My New Life's Work

"Sometimes the fluffy bunny of incredulity zooms round the bend so rapidly that the greyhound of language is left, agog, in the starting cage."

One of my favorite quotes from Cloud Atlas pretty much sums up why, after a few too many infuriating email exchanges with Real Gap, I've decided to dedicate my unemployed life to taking them down.  Well, maybe not taking them down, but at least writing enough reviews, and messaging enough people on facebook, to lose them substantial money.  I think it's a worthy use of my time.

A few highlights of our interactions:

Me:  In no way, shape or form was this class for "all levels" like you said.  On day two we were being asked to perform dangerous acrobatics with people who had been at the school for up to a year.

Fisa Liddmore*, Real Gap: Safety is paramount at the school and in the shared acrobatics session, the moves students were asked to carry out were tailored to ability and longevity of stay. You were carrying out moves of differing difficulty levels to the students who had been there longer.

Me: Unless you were hiding in the back of our class, you don't really seem qualified to tell me what we were and were not asked to do.

Fisa Liddmore, Real Gap: We are satisfied that the services you received at the academy were consistent with the programme information you received before you arrived.

Dear Real Gap.  You messed with the wrong retired lawyer.


**The name of the Real Gap representative I found so useful has been changed due to a cease and desist letter sent by Real Gap asking me not to name their representatives.

Where have you gone, my folly of youth?

You know how you feel invincible to injury when you’re young? Well, we are officially no longer young. It’s always been a weird goal of mine to study kung fu in China and when I got Juan on board it seemed nothing could stand in my way. Boy was I wrong.

Nothing could have prepared us (except maybe 5 or so previous years of intense martial arts training) for what awaited us at the Rising Dragon Martial Arts Academy in the Fujian Province of China. Sold by RealGap, a company that organizes gap years and similar programs for all ages, the program (anywhere from one-month to years) was marketed as being for “people of all levels and abilities.” Nothing could have been further from the truth. Within the first two days, we were being asked to do squats with people on our shoulders, run a minimum of 6 miles a day, do knuckle push-ups with our feet on the wall, perform backward somersaults into hand-stands, crawl down stairs on our hands, do headstand flips and more. Seven hours of training on about 3 oz of protein a day and often no running water for showers… It didn’t take long to realize we were in over our heads; every aching muscle and daring stunt further convinced us that we were likely to sustain some sort of injury if we stayed. Oh, how I miss the folly of youth that would have scoffed at my present self’s aversion to risk.

We quickly retreated to the class where everyone else of lower ability was hiding: the internal tai chi class. Unfortunately, performing the same basic movements for 7 hours a day was mind-numbingly boring and we decided to high-tail it out of there. Sadly, I think this means I’m about 10 years too late to become a kung fu master. Oh, well. Maybe I’ll find a more suitable area for self-improvement. Suggestions welcome.