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| Me at the airport waiting for my wings. |
I'm going to share a story with you all. A recent story. It begins with a dream. A dream I will have to complete at a later date because of my infamous "wrong place wrong time" type luck combined with a few asshole people. I'm still feeling raw about it, so forgive the tone.
My name is Jeff Liboiron, and I am a Senshido International team member, and I am located in Nanaimo, BC, Canada. Senshido has changed my life for the better in SO many ways. My dedication to it has paid off time and time again. One of those times was very recently.
Last year, I started to prepare for a dream of mine which was to travel to Indonesia and all over Southeast Asia. I scrimped and saved all the money I could, lived in my van for two months, and sold almost everything I owned except for my training gear, and some music recording gear.
Sept 1st came and off I went! When I tell you I was excited, that would be an understatement. I had decided to stop off in Malaysia first as I wanted to see the country anyway, and it's only an hour flight to Indonesia from there. This is where it all went wrong.
I was having an amazing time. I saw some really cool sights, and met interesting people everytime I stepped out of my hotel room. All I did was train, see cool shit, and eat great and healthy food. I was living my dream, and it felt fantastic. Until about four days in.
I wear a prosthetic leg. I always have as I was born that way, but I have a good attitude about it. I don't let it stop me from doing shit I wanna do. It's the way you have to be, ya know?
So I meet about six guys outside this store as I'm walking to dinner one evening. Everyone there always asked questions about where I'm from, and about my leg, etc. I figured it was just another interview as I had done so many. It turns out they set me up for an attack as I told them how much my leg was worth which is about 17 grand Canadian. If you don't know anything about Malaysia. $20 CAD a day is an average wage. It's fuckin destitute there.
Anyway, a day or two later. I forget which. I am walking down the street, and hear this "HEY! HEY!" behind me. You have to understand that the streets are always busy, and there's shouting all the time, so I didn't pay as much as attention as I should have, so I turned around, and see these two guys approaching me, but something about them is different. They don't seem like they want a friendly chat....and they didn't. I turned around to basically see a knife put in front of my face "hold up" style with the two guys side by side. Knife guy is on my left, other guy is on my right. This is not my first time dealing with this shit, and unfortunately it probably won't be the last. I could tell they had done this before. They were semi-athletic, and were not worse for wear, but were speaking/shouting broken english. They wanted my money at first, so I figured I don't need the trouble in a foreign country and gave them a dummy wallet. They then point at my leg and said "you give us this!" That really threw me. Out of all the questions they could of asked that was the one I least expected. They asked again, and still in my passive stance, I said "OK, OK!"
As soon as I said that, I took out the guy with the knife first. It turns out that I broke his wrist as I got the knife out of his hand in the move that I used. I didn't even know his arm snapped until after everything was over. I had never been so fucking angry at two people in my entire life. As soon as the knife went flying, I kept a hold of that guy with one arm, and threw an eye jab into the other guy and dropped him as he hadn't moved from his position. I then tore apart Mr. Knife Man including crushing his nose into his skull, then I beat on both of them until they were unconscious. There was blood everywhere. It was disgusting. I firmly believe they would've taken my life to get my leg off of me, so I just made sure they were down and out. Also, keep in mind, the one thing I can't do is RUN. I figure these guys were part of that other group I met a few days before that weren't there at the time. The "tough" guys.
The problem is that there were cops everywhere. All over the fucking place. They just stand around. They are shit. This is not my opinion. This is fact. They are SHIT. So a cop hears the witnesses, and comes running from wherever he was, and I tell him that I will co-operate and that these two guys just tried to kill me with a knife. I get arrested, but not cuffed, and he takes me to the station for a statement, I guess. This was the scariest part. I don't knoe if you've ever been in a foreign country's police station after beating the ever living shit out of two citizens, but it's SCARY. They were speaking broken english to me, and Malay to each other.
I panicked as I was unsure of what kind of future they were going to give me, and told them that if I bought a ticket back to Canada would they let me go. They agreed thankfully, and I had to buy a ticket right there and then at the station. The only ticket I could afford was still $1200 and it didn't depart until a week later. I later learned that the two guys who tried to mug me had previous convictions of assault with a deadly weapon, and one had from what I could understand, an attempted murder charge. That was after I had left the station, and had to return for some more shit under police escort. All in all the situation lasted around 4 or 5 hours I'd say. Felt like forever.
For the week I had left, I switched locations, and just trained in my hotel room, and went to the supermarket to get my food. I didn't really go out much except for one temple, and the last week was kind of shit. I wish I could've gone home sooner.
It's been about 10 days since returning on Sept 15th, and I am getting back to normal. I am still harboring anger, and that is natural. I'm not going to let this ruin me, though. I can either choose to be bitter, or choose to be happy. I have been keeping myself busy with training and music, and looking for work again. Being busy and being around friends and family has been very helpful.
I will return either in May this year, or next year, but this time I'm flying right to Indonesia, and I'm gonna go climb my goddamn volcanoes. A big fuck you to my muggers. I know you will never recover. Next time you see a guy with a fake leg who looks like he just does a lot of pushups and squats, remember that he does a HELL of a lot more than that.
Peace out,
- Jeff Liboiron - aka Stinge - aka Libman
