HEMA in Indonesia, February 2016-February 2017: A Year in Retrospect

I think it’s safe to say that 2016 was the year when HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) went public in Indonesia. Of course I had been practicing it on an informal basis for many years before that, and there were several other “lone wolf” practitioners scattered all over the place. But everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked when a few of us kind of hijacked the networking potential of the local Tolkien society and founded a formal practice group in 2016.

(Warning: this is going to get long and rambly, and mostly written from my highly subjective personal perspective. The others might care to write their own stuff about how things look from their viewpoint.)