November 2004

Upcoming Events

Saturday Nov 20th - Blackburn ITF Challenge

Sunday Nov 21st - Black Belt TAC Training

Wednesday December 1st - Mr. Mavis comes to Canada

Thursday Dec 2nd - Colour Belt Testing 5:30pm

Saturday Dec 4th - Inschool tournament

Sunday Dec 5th - Black Belt test

Thursday Dec 16th - Demo Day

I will be in Ottawa Wednesday December the 1st! I'm really looking forward to seeing everyone again and seeing how they have progressed. I've missed everyone very much, I will be staying until about New Years. We will have a black belt test, inschool tournament, demo day and maybe a seminar while I'm in town. If anyone has any ideas of something else we can plan while I'm in town please feel free to email me. If anyone really needs something from Thailand please email me and I'll bring it for you.

If people are interested in the inschool tournament we need to know now so we have time to order medals. If everyone wants to take part it will be alot of fun, but if not everyones interested then we won't have enough people to make divisions. Please let Mrs. Phrasavath know if you want the tournament or not at this time. We can have it later in the year but I was hoping to be there for this years tournament.

I got yet another visit from an ITF practitioner this month. This time a black belt from England, his name is Dean Alexandrou and he is currently staying in Thailand working on movies as a stunt man. He is very good at Tae Kwon Do and I hope he comes to train more often as he is a great example to the colour belts. Unfortunately I forgot to take his picture! I will try to get one soon.

I recently did a commercial for Oil of Olay..... no I'm not the pretty one that splashes water on her face, I play the boss of the one that does that. It's an office scene and we are all acting like we are having a meeting and then we get up and leave! Not to complicated but we took 20 takes. I recently went to a casting for Orange Garden and a shampoo commercial. I had to act out having a picnic with my family and eating oranges for the Orange Garden one and for the shampoo commercial casting I had to act out being on a date with my girlfriend and telling her how lovely her hair was. Some pretty silly stuff. Tomorrow I go to a casting for a Heineken commercial, I will have to do an action scene so this should at least be interesting and fun.

Mr. Mavis on the set of Oil of Olay commercial

The shoot for UBC 31, the sports channel martial arts show seemed to go well, it airs November 9th and I will get a copy of it soon and see how bad/good it looks.

UBC 31 Martial Arts show crew

I visited my good friend Mr. Gillies new Tae Kwon Do dojang in Bangkok recently, it looks very nice and I'm eager to set up my own dojang, most likely in the Maneeya branch.

Mr. Gillies and his new Dojang

Please if anyone has any good quotes, email them to me! I dont mind looking around and researching a bit for my quotes but I feel like I'm missing the obvious ones that are really good. If you know some, let me know too. Also, if anyone is taking pictures of classes or events lately please email me some of them for the website, like the tounament on the 20th, if anyone takes any pictures I would love to have them for the site.

Any black belts interested in the black belt training at Blackburn TKD should get the details from the events page or ask Mr. Choquette.

"I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

- Michael Jordan

This was an interesting quote, Michael Jordan is seen as an icon of skill and success. Seems like he's messed up alot, but still continued on to succeed many many times. He has a strong sense of perseverence.

Damian Mavis
Head Instructor, Honour TKD