Batte Blog - Ludacrously Impressive Finnish … whats the T stand for again?? crap, I forgot. But its LIFT Gathering 2019 !

So cannot even think about tryina start writing about this without rememberin’ the kindness and generosity of Vellu and Karina.

My first time in Finland n it was the first Finnish International Gathering since .. I don’t even know. What I do know is that Shosei n Zen were the special guests n I had a great time.

Vellu n Karina were wonderful hosts, they really made the time very special to me and I hope I could do enough to say how much I appreciate one of the best gatherings I’ve ever been to. I feel like they really shined as Hosts when normally you’d expect the hosts to be in the background, really with their guidance the event ran so smoothly and I really enjoyed watching and participating in it.

I even got to play video games with Taiichi, Shosei and Zen !

Anyways, onto the battles !

I think I battled 1 or 2 people who were more at the entry level. Since there was some good competition in the tournament, I definitely wanted to make my way up there ta battle em !

Taiichi, Shosei and Zen were Judging. What was their criteria? I don’t know. At this time, most of the Japanese Community could not communicate to English let alone Finnish speaking trickers. So the language barrier was a bit rough but on some level, we can all understand without words. We’re all into Tricking afterall !

I made it up to the Semi Finals. I battled n lost to one of my friends Allu.

I can’t really remember what Rounds 1 and 2 were but the take home for me was how I lost the tie breaker. Allu went for Originality and I went for Power. Since Allu went first, it meant that in a way ( and this is how the Japanese must be reading battles ) the person who goes 1st will “lead” and it’s up to the competitor to respond. Allu lead with Creativity and Originality, I responded by out powerin’ him but the judges favoured his initial direction. He essentially challenged me to creativity but I was so fixed on landin’ the same combo as my previous pass that I didn’t land, that it meant more to me to get it, thinkin’ it woulda been good enough to win it ! It wasn’t until afterward that I realized I lost because I didn’t respond with the direction I was given by Allu.

That was a nice bit of lesson I got from the battles but, Criteria is goin’ to be different to each judge. It’s kind of hard to predict what do others think, so hopefully someday there will be more clear rules in the future, but either way I had a lot of fun, and was happy for Allu because he ended up takin’ 1st place afterwards !

I was also really glad my back wasn’t hurtin’ too much. Still dealt with my back injury but I don’t remember it hurtin’ as bad as earlier in the year.

Really loved Finland ! I wanna go back for a 1st place win !