Miho's favorites

OMG.. It’s already almost time for US Nationals figure skating events. Every season, ( since 2007) It’s hard to focus anything else and my mind is full about men’s event with nerves and I’m anxious, besides excitement. Especially this is Olympics season, and the result of the Nationals influences to get the spot for the USA Olympics team. However , it’s always “ mindset ” comes to my mind first before the competitions. I’ve heard that Japanese skater Miki Ando was thinking about the Olympics while she was competing at Japanese Nationals, and lost podium. She was already locked as an Olympics Japanese team member since she won Gold at two GPS events and won Silver at GPF this season. And now she sounds very nervous from pressure, and her memory of the last Olympics made her even more nervous. And I started thinking, this kind of feeling may be happening to all the other athletes, especially, Johnny Weir from USA, Brian Joubert from France, Carolina Kostner from Italy, ...

Time flies so fast !  It’s already 2010 !!! Our 2009 was like a roller coaster year, and we learned how timing is very important as far as helping things go smoothly. When you do something at the wrong time, everything may get worse and worse from that point then. We just need to know when is the right time.  Ray thinking There are also signs which may point out whether it’s right time or not when we pay attention for it and things in the beginning of the day. We felt like we were in a twilight zone for a while. LOL. Anyway, Ray and I are fine, both keeping healthy and have been staying in good relationship, no matter what happened around us. Life is like an illusion , why not achieve all the goals we want in our life ? ~ Everything in heaven and earth is connected to everything in earth and heaven. ~ ~ Everything in heaven and earth is the reflection of everything in heaven and earth. ~ ~ Everything in heaven and earth contains the pa...

People’s views are always different especially when it comes to artistry. I really think we all are biased for our favorites based on our taste, our views, our personalities, and it also might be coming from which side of the brain is more developed , right brain or left brain. And whatever art or other things that we learn, there are always levels, whether it’s judges scoring by whatever the rules happen to be, which BTW the rules were made by people who also have their own bias and favorite type of figure skating, or it comes from laws of nature.   We can feel which pianists are playing from the heart or not, besides being able to appreciate the technical ability.  In figure skating, Genuine artistic skaters to me are Johnny Weir Emanuel Sandhu Tatiana Navka Oksana Baiul These skaters come to my mind first. The following are also genuine artistic skaters,  Stephane Lambiel Daisuke Takahashi Staviski (of Denkova/Staviski) Shen( of Shen...

This season, I was unable to post my reviews for each GPS event because of many other things I needed to do even though I watched all the GPS events for singles except for Skate America and wanted to post about it. Figure skating Grand Prix Final competitions was held in December 3 to 6, 09. The qualified skaters for singles were below, Men  Nobunari Oda (JPN) Evan Lysacek (USA) Brian Joubert (FRA) ( withdrew for injury ) Jeremy Abbott (USA) Daisuke Takahashi (JPN) Johnny Weir (USA) Tomas Verner (CZE)( was replaced for Joubert ) Before the event, I was guessing this competition will be really heat up especially between Takahashi vs. Oda in Team Japan, and Lysacek , Weir and Abbott in the team USA. Felt sorry to hear about Brian Joubert ’s injury during the practice. Sounded extremely pain when he got the injury.  He also had to withdraw from GPF last season after SP , because he got injury during practice before LP.  Hope he will get better soon and...

It’s been a long time since my last post. Just too busy for my work right now, and since hearing only Universal sports/NBC broadcast will show the GPS here. But Ray got a great news, NBC ( not universal sports), one of the major broadcasts will show it for single skating, ladies and men both !!! and pairs and ice dancing will be shown at Universal sports.    I’m very happy to hear that because I much prefer to watch figure skating on TV to Internet.  October 18, (TEB) October 25 (Rostelecom Cup ) November 8 (NHK) November 15 ( Skate America ) November 22 ( Skate Canada) December 6 (GPF) Figure skating TV schedule http://heatherw.com/mk/sch.htm   Disappointed news is Sasha Cohen had to withdraw from TEB competition because of injury.  I was very excited to see ladies TEB, because I was wondering how Sasha can compete with present top skaters with different judging system. It’s also great to see her skating, especially for her artistry....

Johnny’s new interview from Outsports part 1 is already up at   http://www.outsports.com/os/index.php/component/content/article/43-2009/261-johnny-weir-the-outsports-interview This interview is all about figure skating, and according to the article, in part 2, he will talk about sexuality, his own sexual orientation , crazy fans and his personal life. I always love his interviews, and this is also no exception.  My impression of him from this interview, So strong !  Full of fire !  Direct and honest as usual. My top favorite parts of his answer is when he was asked about his competitors,  “ I personally have no resentment , because competitors mean nothing to me. I just need to do my best and think about what I’m going to do and make sure I look gorgeous. “  Really love his answer for this.  It reminds me of the quotes from Ma Zu, “ Be a witness, not a judge. Focus on yourself, not on others. Listen to your heart, not to the cro...

It may be the first time I watched World Championships for track & field this year. Except for figure skating, I don’t usually watch any other sports competitions and I only watch Olympics. I have been a fan of Jeremy Wariner (400m) since 2004 Olympics but since watching last Beijing Olympics ( 2008), and his struggle to get gold medal, and rivalry between LaShawn Merritt and him at that time, I became more concerned about his competition. They showed the first round ( rehearsal ) two days ago, and Jeremy’s time was 44.64 or something like that, and he looked like he was not seriously running and I thought it just for warm-up before the final. And in the final, he placed second with the time 44.60 ! LaShawn Merritt won with the time 44.06 . I was wondering what was wrong with Jeremy ??? Then in the interview, he said he has been having an ankle injury. That’s why… The time 44.60 is slow compared to his usual time he had been having in the past. It’s really a sh...