was approximately half an eternity as a
result. I think it was about a half hour in "real time", and no, I
didn't quite make it all the way through without taking a break on the
knees.

Alex kindly offered to video the test and preceding class, earning
herself an honorary membership on the video committee, though she
doesn't know this yet. (heh heh) After some thought and Jesse's
suggestion, I have decided to move ahead with developing a short demo
video using our existing footage and editing tools, taking up Mike's
offer to edit, and hopefully providing the soundtrack music myself. The
idea is to pitch a real production proposal to "real" video people locally.

My reaction after seeing the test was a mix of being impressed and being
a little bummed (though that's maybe too strong a word for it), because
I'm so far from being able to do these things, thinking of Mike's
performance in particular. It's sort of like seeing one of my guitar
heroes perform and realizing that I'll never be that good. The upside,
however, is that I started martial arts at a young enough age that I can
still make good progress, the only enemy being my aging body.