The last three weeks, heck, the last month and a half have flown by for me. It feels like it was just last week that I was in Newfoundland but in reality I’m off by a few…
I have an excuse though, really, I do. Except I don’t really want to share it so openly…yet. Excluding the week I spent in Newfoundland, I’ve spent the last month and a half in almost complete solitude, just me and my computer. I’ve been working on something big. If I’m lucky I’ll be done in a few more months. I’ve been semi-secretly blogging my progress so that people can read it later.
But anyway, that’s not what I wanted to talk about, so on with Newfoundland.
Newfoundland was really awesome and I had a great time there. It’s so laid back there and everyone was exceptionally nice. The scenery there was absolutely amazing, definitely an underrated part of Canada.
The competition was pretty fun as usual, and it was great being able to spend a week with Tom and Arjun as they are like brothers to me. We came in second this year, losing to Quebec, but I was pretty happy with our performance. We compete in team kata which is where the 3 of us perform a synchronized kata (a karate routine) and then we do a bunkai (a demonstrationof the kata). We don’t exactly train throughout the year as we haven’t trained together since we left Belleville three years ago but we always somehow pull something together right before the competition. Anyway, this year’s bunkai was really awesome, I think my favourite one so far, and it was a lot of fun performing it.
On the last night, after the banquet, we went out to the famous George St. (has over 40 bars along one small street) and that was a lot of fun. I went with a rag-tag group of people from across the country. From what I can remember we had one from Alberta, one from Nova Scotia, two of us from Ontario, a guy from Northwest Territories (!!!), a couple from Newfoundland. There were others too but I can’t quite remember…uhh yeah. Anyway, it was great having some locals with us as I had no idea where to go in George St. with so many choices.
We first went to Lottie’s Place where we downed their “famous” White Russian (it was good just as they claimed) and had a few other drinks while we waited around for some others to join up with our group. We then crossed the street to Trapper John’s where we all got “screeched-in”. This is a Newfoundland tradition through which they allow mainlanders to become an “Honourary Member of Newfoundland”. I was told it involved taking a shot of Screech which is a rum that’s bottled in Newfoundland but I hadn’t realized how big of a deal it was until we did it, and it was a lot of fun. The bartender rang a bell and basically the whole bar turned its attention to the middle bar as a good 20 or so of us “mainlanders” lined up along the bar. The bartender, Trapper John himself, poured out a couple rows of shots.
The ceremony then proceed with all of us picking up a shot and then we repeated the saying:
Indeed I is
me ole cock…
an long mae
yer big jib draw!
A lot of us being really drunk and him saying it really fast didn’t help and took a few tries for us to repeat it properly. But we persevered and then took our shots and then kissed a puffin (type of bird) statuette. This was a variation of kissing a cod (a real one usually). And having completed the ritual we were given our certificates to certify that we were entitled as Honourary Members of Newfoundland.
The rest of the night consisted of going to others bars, and it was a blast. I think I got home around 4 am. It was really tough the next day because I had to wake up at 8:30 am to go on a whale watching trip. Thankfully the night was so long that when I woke up I wasn’t drunk or hungover. We drove all the way out to Petty Harbour which was about 30 minutes away from St. John’s and we set sail on the Scademia.
Later that day I came back to Ontario with the rest of the karate team but my parents stayed for an extra week and drove all across Newfoundland. Looking back, I wish I had stayed but I guess this means that now I just have to go back again sometime. My mom took a bunch of really nice pictures and goes to show how beautiful Newfoundland really is.
