Haven't died yet, go me!

It's just past 8am here and I'm geared up to go for my MMA class starting soon, but I figured an update would be in order as I'm sure many of you had good money on the fact that I wouldn't still be alive this far into the trip, let alone have the faculties to type out a blog post -- in your face. As I said, training is going well and the place is incredible. I got here on what I believed to be Saturday geared to go for the open mat practice, only to find out a lot yet another day in transit. 40+ hours from door-to-door, not exactly what I call pleasant travels.

On the advisory of my friends, who I believed judging with my best interests in mind (yeah right), I went out for one last night of revelry to celebrate what has been a girthy 3-year stretch in Montreal; to all of you, thank you and I'll hope to see you again soon. They say hindsight is 20/20 and looking back the rockstar/colt 45 tag-team combo was a poor choice; moreover, a word to the wise, once you lose track of pints ordered at a bar, it's a sure benchmark of an impending hangover. After closing the bar down, following one too many live songs and our poorly feigned sing-alongs, I headed home and killed time until I was off in a cab at 5am - to the couche tard. Aparently, despite the legality of the tender, $100 bills are no more useful than monopoly money to pay a cabbie and luckily for Mr. Moneybags Charleton, they managed to break it.

Blah blah blah, Toronto, Beijing, Bangkok, Phuket. They set me up in a little bangalow on the border of the rubber tree forest, which was very cool, in appearance and atmosphere, but definitely not temperature. Another strange coincidence was the fact that my neighbour happened to be from Sidney, BC, a 20 minute drive from my home in Victoria. However, despite the 'quaintness' of the bungalow, having been awakened to ants crawling in my face and mouth and about a 1000 of their buddies (I wish I was kidding you) on the ground and in my bed, I decided to spring the extra cash (sorry Pops) and get a luxury bungalow next-door. It was really that or nothing as the camp is busy, but now I'm clearly not roughing it, with a poolside villa it's hard to complain; damn that daily maid service sure is annoying!

There are more nifty details that I would love to share, but I injured my hip a little yesterday and after a little tiger-balming and stretching I'll need to jog it off before I go to whoop some ass at Jiu jitsu. I should add that all of the guys I'm training with are great and I hope to get in as much training as possible; yesterday I did 3 sessions and I think I can certainly keep that up, if not more.

Wish me luck and hopefully this convinces you skeptics that I'm actually alive and kicking (pun intended). Take care and I'll see you sooner than you'd like.