I had been hiding from this blog… again. Here’s a quick highlight of what I had been up to in the past few months.

Ars Amorata

I’ve been following Zan Perrion for a while and appreciate what he teaches. Zan and Hans Comijn started the online version of their program Ars Amorata recently. Ars Amorata is a 90 day transformational program for men. ‘Ars Amorata’ means the art of love and it is oriented towards things related to love and relationship as the name suggests, but what one learns in this program is much bigger than these two areas. I signed up for Ars Amorata in May and completed it. Ars Amorata helped me clarify my vision about where I want to go and what I want to do. I will write more about Ars Amorata in another post. If you are curious about it, check its promotional video and webpage.

Beautiful moments

I want to make the world more romantic. The question I get most often is “How do you do that?”. My answer is simple: I live my life as if it’s a work of art and seek for beautiful moments that contribute to this artwork. That’s what I do. If you like the idea of the world being more romantic, what you can do is to believe in experiencing the beauty that your life offers and to experience it when it’s right in front of you. I want to write more on this topic on this blog and it would be great if I could be of your help. But you can start now without waiting for my stories.

Interviewing professional fighters in Japan

Daniel the MMA photographer had been looking for an interpreter for this project on interviewing fighters in Japan. On twitter, I had been following him and replied to his tweets a few times, and he noticed that I was fluent in both Japanese and English. So he contacted me. I got to interview Megumi Fujii, Yuki Nakai, Tatsuya Onose, Maximo Blanco, and Kazuhiro Nakamura. I had so much fun with this project, because it was inspiring for me to hear from these top fighters in person. I believe the materials recorded for this project will come out as articles and videos in the future. In fact, Matt, one of the project members, wrote an article about our interview with Megumi Fujii. Check it out if you are interested. If you are on twitter and interested in BJJ or MMA, don’t forget to follow Daniel (@DanHerbertson) and Matt (@martialfarts) as well as Dean, who is another project member and likes BJJ and hardcore punk!

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Asian Open Championship in Tokyo

I competed at Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Open Championship in Tokyo last month. I came to the 2^nd in my division, winning 4 matches by submission. I lost in the final. If you are following me on twitter or Facebook, perhaps you’ve already heard about it. Or perhaps you’ve got an e-mail from me. I will write a post on my fights soon.

Miscellaneous

I’ve been practicing Argentinean Tango since April, and in August, I started practicing for a solo performance, which will happen in November.

I met Rickson Gracie. He published a book in Japan and the publisher organized a meet-and-greet event for those who bought a copy of Rickson’s book at certain bookstores. I learnt a lot from Rickson’s view on life.

I met amazing people in the last few months. I want to meet amazing people more. Suggestions and introductions welcome.

In terms of setting up a location independent business, it’s not happening much. I need to work more on that so I can be a vagabond with location-independent sources of income. Translation, which I do, is such a source, but it’s not quite in line with my vision.

It’s been a year since I came back from Australia.

I’m totally looking forward to how I will evolve in the next few months. Watch out!

photo: geoftheref