I wanted to do something other than working out at the gym when I moved to Edmonton, so I started taking kung fu. It was fun, but after a while I wanted to try something new, so I moved on to jujitsu, and that was fun too. When I wanted to try something new again, I started Muay Thai, which is essentially kickboxing. That’s what I do now.

It lets me get out and meet new and different people. Through my job as an accountant I meet many different people too, but they’re always business owners or other accountants or other finance people. With martial arts, I meet people from different walks of life. It’s nice to get out, and good exercise too.

When I was still taking kung fu, I had the opportunity to take part in Edmonton’s Chinese New Year celebrations. It happens on the first day of the first month of the Chinese calendar - the community all comes out and the streets are just filled with people. There’s always a big event in Chinatown on the New Year weekend when the lion dance is performed for businesses. I was half of a lion. The owners hang money in a red envelope pinned to a head of lettuce above the front door of their business. Then the lion eats the lettuce, spits out the leaves, and keeps the money. It brings the owners good luck.

The really exciting thing for a lot of businesses is the higher they hang the money, the more luck they get when the lion takes it down. So because I am tall and fairly stocky, I could have people stand on my shoulders who are quite tall as well, and 6 feet became like 12 feet. Some of the guys were really acrobatic – they’d be on one foot on my shoulder looking up and grabbing it. I couldn’t do that. I was just the big guy who stands in one spot. Yeah, I wasn’t in for the fancy part. I was always in for the heavy lifting side of things. It was a lot of fun. I’d recommend it.