Since I seem to be in the habit of writing nigh on 1000 word Blog posts every few weeks, I thought I’d chop this one up into friendly chunks for you to enjoy at your leisure. This is part 2 of 2. Read part 1 here.

Showing off: Me getting my new orange belt from Olympic and World champion Maki Tsukada (I will post photos of things other than judo soon...)

So a world and Olympic champion in Judo has been training with us… More photos at the end of the post!

Other Extracurricular Activities

I’ve had several weekends away in the last few weeks. There was a wonderful (if exhausting) weekend in Cambridge with the choir. This was mainly to rehearse, but also to have a nice time away together. It’s a lovely city and an enormous contrast to London, reminding me why I applied to go to university there a few years ago. I must say, it’s a quite a contrast to London and imperial.

The whole place feels much smaller and focussed around the colleges and the university. Imperial is more one of many focal points in a massive city filled with focal points. Of course, this means that there are lots of focal points (national art galleries, museums, a mind-boggling selection of entertainment venues…) around you all the time. Sometimes it feels like being at the centre of the world.

I also went home for the third time this term, to go and refuel (both in terms of food and spirit) with my family.

Elsewhere, I’ve joined a Confirmation group at the main Catholic Chaplaincy near UCL. It’s really great, and I think I’ll have to write some more about it as part of a general comment on the (excellent) London chaplaincy services in the near future.

Physics

“So, everything is great! But how about your physics degree?” I hear you ask. Well, physics is ticking along. At the moment it feels like more of a day to day job than one of the great passions of my life, but I think that’s because unlike at A-Level, I don’t have other things to compare it with. Problem sheets feel like a chore rather than being immediately interesting. Passion clearly needs rediscovering, and it’s a problem the department is, pleasingly, trying to fix.

This is, I think, a symptom experienced by many in the middle of a long degree, rather than any kind of black mark against physics or Imperial! At the end of the day, I maintain that physics is hard but ultimately rewarding. To give an example: learning about quantum mechanics has felt difficult and overwhelming at times, but there is a palpable sense of satisfaction when one steps back and examines the entirety and the implications of what has been learnt. Perhaps I need to do more “This is Awesome” posts about physics!

So, to summarise: Choir is joyous and going to be much of my life next year, Judo is painful and invigorating, my family and friends are beacons of awesomeness, and physics is fascinating if occasionally draining.

- Reuben

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Since I seem to be in the habit of writing nigh on 1000 word Blog posts every few weeks, I thought I’d chop this one up into friendly chunks for you to enjoy at your leisure. This is part 1 of 2. Read part 2 here.

DAY OF ANGER, DAY OF TERROR! Are words that I currently know the (rough) Latin translation of rather well*. And that’s not because I’ve been getting spooked at Catholic Mass. (I can already hear the “obvious joke” groans).

Choir

It’s nearly concert time again with Imperial College Choir and Verdi’s Requiem is filling my mind with its thunderous crescendos and poignant quiet moments. A musical friend of mine once affectionately described playing in the orchestra for Verdi’s Requiem as ”Quiet, quiet, quiet, then… LOUD NOISES.” It’s rather more beautiful and captivating than that might suggest, but I must admit that the chap in who’s memory it was composed must have lead one heck of a dramatic life if Verdi was trying to give an accurate reflection!

I keep forgetting to take pictures of the things I do, so please forgive this one not showing you a lot. Shiny though!

I really love singing all this classical music in the choir. Perhaps the novelty will wear off at some point, but I do find it extraordinary that ordinary me gets to be a part of such extraordinary music. It’s quite a privilage. Anyway, enough gushing.

This time of year all the clubs and societies have AGMs. These involve finding out how the club is doing, the Very Serious Business of electing committee members (to the delight of vote counters everywhere, the union insists on a second preference voting system for all elections) and plenty of mild banter. I managed to persuade the other members of the choir I liked it so much that they elected me Vice-Chairperson for next year. Apparently “I don’t know about you, but I love choir!” is a winning line.

My new job started today, as I went to help sort out the choirs enormous (and fascinating) collection of music, some of which was quite old when the choir began in the 1950s… One person noted that the whole thing would have taken a lot less time if we hadn’t stopped all the time to practice singing the pieces.

Cheeky plug, since we need people to come and see us perform to keep the Choir afloat:

Imperial College Choir’s performance (with orchestra) of Verdi’s Requiem is at 19:30 on Saturday the 17th of March at Holy Trinity Church, Sloan Square. Tickets can be bought from Choir members, here, by calling 0207 594 9354, on the door (less cheap) or in the Sherfield Lobby on Wednesday and Thursday Lunchtime. Selling points: Great music, great choir (who have put in lots of effort), great venue, it has me in it, and Verdi’s Requiem is awesome.

Now back to the serious business of discussing my life…

Judo

Judo is as painful and invigorating as ever. The whole club is focussed on the looming inter-university BUCS competition, success at which decides much of the funding for the club. I’ll spare you a Reuben Rant on how unfair the funding system for clubs appears to be (it’s based on the number of points gained at certain qualifying competitions. Except not everyone can get points, and different sports are elligible for different numbers of competitions and points. Grrr…).

To the detriment of my big toe, which took a nasty strain when being swept from under me a few weeks ago, everyone is training extremely hard. I thinks it says something that even though every session causes me to limp off in pain at the moment, I still absolutely love it. (Whether it “says something” about my mental well-being or the sport of Judo, I have yet to decide.)

Oh, and former Olympic and World Champion Maki Tsukada has been popping in to train with us. Pictures soon.

Read part 2 here.

*I’m not sure quite how good the translation in our copy of the music is, but it’s definitely along the lines of “WRATH!” and “TERROR!”.

Me being thrown...

“There are a number of strangles you can do from this position” are somewhat ominous words. It’s apparently all good fun though, since this is strangling in the name of sport!

So, Judo. Roughly translated from Japanese it means “gentle way”. It’s a competitive fighting sport where the aim is to either throw your opponent from their feet (see the video at the end of this post for an example) so that they land on their back, hold them down with their back to the ground, or force their submission with an arm lock, choke or strangle. Gentle indeed. This year, the sport has for me has been a source of satisfaction, exhaustion, pain, and even my tentative steps into poetry.

Following my decision in September not to venture down to the river each morning to row (much as I enjoyed it, rowing was simply going to be too much of a time commitment), I was looking for a new sport to do at the beginning of last term. There are a venerable plethora of sports clubs at Imperial; after the freshers fair I found myself trying everything from Cross Country running to Muay Thai Kickboxing. It was, however, Judo which kept my attention.

Me getting stuck in during a ground fight. I discovered the massive tear on my back, which spelt the end of my first (very cheap) judo suit, after the fight.

Prior to trying Judo, all I knew of the sport came from my memories of other children doing it at my local leisure centre when I was young. They wore pyjama like suits and seemed to do a lot of rolling around on mats. At my first session “Rolling around” quickly revealed itself to be either viscous ground fighting, or a falling technique to avoid getting injured every time you find yourself approaching the floor at speed (which is often). The pyjama like suits… well I don’t know about you, but I’ve never worn a set of pyjamas that I could describe as being suitable for repeated forceful lifting, pushing and dragging the wearer. (If you have, then your pyjama based activities are clearly not meant for sharing.)

After a warm up, and often a silly game to work on balance (trying to “surf” a partners back as they crawl on their hands and knees seems to be a favourite of the coach), we get to training. This typically involves going over techniques or learning something new from the enormous library of moves, the mind boggles to imagine how the numerous inventive ways of strangling were thought up for example, or doing some fitness drills. This builds up to the latter part of the session where there is free practice: we take turns to fight with one another in standing or ground fights (competition fights tend to transition from one to another).

This is an exhausting, adrenalin filled test of the mind: getting past an (in my case usually far more experienced) opponent’s defences means thinking fast and knowing just what move to try in the situation at hand or, more usually for me, some good luck. I get thrown quite a bit. Thankfully, its amazing how polite someone can be immediately after they have just unceremoniously lifted you from your feet and driven you into the floor. To stop players being killed or injured all the time, fighting and training is done on shock absorbent mats. Still, a good throw always knocks some of the wind from you. One doesn’t dwell on this though, at Imperial Judo Club you get up (your partner perhaps offering a hand) and you get back to fighting. I have to admit, the feeling of satisfaction when you finally successfully throw or hold your partner is always fantastic.

We meet for training twice a week: On a Monday evening at Imperial’s sports centre Ethos and on a Wednesday afternoon at an impressive historic purpose built Dojo in Chelsea (which is frequented by at least one Olympian). In the first term there was an extra session on a Thursday night or beginners, to teach us some basics.

Our club captain (blonde, centre) completing a throw on his opponent (my mate Thore, right).

All of this builds up to competitions, where we compete against players from other clubs and universities. I’ve so far competed in one, a terrific team effort at which Imperial won the overall trophy for the most medals. This was one of the most exhausting things I’ve ever done, easily comparable to racing a boat down a river, but also a complete adrenaline rush. I only realised how knackered I was when the fight was over. It was my first win that partly inspired the aforementioned poem.

So, if I may use this blog to plug something, it’s to say that you should try judo. Or, if you come to imperial, try a sport! There are some fantastic clubs here that perform to a very high standard (more plugging: several of the clubs, judo and the boat club included, are some of the best in the country). The (free) gym here is great too.

I hope this (rather long) post goes some way to make up for my lack of them of late. One thing to know about Imperial is that it knows how to fill student’s time! Must do better. Still, now the world knows that I know a number of ways of throwing, strangling and generally inflicting pain on people. Come to think of it, is divulging such information that wise..?

- Reuben

Lots more pictures, including a team photo (at the very end) and a video follow:

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