exasperated

My female owner decided to attend aikido lesson yesterday at the spur of the moment. It must have been about a month since she attended her last lesson. She has been losing enthusiasm largely because of the time spent travelling to the dojo, especially on a Monday night (her busiest days are Mondays and Tuesdays).

Anyway, off she went, but first to pick up her aikido friend at his house. What was meant to be a 5 mins’ drive away, resulted in a 15 mins’ hunt for his house (in the next suburb). She took so long, he called her to find out if she was lost (haha. So insightful of him).

Well, class was not as fun as she hoped, coz there were some newcomers who slowed down the pace of the class. My female owner was particularly pissed with an ang-moh young lady, who had an extra-ordinarily large reaction when she performed a tight “nikyo” lock on her. If you don’t know what I mean, basically, that ang-moh couldn’t take the pain when my female owner performed the technique on her and kept instructing her afterwards on how the lock should be done (soft and painless).

My female owner was really annoyed at this. That’s not how aikido should be practised. The execution should be precise and tight enough for the opponent to feel the effect. If you want something soft, try taiqi or something. In addition, my female owner has a reputation of choosing to be gentle so much so that people would want to partner her for certain techniques (knowing very well that she would not be rough with them). No wonder she felt insulted (especially since that lady seems like a junior belt).

There were a couple of other strange characters in the class which made training trying. So that added to my female owner’s exasperation. To top it off, her instructor spoke to her at the end of the class regarding membership fees, and said that “actually, I thought that you would be coming more often.” My female owner would have gone for more lessons if she could! Duh. (she's grouchy eh)

There’s no place like your home dojo…