Breakin The Law 8: Elev8tion

To be honest, I almost wanted to neglect writing a post about Breakin the Law 8: Elev8tion for many reasons. Most important reason out of all, however, is the lack of footage or pictures to go along with the blog post. As many readers have already noticed, as you should, I love to put some pictures to either help me illustrate a point or to just give a nice visual effect to the post. However, because of my stupidity of leaving my camera battery charger in Taiwan during my visit last winter, my camera activity has been reduced to 0. But this will change because I just got the charger from my mom! ^_^

Another reason that contributed to the shaky fate of this post is the timing. Due to the fact that Breakin the Law 8 happened the week RIGHT BEFORE the last round of exams, which was also RIGHT before finals. So right after BTL, I went into hermit mode and studied like a mad man like a college student should. Then before I knew it, it has been a good 3 weeks to a month before I finally have the free time to post.

However, since I promised in the previous post that I would blog about Breakin The law, I must dismiss my laziness and man up and blog like a boss! However, because of my horrible, and failing memory, I may not be able to supply this post with accurate details. So in order to supplement for the possible short ass post about a huge event on the caliber of BTL, I will most likely include some other stuff in this post. So again, forgive me, but this time, for my randomness XD

Getting to Wisconsin Madison was no simple task, especially when you are about 5 hours away from the place. Furthermore, having classes on the day of definitely does not help with the case. Nonetheless, a group of Floor Lovers Illinois (FLI for short) members were determined to get there, me included. Because BTL was a two day event that lasted from Friday to Saturday, many of us, having classes on Friday, would have to rush our asses to Wisconsin right after classes. And God definitely did not like the idea, and punished us with never-ending shower. After a few minutes of attempting to rendezvous, at long last, we were off! I was in the same car Tom, Jason, Cary, and Vicki.

The ride was rather interesting. Even though it was long, it really wasn't as bad as many people would think. We stopped by somewhere in Chicago to drop off Vicki at her mother's office. Jason and I were rather surprised by the fact that her mother works for a biomedical firm! Being students of the science, we were intensely interested and could not help but ask a few questions regarding having possible internship under her guidance. However, since we were obviously short on time, we cut our conversation short and got back on track to Wisconsin.

On the way, we listened to various kinds of music, as well as in various languages. Most notably, the Asian kinds. It's been quite a while since I heard and sung "Sakura", by Naotaro Moriyama. It was indeed a beautiful piece that is worthy to be played on the day of graduation, as many Asian schools have done. While listening to this song, I was utterly reminded that after this semester, I will be half way done with college. While the mere thought definitely saddens me, I definitely look forward to the life afterward. But hey, that's for another time. Gotta focus on the present!

When we finally arrived to the capitol, we were utterly frustrated and shocked by the unorganized directions as well as an insane amount of ridiculous one-way streets. It took us about an hour before we finally were able to locate our destination. Drenched in rain and soaked in exhaustion, we dragged out asses into the prestigious-looking building and found the place where the event was held. To our dismay, we found out that the room was covered by carpets. There were only the main lino, which was used for competitions, as well as about 2 other linolium/floors that were set up for the ciphers. Blujay and I were rather disappointed by this. It was not until we pretty much said "fuck it, we drove 6 hours to get here, and we are going to fucking get it down on the floor" did we realize that it was not that bad at all. The carpet was totally smooth and allowed people to do spin moves like 1990/2000s on them.

While ciphering was definitely our main way of showing our participation, watching the battles were the other half of the game. However, it was a rather difficult task to find a good spot to spectate since we arrived so late. But we managed to get a pretty decent view of the battles. While the battles were divided into many categories, our main interests lied within the bboy crew battles and bboy 2 vs 2 battles. I just gotta say, being to a jam of this huge scale for the first time, I was definitely impressed with what the participants had to bring to the floor. Not only were they creative, they were also energetic and unique. Ciphers...not so much. The ciphers were more like "practices" for the participants. Only a few, including Blujay and myself, were there to just dance.It was rather hard to break the power move practice theme and just dance to the music, especially when those kind of bboys are clearly the minorities at the scene. Hopefully this won't be the case throughout.

Another thing which I noticed during my stay is the level of energy of the crowd. Perhaps it was because of the weather, or perhaps it was because of the level of the jam, the crowd was usually dead silence unless one of the participants busted out some unique or uncommon power moves. While styling/killing the beats of music still scored some props from the crowd, the ratio is significantly lower. This made me think....in what direction has modern bboying evolved into? Has the younger generation bboys come to only appreciate power moves rather than perceiving the art form as another form of dance? Or perhaps other reasons that I am just not aware of? This is for another time.

After the Friday portion was finished, us FLI people returned to our hotel. To our surprise, we were welcomed by a big hotel room that was facing the lake! After paying our respective amount of money for staying at the hotel, we quickly searched for a solution to our immediate hunger. It was here, James Park came to the rescue with his amazing knowledge of food. After hearing some suggestions, we decided to eat some local flavored pizzas. At the place, we ordered 3 humongous pizzas. At the end of it, we were mighty full...afterward all that jazz, we were extremely exhausted and immediately claimed our spots on the floor (only girls and couples slept on the bed) and went on to dream about tomorrow.

Waking up to the alarm around 9 am, I slowly crept to the tables in the hotel room and started to work on some homework that I brought from school. However, after about an hour, Jenkin Ng woke up and started his day. After awhile, I decided to just say screw it and talked to him a little bit. Being probably the eldest member currently in FLI, I thought he would probably share some knowledge he has, seeing that I was planning on be part of the executive board next semester. Then I realized that, it has been quite a while since I first approached FLI. This conversation was both nostalgic and saddening, seeing that after one more semester, a lot of current members will be gone for good. I guess we just gotta make the best out of it and treasurer every second we have.

After everyone slowly came to their conscious from their deep slumber, we were going to watch the Bulls game, but decided to simply leave and explore the town before the jam. We went out and explored Madison's equivalent of our Green Street. And dear lord, was it wayyyyy longer and wayyyy more prosperous than our Green Street. Their shops were not only filled with various kinds of restaurants, but they also featured some really interesting shop. After we decided to settle with "Five Guys" for lunch, we went in and I was simply amazed by the quality of their fries. It was soooo...good....simply orgasmic ^_^ Afterward we went to get some ice cream. Having sensitive teeth usually prevent me from enjoying this desert, but hell I would endure the pain for THIS ice cream. It's the tastiest ice cream I have ever eaten!

After all the exploring, we proceeded to the last day of Breakin the Law. To be honest, the second day definitely was not as hyped as the first day. Perhaps it was because we were finally adjusted to the atmosphere, or whatever the reason. But the battles just simply didn't appeal to me all that much. True, there were a couple dope battles, but I definitely liked what I saw on Friday way more. Nonetheless, I still were amazed by the popping battles and the house/footwork battles. It was the first time I was exposed to the latter battles and I wonder how it will help me with my dance when I learn it. Perhaps some other time XD

But my night at Breakin the Law had to be cut short because I left with James in the middle of the second night. Although a little bit unwilling, I promised Grace that I would return on Saturday instead Sunday if an option was available. A promise is a promise. So I took the ride from James with Sean and Sherry. On the way back, I kept reminiscing about the event. It was, after all, my first time in a big scale and well-known jams that's not Ill Break. I have witnessed many new things in this jam, and I intend to make use of this new found experience.