Balance

Oops I haven’t written anything in over a week. I’m going to make up for it by making at least two entries this weekend. I don’t really like writing when I’m not in the mood; the quality of my writing deteriorates. When I am in the mood to write, ideas come in a rush and it seems like I don’t have enough time to put it all down, so I save ideas for later. For some reason I’ve felt blasé all week and unmotivated to do much of anything. My excitement came back Friday morning and I’ve got a backlog of stuff to write about.

Alright entry number 1: Kung Fu and Fire (I working on shooting fireballs)

We had our annual Kung Fu tournament last Saturday. It was a lot of fun and I did fairly we’ll, I really like the team spirit that goes into running and judging a tournament. I managed to get earn a gold in weapons forms, point sparring, san shou and a silver in hand forms. I was really happy about the silver in hand forms, it’s usually my weakest area, and I performed Kempo, a less advanced form for black belts. So it must mean the 1000 reps of Kempo I’ve been working on paid off. I wasn’t very happy about my Kwan Dao performance, I ended up facing the wrong way again, which screwed up the ending of the form and I ended up missing five or six moves, some of the best ones too. I managed to make it look like I hadn’t totally blown it though and it was still good enough to get gold so I am happy about that. I have yet to do the whole form in public without screwing up though, so I’ll be looking for chances to do it in demos this summer. I want to do it perfect at least once!

I think it’s kind of funny that I got a silver in the category I thought I wasn’t going to place in and that I didn’t get a medal in what I thought was going to be my best category (continuous sparring). I tied Sifu Becket for black belt grand champion and it was decided we’d break the tie with a pool noodle fight. A pool noodle fight involves taking a short foam pool noodle and a shield and wailing on each other. It was hilarious and a good, light hearted way to end the tournament. I wonder how it looked to the spectators, seeing two black belts unload on each other with pool noodles (formerly only a kid’s competition). Alas my pool noodle duel skills weren’t up to snuff and I ended up dropping it once and losing the match. Congrats to the new champion Brandi Becket!

We went out for supper afterwards and had a good time; it was a fantastic day so far. After supper I got in my car, checked my phone and saw that I had five voicemails from my mom. I assumed it was about my sister moving, because I was supposed to help her after I was finished with the tournament, and I was running later than I said I would be. To my surprise the move was off, and the voicemails were my mom in hysterics because our idiot neighbor burned down half the trees on our acreage.

It turns out he was burning the grass on his lawn, lost control of the fire (I’m guessing it was just him and a garden hose) and the fire spread into the woods that separate our lots. This resulted in a wild fire and six fire engines coming out to fight the fire. They managed to stop the fire from spreading to the rest of our neighbors so almost all of the damage was done to our lot, and a bit on the lot of the guy who started the fire. In the end a strip of bush about 60x25 meters ended up burning down. This isn’t the first time we’ve had problems with this neighbor, he almost did the same thing a few years ago, while burning his grass again, the same woods caught fire but he managed to get it under control. Apparently he didn’t learn his lesson the first time.

So where there once was a thick, beautiful patch of trees in our back yard, there’s now a scorched disaster zone and a black lawn. My parents have looked into getting compensation for the damages and to my surprise they are completely screwed. The neighbor had a burn permit which I’ve now learned gives you the right to do whatever you want, almost as powerful as James Bond’s license to kill. For some reason the fire marshal didn’t give him a fine, she said the conditions of the permit were met. Apparently deciding to do the burning on a very windy day and not keeping it under control doesn’t matter so long as you have some paper work.

My parents called their insurance company to see if they had any options there, to see if their insurance company could go after the neighbor’s insurance company. They were told that home insurance doesn’t cover landscaping, they’d have to make a claim and pay a deductible, the neighbors insurance wouldn’t cover it, and then the insurance company thanked them for notifying them and told my parents that their insurance rates would now be going up. I’ve told my dad to look into getting a lawyer but he’s convinced it will just end up costing him more money and that we probably wouldn’t have a case since the neighbor wasn’t even fined. Sadly he’s probably right. My parents consulted an old friend who used to be the mayor of Parkland County and she recommended writing a letter to the local councilman. My parents got a couple people in the neighborhood to sign the letter and sent it in, no developments so far.

It looks like there’s not going to be any help for my parents. My dad could spend a couple hours every day for the next ten years trying to clean up the mess. He had to buy a new power saw to knock down some of the dangerous trees and try to clean up a bit. So it’s already cost my dad $300 for a chainsaw, higher insurance rates, a decrease in property value and countless hours of manual labor.

What really bugs me about the whole situation is that the neighbor doesn’t have to account for his irresponsibility. The systems we have in place to protect people from other peoples actions have failed. I see traffic marshals and photo radar everywhere, it seems there’s no shortage of people ready to hand out fines for damages you “could” cause but when somebody actually does destroy something, and victimize someone, it’s ok. I’m slowly becoming more and more disgruntled with our justice system. From personal experience, whenever myself or friends needed help from authorities it never came, but they never hesitate to hand out fines for minor issues.

I went to court for the first time to fight a traffic ticket I got. It was an altogether negative experience. I got a ticket for running a stop sign when I didn’t run a stop sign. It wasn’t even debatable as a rolling stop. The intersection is a scary intersection, it’s a stop sign to cross three lanes of busy traffic and there’s limited visibility due to cars parked by a bus lane. You would have to be suicidal to run this stop sign. I stopped for twice as long as I usually would because I was nervous about going through the intersection. I got through safely; well clear of any incoming cars, the only incoming car was a police cruiser just turning onto the street. I was completely surprised when he followed me for awhile and pulled me over. I wasn’t worried, I was confident I hadn’t done anything wrong but to my amazement I still got a ticket.

I took pictures of the intersection; I thought the officer had simply mistaken the position of the stop sign because you can’t physically see the stop sign from where he was. I represented myself in court and had great pictures to show that the stop sign isn’t even visible from where the officer was and therefore there’s no way he could have seen me at the stop sign, he only would have been able to see me once I’d already entered the intersection. I lost the case anyway and now it’s going to cost me a fortune in insurance. I left the courtroom, after having to wait 2.5 hours for my turn, to find the meter I parked at expired 10 minutes earlier and I now had a parking ticket. Damn you irony! Sometimes it’s therapeutic to rant.