Another busy week

Another busy week, arrived in Saskatoon this morning and went for a long walk along the south Saskatchewan river. What a beautiful walk, there trail system along the river is wonderful. We don't have a river in Stony but we do have a creek, what if I got it dug out a little and have all the water from dewatering the aquifers pumped into it. Maybe it will work? I'm here for the Federation of Canadain Municipalities conference (FCM), a few days of networking with other elected officials from Canada, attend the trade show, take in a few sessions and study tours and hear from our national leaders. Yup, that all packed into a few days. Training is going better, been jogging a little with the dog. It's giving him and me a workout. Trying to take advantage of the gym and swimming pool here and get in some training. Better try and get some sleep it's going to be a long few days.

Starting again

Went for my first jog this evening, 2.3km in 13mins. Not bad? I didn't want to over do it. You can tell that I'm out of shape, muscles don't feel it now (tomorrow they will be complaining) but my lungs are a little stressed. Looking forward to increasing my speed and cardio over the next couple of months. Hit a few golf baglls this week. The inactivity over the past few months has also effected my swing. I thought I do a little bit of practice since I have signed up for a couple of golf fundraisers. Don't want to embarrass myself when I'm with other elected officials. I'm starting to plan a raffle for the school, if everything goes well, we will raise awareness of the charities we support and generate some money to support them. Let's hoe everything works out.

Good week

It's been a week since I was officially sworn in as mayor, what a feeling it was last Monday. A big sense of accomplishment and pride with a little be of trepidation. Taking a quote from uncle Ben from the movie Spiderman, "with great power comes great responsibility". As mayor, I don't have any more power then I did as a councillor, I'm only one vote in seven. What I do have is more influence on the direction of the Town. We will still discuss and debate everything in Council and then vote on the best course of action. I'm looking forward to settling into my new leadership role in our community. I have been given the go ahead to resume all activities (YES!) but I have to stop when my eyes gets red or if I fell pain. Time to amp up my Kung fu training and get back on track. On Saturday I went to open training and have now settled on my 5 techniques, (well 4 for sure and still working the kinks out of the 5), if anyone wants to allow me to practice on them, it would be greatly appreciated. Today, after work, we went to the lake to get things opened up and ready for use. The cabin wintered well but the boat shed was used by some cats as a washroom. (yuk) I raked thought the sand to clean most of it out. Next year, I'm going to seal te shed with some boards. Looking forward to warmer weather and spending a few out there with the family.

Here and now

Well it's 12:50am and I can't settle myself down to sleep. A little to excited from tonight's activities. I was officially sworn in at tonight's Council meeting as the Mayor of Stony Plain. Excited and nervous at the same time. It was nice to have my family there to share the experience with, I was also surprised to see of the community there because they wanted to watch me get sworn in. I took over the meeting after I was sworn in and settled down after a few minutes. Looking forward to the challenge, I know this is going to be an amazing journey in my life. I'm just thankful for everything that has happened to me. With the many paths that are in front of me, every step I have taken has taken me to this point in my life. Sometimes I wonder where would I be if I hadn't come to Canada......if I didn't talk to Dara in grade one.......if I.......I don't know where I would be, I only know what I know and humbled to be here and now. Better try to sleep, I have kung fu at 6am, then another busy day.

Another journey branches out

Well the election is all over and I did get elected as the Mayor of Stony Plain. It was a great relief on Tuesday night after the results started coming in. After the results of the third poll was posted, it was clear that I was going to win. I was excited and honored to be given the opportunity to lead our community into the future. We had a little get together with some friends and volunteers and Dara did an awesome job setting up the room and making all the food and desserts. She spent a lot of time getting everything ready. Regardless, if I won or not we where going to have a celebration. The voter turn out was low and that was no surprise, municipal elections tend to have low turn out and by-elections are even lower. With just over 20% of the eliglbe voters voting on Tuesday, they made a definitive choice in choosing me to be the Mayor. I'm still in awe that I was elected. Now the work really starts, I feel another sense of pressure on me now. The pressure of leading a community. I will need a lot of support from my Council, Town Staff, my family and friends. I need to lean on them if I'm going to succeed and make the Town better. My training is slow, looking forward to my appointment with my surgeon on the 15th. Hoping to get the green light to amp it up a little. I find it hard to get mentally engaged with training without being physically invested. It was good to get out during Pandamoniun and it was during grappling and sparring (bonus). Would have loved to really get involved but had to hold myself back. I'm so blessed to be involved with a school that does more than training it's students how to kick and punch. The "spirit" of Kung fu is thriving at Silent River. I wish other organizations get this invested in their communities, their municipalities, their provinces, THEIR WORLD. The world would be a better place for everyone in it.

Nervousness

This time tomorrow I will know if I I'm leading our great Town into the future or supporting the new Mayor and Council. This election is whole lot different the the last two I went through. 2007 and 2010, I ran for Council, there where six seats available for Council. Which means I only needed to get more votes then the seventh candidate and I would have won a seat. This time, it's for all the marbles, having to resign from council to run for the Mayoral seat is scary. There is not a seat for second place, I have to finish first. As the time closes in many thoughts are running through my head, have I done enough during the campaign to win? Have I done enough during my 4 1/2 years on council to deserve to be the Mayor? Have I done enough for my community to get the support from the residents? Have I ..... ? This night will the similar to the whole week, little to nervous to sleep very much. It's hard the settle my brain down enough so I can sleep. I'm hoping to win tomorrow but if I don't, it's not the end of the world. I would be extremely disappointed but I have so many other wonderful gifts in my life. I'm feeling pretty good physically and my eye seems to be better the last few days, not as red and the pain is not as frequent and I have gained all my weight back. I'm going to start tracking my numbers again. I haven't tracked anything since my surgery (my next appointment with the specialist is on May 15 and I don't know if I can wait that long), just doing enough to keep me from deteriating to much in my training. I'm going to need a lot of help getting everything up to par...anyone volunteers? I'm going to try to do 500 pushups and situps tomorrow (yes sifu Kichko, I'm going slow). It's late enough, let's see if I can get a few hours of sleep tonight.

1 week to go

Tonight we had the all candidates forum for the Town by-election. It was a packed house, this surprised me. I thought wTith all the hype of the provincial election people would have had their full share of politics. This goes to so you how much community pride and involvement is in Stony Plain. I was nervous at first still need to work on my public speaking skills but they are a lot better then 2007 when I ran for council. As the evening went on to the question and answer period, I got more comfortable and felt good. Hoping to get elected on May 01. Looking forward to this h Council to run for Mayor but it fells like a long time. If anyone is interested you can check out my website to see my platform. www.wix.com/williamchoy/williamchoy If you like what you see and support me, please tell everyone you know in Stony Plain got out and vote for me. May 01, let's get the social media buzz trending that day #choy4mayor Another thought, my iPad can copy and paste to the I Ho Chaun blog, I need to copy my post before posting, then paste it to the other blog site. I guess my purchase of an iPad is validated :) until I try to do some excel and word projects. Went to see the optometrist on Monday, my left eye is great, the preventative lasering to the back of my will prevent it from ever detaching (yeah!). My right eye, the one that had the tear, is healing and with the scleral buckle and lasering the chances of it tearing is very unlikely but not 100% for sure. The gas bubble is all gone but the healing is slow. My eye gets really red when I do anything that adds extra pressure to my eye. Today at Kung fu, we where practicing our knife defense and after a few minutes Mr. Bouchard was kinda queered out with my red eye. Needed to take a breather. Looking forward to end of the election and my eye healing so I can start focusing back on my Kung fu journey. Thank you for all the support from my classmates to help me though this.