The Return and beyond

It's been a long while since I posted. To be honest, I totally forgot about this blog page as I moved to a dedicated website for about 10 years. I'll try to save some of the blog posts there to repost them here.

I'm sure by now you will have realized the international impact of the pandemic and it has hit me so hard that I had to close the gym and returned the keys earlier in June. Not much has been happening since as we've undergone waves of lockdowns with no end in sight when this will be over. No confirmed vaccines, no effective ways to restart the economy and specific to my situation, no contact sports allowed for the time being. Interstate travel is currently banned so I don't even bother to think about international travel. Fortunately I didn't book any overseas trip this year but that's a habit that I miss most given that in 2019 we travelled almost every other month to reunite with the CMD family worldwide.

In spite of this, the next chapter will look like I will be coaching at Blue Print Martial Arts (BPM) at their new venue in Damansara Heights next January 2021 after having conducted some private training sessions at Jeet Academy when contact sports was allowed for a short while. I was planning to hold some private training sessions at an undisclosed Bangsar location but that has been nixed by some fuddy duddies.

So in a while I'll have a clearer picture of what 2021 at BluePrint as I'll need to do what I do best. Whether I'm only responsible for my classes or for the entire BJJ program seeing that I'm the only black belt coach on staff. The current understanding is that I will continue to coach and grade the Monkey Jits members who join BPM and I might grade eligible BPM on behalf of BPM and their affiliation under Prof. Chet Quint. It's unclear at the moment so I'm not worried about this moving forwards.

The shutdown has allowed me to complete many outstanding housekeeping matters and a few things are still in progress. Frustrating to say the least but I'm financially relieved that I'm free from having to pay for a gym space that that the government doesn't allow my business to operate, but it also means that I'm just one of over 50,000 small businesses that have closed up this year alone due to lockdowns and other restrictions.

Nevertheless, I remain positive and motivated to continue and pursue matters when things become better and I'll keep you posted here and over at Beltchecker.com where I'm more active.

See you on the mats.
Vince