1st Tournament! and a placing

Kaleo took another positive step towards his career in the UFC ;). Tournament was held on Saturday night at the KFA facilities. There were three sets of skills to be done at the tournament - basic skills, KATA and sparring. Of course the highlight of the night would be sparring tournament.

Kaleo did average on the skills and didn't place. When Kata demonstration was performed, to my surprise, he picked the Heian Neidan which is difficult Kata, but was where he needed to be before achieving his next belt (Orange). I think Sensei was surprised he chose that one too. He performed the first 10 or so steps and was ahead of where he should have been to my surprise. What was also surprising was that he was first up on all events aside from sparring and did not crack under pressure, or get any sort of stage fright. Pretty awesome for a 7 y.o. at his first tournament.

The sparring tourney was great. First three points wins the matchup. The first round took him up against an older child with some crafty moves and an orange belt. After a flurry of non connecting punches in a squirmish, the opponent would drop to the ground. At this point Kaleo (as well as myself) did not know that you could hit an opponent while he was laying on the ground. So Kaleo kinda stood there waiting for the other kid to get up. The other kid scored a couple of good up kicks from the ground landing solidly. Darn! I think to myself 0-2 and we're going to be out of the tournament in less that a minute. The deficit would be tough to surmount. The next points Kaleo landed some solid combos as well as a couple of accurate kicks scoring the next point. When the other kid went to the ground again, I hollared at Kaleo to throw some punches and he responded, getting a point while the kid was grounded. 2-2 tie great. Kaleo scored the final point with solid combo punch kick and Bam! first round comeback from 0-2 deficit. I was stoked!

2nd Round matchup was against another taller yellow belt. No much to say here, Kaleo scored three straight point with front punch kick combos. He got a warning for "excessive celebration" on his 2nd point which was appropriate. In another match, another kid got points taken for taunting by saying "c'mon" egging other opponents on. I felt bad for the other kid in this round as he lost quickly in three straight.

3rd and final round was against another Orange belt who was bigger taller faster, but to my surprise Kaleo was not intimidated and moved forward pushing the action, but fell in three straight. I was really happy about his performance though. He placed 2nd in the sparring tourney.

Here are some pics. He was really happy to place, and went up against higher ranked and much more physically mature kids and placed. I'm gonna give Dana White (president of the UFC) and see if we can get some sponsorship dollars for more training ;) -lol.

November 08' (see? it *is* hard to be original)

1.5 months til 08' is over. Time flies when you're busy and having fun. I think from now til year end every weekend is booked with some family thing. BTW, my 20 year reunion is in two weeks. Should be a hoot seeing how everyone has changed since the 10 year and since H.S. I must say facebook's been great as far as connecting with a lot of old acquaintances. I found a couple of HS friends from Cajon high, who had left lasting impressions on me during an interesting time in my life. It's great to see that they have families and doing very well. If you were to look at us back then in 86', you'd never thought we would become well adjusted, family people.

Eh, I was in the middle of writing this and got interupted - I'm going to post this as-is with half my thoughts down...

1 month, and things have gotten worse...

Bailed Out, Thanks for your reply on my previous post.

Now one month has passed and things have gotten extremely bad in the market. Things have deteriorated so bad in the last week. I'm thinking that the 80k I talked about last month (of the 100k you had on 1/1/08) is now worth about 65k. That's about a 35% loss YTD- looking at fund performance within Fidelity 401k, this about right.

Does it get worse? A better question would be "Does it get any better?". I don't think so, not in the short term. The Dow is under 8600 and there's no telling where the floor is. A few us timers knew the bubble would be bursting, and my guess was that the dow was gonna floor at 8500. What I didn't realize was how fast this would happen and that things can get a lot worse than 8500.

Hard to know what to do with cash on the sidelines. I'm going to be looking at P/E ratios and see if we can't eek out any information on some value investing for the long term. Aside from market timing, isn't investing about dividends and interest? I believe there are still good companies out there - even sectors - that are going to make money in this market. Hard part is finding which... Energy stocks are in the toilet, just check out XLE . Gold seems to be the hot tip, but I'm too late to catch that train.

Everyone's expecting some kind of magical pill that will turn the entire market around. Isn't going to happen (credits tight, unemployment high, earnings (for 3Q, we'll see). From, experience we're only in year 1 of at least a 3 year downturn (this one's expected to last at least 5). We've got a long ride on the back of this bear.

The ridiculousness of "Holding" during a bear market.

Okay, so the stock market has been taking a massive dump. I've been watching this bear market unfold since Sept. 07' and luckily I've been mostly out of the market since then. In one year it's been nearly impossible to make any money (by conservative means, not gambling on individual stocks or shorting them). All indexes YTD show between -15%-20% performance. If you're one of the unfortunate ones that haven't gotten out of the market, be prepared for worse.
Here's why:

Global Economy - Euro indexes are in the dump, China and India economies are receding - The global economy is not tied to the United States

Domestically, we have our own inflation worries to deal with, mortgage/credit crisis, with more bad news on the way, the worst is not over yet.

I think it's ridiculous for these advisors telling people to hang on, to hold on to investments when we've clearly have at least 12-18 months for recovery.

Here's something that would make it more clear for you if you're not catching my drift... If you had a 100k invested in some index fund in Sep of 07, you'd probably have 80k left today. My guess is if you keep what you have left invested, in about 6-12 months, it'd be worth about 65k.

What is the pyschology behind holding on to losing investments?

"The Buy and Hold strategy suggests investing in high-value stocks or mutual funds and leaving them in place long term based on the assumption that, over time, the market increases in value. The investors who employ this strategy assume that since the market will increase in value over time, their investment will too."

What a crock... I'm not saying it won't work, but there's nothing worse than watching thousands of dollars go *poof* in a matter of days. Here, just let me open my wallet and hand you several hundred dollar bills.

Anyways, I leave you with that thought to chew on. I'll have more to add when I'm a bit fresher - about my experience with market timing and investing on momentum. It doesn't work for everyone, but has worked for me. I've been lucky to get in on the 90's .com market boom, then to get out before the crash. I was also lucky enough to get in during the 2k's real estate boom and then out before the crash. Luck? probably not. Skill? definitely not. Common sense? absolutely.

Obligatory monthly post...

August. Olympics have been great, but I'm sick of NBC's control over what games are being shown. I wish more obscure sports like table tennis or BMX would be televised. I'm especially disappointed over (non swimming/gymnastic) U.S. gold medalists that got very little coverage. Yahoo medal count is also a joke, it shows that we're first at getting the most silver and bronzes...

So I finally get on facebook and the connections and networking it makes far surpasses Myspace. So much in fact that I want to ditch the MS account as well as classmates. So much easier to connect with current and past aquaintances.

Anyways, I'm trying to keep up with my riding again, and after a two week layoff I still have some legs - must have been the consistent weekend surfing that kept my cardio up. The guys I'm surfing with have got me wanting to ride a short board again, but I'm not 100% convinced my body can handle it. For someone with my build, the waves have to be 4'+ to be any fun and so far this summer we haven't had that kind of swell.

Quad riding has been a blast too. A couple of weeks ago, we did the same trail called Trestles, only we went further, got lost and again finished in the deep dark. Kaleo took a few hard spills, but upped his difficulty quite a bit. His bike now goes a bit faster with a different rev limiter and he's got a lot more confidence. I think we'll be hitting El Mirage dry lake bed around the holiday weekend so hopefully it stays somewhat cool.

Lastly Kaleo tests again next weekend for his next stripe which reminds me we that we have to practice this week.

Some parting shots attached:

Next Hobby Please

Okay,

I was scratching my head all spring thinking of a new hobby so that I could spend more time doing something with Kaleo. When I say "something", I mean an activity of at least 4-6 hours in nature that will wear him out. The type of Mtn Bike riding I do would be too strenuous for Kaleo. I can't tow him anymore because he and his new bike are HEAVY. Last year when he weighed about 35-40 lbs and had a small 12" bike he was towable. We'd be able to go 15 or so miles on hard Mtn bike terrain, but last summer proved to be too difficult (he now weighs about 52# and his new bike is about another 25#, imagine pulling a 75+#s of bored kid/bike up a steep hill in the heat) so we've stopped going all together. I still ride regularly however... He doesn't want to go surfing (yet) because 3' surf and rough water intimidates him, he's not quite large enough nor does he have the dexterity yet to paddle the kayaks, but I know he loves the outdoors and yes.. we didn't renew our Disney passes this year.

So where did the money go? I ended up finding a couple of used Quads from a co-worker. Kaleo's is a small 50cc and I found nice barely used 200cc which I will eventually retire for a Dual Sport bike next month. (registration and prep for these things was an adventure in itself... read DMV and equipment)

I met up with Harold and his son up near the Cajon pass. He had scoped out some nice trails the week before, but I was leery about the 95 degree weather that was supposed to hit that area. We got lucky and did some epic riding. A storm front was arriving and kept things breezy and cool. Kaleo hung in there like a champ and to every one's surprise, especially Harold's, he made about 30 miles of up and down climbing. It got dark as we arrived back at camp. The freak thunderstorm hit, with lighting and fast rain, we packed our junk and were out of there by 8:30 p.m.

Anyways, here's a picture of us a the top of one of the peaks near Cajon pass. I think we've found a good hobby to do together for longer outings and hooking up with friends with a similar interest. I know it's a dangerous sport, but I've been taking as many precautions as I can with equipment and have no hesitation barking out commands at Kaleo when I think he's being too ambitious. BTW, he crashed once trying to do a 15' high berm stunt (he stalled at the top of a bank and rolled backwards off a small ledge, fell off the bike but was OK). The other no-no was another 15' berm stunt when he was trying to mimic what some some forest rangers were practicing earlier. I stopped him at the top of the ledge before any damage was done.

We didn't stop to take too many pictures, we were too busy enjoying the ride.

Big K earns Yellow

Kaleo on the Left, Aiden right

Ready for the UFC - Kaleo in Black/Red.

I'm gonna make you tap-out!

Yes!


After many weeks of dedicated practice (his test kept getting delayed). Kaleo finally earned his yellow belt. The yellow belt requires the first 9 moves of Heian Shodan, but with the extra weeks of practice, he did the whole thing (21 or moves). It also requires demonstration 3 basic punches, 3 blocks, 3 kicks, falling, and 3 stances, attack and defense move- most importantly he's had to display self control and discipline. He's also been sparring alot and picking up a lot of (applied punch, kick, and block) and is getting better at his spacing. I love watching him excel at this, I can sense that he loves the feeling of accomplishment.

Here are some pics, Receiving yellow after the test, sparring partner Aidan.