The results are in: ARE division, passed! Woo! Three more to go... I've already started studying for it. Less books this time, I'm taking the last of the graphic divisions. Target date: end of August.
Work's been hopping like crazy, which is good because it means we're growing and there's lots of work out there. Most of the office was driving hard on one project last week, and this week I get to drive hard again (we're on mandatory overtime for a short bit too) on two more projects, including one with much 3D modelling. Amusingly, we just ordered a copy at work of FormZ to use for modelling -- which will be very useful not only for that but also for the 3D Printing project I mentioned a few posts back. I love it when things align like that.
Did some photography for a couple of Sifu's projects over the past week, which was a lot of fun. Also been getting these cool bursts of insight as I practice not only Tai Chi (we did it several times in a row the past few practice sessions, which makes some new things available) but also in Shaolin -- its one thing I love about Kung Fu (among other things): as you unwrap one layer it opens up a whole new layer for discovery (and the discovery never ends). Did some iron palm again last week and the left hand (the one that had been operated on) didn't hurt at all, so I'll start ramping it up again, and Rev and I have been practicing the staff sparring set anew.
Tonight as I stepped outside I got to see the rising very crescent moon (little less so than last night, which was awesome as it was razor sharp thin) with a VERY bright evening star (ie Venus). Beautiful. Aaaand... as it turns out, Saturn was also there! "June16: The crescent Moon hangs in the west-northwest at dusk. Pollux is above it, and Castor is to the right of Pollux. But Venus is much more eye-catching high to the Moon's upper left. Saturn and, farther on, Regulus, are to Venus' upper left."
So there you go, two planets, a star and the moon. It was wild!
What's been the news from lynx central since the fabulous Loreena concert, you ask? Studying... lots of studying. I've scheduled my next Architectural Registration Exam for the first of June, so I've been hitting the books (all 2400+ pages of them) pretty consistantly. Work has also been mightly full, with multiple projects on the go, both big and small (plus, of course, ADT implementation). Getting to work on two projects right now that are design heavy, but from two different angles: one is very technical oriented, the other is more artistic oriented. On that latter I haven't been working on the design directly, but I have had my input, and had the great experience of suggesting a direction and having Jose later show me the design opening with "So, I took your idea and totally ran with it." Woo!
The hand continues to heal -- no iron palm for me yet alas -- and I'm back into the Kung Fu swing of things. The past couple of weekends I've pulled off some good Shaolin practice, doing straight sword, all three staff sets, the spear set, the cane set, along with all of the hand sets I know, with the accompanying great feeling of a workout that comes the day next. We've also completed 'learning' the Five Elements form of Xing Yi -- of course, the movements look simple, but to excecute them with all the concepts and energies is where we are developing ourselves, so learning is a somewhat imprecice term. It's neat to take Sun Style Tai Chi and discover the Xing Yi and Bagua influences inside it.
Still on Kung Fu, tuesday Evan brought in his new HD DV cam, which has a rather fun feature: a high-speed mode. That is, the camera records four seconds at a high frame rate, and then plays it back at .33x speed (so the 4 seconds is displayed over 12 seconds). We did some tornado kicks in front of the camera... A) I did some really amazing tornado kicks (and have a very sore left hand as reward) and B) wow the replay is very smooth and very interesting to watch at the slower speed. This could be lots of fun and one heck of a training tool.
In the short bursts of WoW I've been playing in between studying and other things I've been focussing on doing the Battlegrounds, which pretty much constitutes my only foray into the world of PVP. Definitively a different world, and with whom I'm being about it it's been overall quite fun. With my aims there nearly complete however (30 tokens from 3 of the BGs so I can get a nightsabre mount) my PVP time will likely come to a close.
Apart from alllll of that I've managed to hang out much with many friends and visitors, hit the Maker Faire (and find a way to work on a project I've been wanting to do, mmmmm), done some gaming, had BBQs, ridden the bike a bit and all the general goodness.
What I hadn't done was written here... oops! Now I'm up to date(ish).
I hadn't realized this would be so when I posted my pictures the other day, but it actually lined up with a gallery viewing I went to yesterday. Tiff, Evan and Evan's parents and I (and Jet, of course) went up to the city to the main branch of the SF Public Library to view the exhibit Documenting China: Contemporary Photography and Social Change.
I really enjoyed it. For starters, it was mostly black and white photography of moderate size, punctuated by these huge (3'x4') colour prints. Each of the photographer's (there were about 6 who's work was on display) had a different tact and a different take on what they were shooting and on how, and taken together it was quite evocative, some scenes amazing, some wrenching. Juxtaposition was the word of the day (which is really not surprising), not only in between each photograph, and also not only even in between the elements in the photographs, but sometimes between the emotions and the humanity within. As a purely visual exhibit with no set narrative what each person would take away from it, I would assert, would be different -- which works beautifully.
For myself, the exhibit had a double ring because many of the pictures were taken in Henan province, which is where the bulk of my travels in China have been. Looking at some of the pictures brought nods of knowing from me, simply by recognition of what was depicted (as in "I saw that"), but also as I recognized what I saw and took it in the larger context of the exhibit and viewing the familiar through (pardon the pun) a different lens made possible by the 'big picture' (again, pardon the pun). Let me put that another way: in the context being created by the show, the familiar images gained new layers, new levels of meaning.
Great exhibit that runs until June 24th in San Francisco -- I recommend it.
In the 'you really can find anything on the internet' category, the other week I had the inkling to do a search for some lyrics. While we were in China in 2005, on our daily travel to and from the Wushuguan, our bus' DVD player would start anew. That first video/song shown on the DVD became, over the days, adopted as our group's sort of unofficial anthem. Enough so that several people bought CDs and DVDs with the song on it... but I never knew what exactly the song was about. It was a pretty nifty video, that was for sure. So, I sought it out. And found it (link also contains the video and the song)!.
It has nearly been two years since my second visit to China for training. And I just finally got my pics up and onto my website. Find them here!
"Those who live deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young."
These times, they are a rockin'
A good week and weekend of Kung Fu. Sunday was a great self-directed practice day. After doing the Sun style set a couple of times we worked on applications and, moreso, linking and power. One thing I have always enjoyed about Kung Fu (or climbing, for that matter) are those moments of insight or discovery, and of delight when you perform something exquisitely for the first time. Had that many times this Sunday, especially on one particular move where literally the only thing I (and others, a bunch of us really got it this weekend) felt with a partner pushing quite hard was the skin on the arm moving from their push. Without doing anything, without even really feeling their push, they were bounced back. We also did some Xing Yi development and got deeper into the movements and concepts of Metal. Afterwards Evan and I did 5, 6, 7 and 8 in rapid succession, which was great, something we hadn't done in a while. I also started up Iron Palm last week, which felt great.
Alas, Sunday evening I stabbed my left palm with a knife -- it wasn't a deep wound and hardly hurt at the time (and even little blood) but overnight it swelled a little and today it hurt like the dickens whenever I tried to straighten or curl my middle finger. Which means no Iron Palm for me this week, and likely no practice either. Nor even some of my morning excercises. Grump!
No gaming, but gearing up for Jason's game next weekend -- character's ready to go, and I'm excited. Also having the mini painted up by our group's resident fantastico mini painter (who sculpted an amazing set of clothes for the mini while we were playing...
certainly talented).
Time to complete on what I took on three months ago, and in both cases I've had some pretty remarkable breakthroughs. Imagine being at the centre of a new accountability, you're just starting out, you're training others who have just started out, you have to get a bunch of tasks done as you learn them, there are things you're discovering as you go along, everything's in motion. Think of holding six reigns at once with horses going all over the place. Now, imagine being at the centre of that and going with calm, with ease, with grace, and even enjoying it. At one with the world and in adventure: check. And last weekend, after a breakdown or two the week prior, I had a remarkable experience of being one within conversation, with a quiet mind, quiet anxiety, flowing and living, not surviving within it. Heart of trepidation and being with discovery: check. Picture big grin on face.
Had this article directed my way today, and thought it very interesting on a variety of levels: read it here. Also, I reccomend to listen to the audio if you have a chance -- the acoustics are pretty good and it's a unique sound with the background going on.
Seems to me I had more to write about, but they've slipped the mind for the moment. A pitfall of writing so infrequently these past weeks!
Current Possibility: going all out
Who'd've thunk this time change would be so brutal to me this year?
A fantastic week capped by a fantastic weekend! Had some great moments last week and especially Friday evening where I felt like I had six reins in my hand at a time, managing, learning, creating and recording all at once, yet done entirely with grace, ease, power, relatedness and ultimately success and accolades. I especially loved the grace and ease part! Also got another book for studying for my next architectural registration exam, brining the total number of pages so far that I would like to read to a cool 2200, with one more book on the way. Um, yeah. Might try to be a bit more discriminating than full-book reads.
We've also started push hands at our Kung Fu/Tai Chi class. Sifu ran a push hands seminar a couple of years ago and it's a bit of a trip to return to it after doing Bagua and learning Sun Style. At the time Sifu said "If you practice every day for two hours, after two years, you could consider yourself ok at push hands." Given I haven't practiced really at all since the seminar, I am certainly not 'ok' at it. But already I feel softer than back then, which is awesome.
Saturday Dave and I headed out for some climbing, which interestingly is the first time I've gone climbing since I went with Dave a couple of visits ago. That time we went to the Planet Granite gym (newly opened then) in Belmont. This time we headed to their newly opened gym in Sunnyvale, which replaces their Santa Clara location.
New gym... this calls for a review!
The new PG in Sunnyvale has seen them move into their own new building, which affords a much greater interior height (and hence greater wall height), along with plenty of space for the other amenities (not all crammed and shimmied into place). This is, obviously, all good. The actual rock, however, when I compare it to what existed at the old location, was lacking for me. Gone is the 'natural rock' of the old gym, which really was a thing of beauty. I don't know how they had done it - I'd only ever seen it done like this at that gym - but the walls there were lovingly crafted to have quite a natural feel to them, with bulbs and dents and smooth edges and just generally looking like large weather-worn cliffs. Coupled with great route-setters (and the setting of holds) allowed for some very interesting climb possibilities, and even some routes where you could climb most if not all of it with nothing but the 'natural' itself. Oddly, the Belmont gym actually has some walls that bear the memory of that type, but the new Sunnyvale has lost it completely. Worse than this, however, is the lack of wicked geometry (at least on the top rope routes -- the leading routes looked like they had more going for them). Shelves, caves, arêtes, even overhangs are in short supply (or lacking entirely). Right off the top of my head I can think of four excellent spots in the older gym that were geometrytastic, whereas here it was all pretty straightforward. There IS some geometry, it's not just flat plywood slabs, but in practice it didn't seem as engaging as the older gym. What's interesting is that I didn't get that feeling from the Belmont Gym, so I'm not sure what happened between the design of those two gyms.
With all that being said it was a great day of climbing, I am totally reminded of why I enjoy climbing immensely (and climbing again with Dave was an added bonus). I didn't tackle anything too strenuous, figuring my hands probably wouldn't hold out well enough and I didn't want to cap out my climbing day early due to tiredness. However my grip stamina continued to surprise me, threatening many a time to give out on the climb yet never actually doing so. That's not to say that I haven't been feeling it ever since then. It's been fun to grab something or even just make a fist and have the arms protest mildly (not to mention raw hands). Surprisingly the wrist also held out just fine throughout all the climbing, which was great.
Sunday was insanely warm, even in SF, and a walk in Golden Gate Park was had by Dave and I, mid-pointing at the Pacific. Also took a quick jaunt through the De Young Museum's lobby and about the outside. Not enough for me to really get a huge sense of the building, but enough to make me want to check it out some more.
Throw in some fine food, some fine films, fine conversation and fine fine, and it was one heck of a weekend and culmination of a visit!
I had some fun this past weekend. A friend of mine participates in the 48 Hour Film Project every year, and organized a similar for-fun-practice this past weekend. The rules were a bit more lax -- for one they were chosing the theme, genre and props and for two they weren't contiguous 48 hours -- but the result was the same: make a movie over a weekend timeframe.
I haven't made any live-action films or shorts since university, and the last film I made really was in high school (44 mins long) so this was fun on several levels: acting! being involved! creating! kung fu!
Indeed, one of the chosen elements was indeed to add in some Kung Fu. After the Taiji lesson on sunday (and some extra practice for me as they got lost finding my location...) the cinematographer scouted and found where he wanted to do the shoot. I had never seen it before, but by the pond there is a fountain/waterfall, in front of which are a series of flat concrete 'paving stones', each about 30" by 42" in size. Five of them are arrayed next to each other, with a 2" gap between them, hovering over the water, each one staggered from the previous. It was indeed a picturesque location. But doing the sets on that uneven and narrow surface? If our sets were perfectly linear maybe...
It was entertaining and a challenge at the same time. Few of our sets really move in such a limited axis, never mind parts of the floor dropping away to water unevenly. So, I made things up! The benefits of future editing helped too of course... I took chunks of sets, strung moves together, ad libbed, mashed shaolin and hung gar together, and generally had fun. Doing tornado kicks on such a small target was, shall we say, interesting in its own right, mostly just for the mind's reaction (landing on such a surface and control is easy, but the mind has a way to shout out 'aiiiee!' -- now I get the whole concept behind plum flower poles!)
We shot several takes from several vantage points -- close ups for hand movements, pulled back more for the kicks, then a wide angle shot looking perpendicular to the axis (with the waterfall in the background). By the end I had basically done kung fu and taiji for about 4 to 5 hours off and on. That was the hardest workout I've done in the new year, evidenced by the soreness of my muscles today (yes, the first sore muscles post in a VERY long time!). Adjusting for the small platforms likely made me more tense too, adding to the muscle soreness. I did have my foot go off a platform at one point during a sweep...
After we finished up there we moved onto the second location for a scene between myself and another antagonist. The scene was originally intended for the same location or flowing from the kung fu practice scene(s), but was re-purposed and even a bit re-dialogued to adapt to changing conditions and participant availability. I really enjoyed this part, not only as I got to do some fun acting, but also I got to choreograph some basic fighting, teaching the actor working with me as we moved along. Combine that with the cinematographer working with us to set up shots, and it was a very organic growth of the scene. There should be enough takes and variations there to satisfy everybody during post and to create something truly wicked.
After a few more scenes and lines delivered (less combat oriented!), I headed off to gaming that night.
Which, in a way, is more acting, non?
I blogged once before that I fell in love with the Pulse many moons ago... and while that dream of owning one may have receded, here's something new that could be equally fun: the VentureOne Hybrid. The Pulse back in its day could already get 100mpg at 55mph, this as an EV and Hybrid vehicle would be doubly awesome. Think I still prefer the body of the Pulse better, but hey, this one is available! (Or will be...)
On a more silly note, here's an idea who's time may have come.
Want to talk about light? In the field of prefab homes here is a particularly cool website that opens with several time-lapse movies of the quality of light within throughout the full cycle of the day. Nice quality of light indeed, and very cool to watch the play of shadows and light as it moves along. And the homes are, of course, sweet as well.
As for things, well, things are going very well. On the boo-side, I didn't get the gun drop yet again in my second run through the instance in WoW last friday (I wonder how raiders manage to stay sane after several hundred runs). Played Eberron this past weekend, got character concepts roughed out for a new campaign, worked on various projects, kung fu was great, and just generally having a blast in all areas and at all times. Now that is remarkable.
Current Possibility: Levity, Grace and Inspiration
Something amusing happened last night that made me really aware of the way our minds are so stuck on patterns and on the past.
Along with the new kung fu class/setup at the other kwoon space, we have received new school shirts that are, shall we say, quite different from our old ones. Since I began practicing Kung Fu I've worn the black Wing Lam shirt to every class and most practices as well -- these new shirts are instead a quite bright gold in colour. I put the shirt on before class, did my warmups, all that. When class was started I trotted out onto the practice space. My eyes caught a flash of brightness from my chest and I had a moment of panic, and my mind immediatly went "YOU ARE WEARING THE WRONG CLOTHES! YOU FORGOT TO CHANGE!" A couple of more times during the class I was distracted by the shirt and its uncustomary hue, like something wasn't right.
Amusing and telling.
"The most visible creators I know are those artists whose medium is life itself. The ones who express the inexpressible - without brush, hammer, clay or guitar. They neither paint nor sculpt - their medium is being. Whatever their presence touches has increased life. They see and don't have to draw. They are the artists of being alive." -- Jay Scott
It's been quite the fantastic week; there's been a certain composure there that's making its presence known. No doubt about it, this is going to be quite an unfolding over the next three months.
Saturday evening got a surprise call from Lumi who invited me to a local crab cioppino event, happening literally about a mile from my house. No problem, I ran the whole way there, worked up a bit of an appetite, and enjoyed much crab cooked in an aromatic broth. As we spoke between cracking legs and claws we caught up on our lives, shared some philosophical musings and marveled at the humour of the crab feast. Also got to catch up on something else on Sunday, mainly the staff sparring set. Rev and I learned it a good chunk of years ago - he rode over to our new training spot on Sunday (the Sunday Sifu/Tai Chi group found this great spot to train on Sundays) and we worked on the set for a bunch, managing to get the first half back to pretty good form by the time we were done. Between that, Tai Chi and practicing a few Shaolin forms it was a good 'fu weekend.
Gaming was Sunday night, a good game of the Bloodstone campaign. Some work for DP9, some more exploration in Outland in WoW and some cleaning rounded out the weekend.
Found this link today, which is pretty interesting: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/30/lily_white_and_not_loving_it/. Some food for thought in regards to the composition of online communities, and what that means for what gets created and/or had there. To take what the author says and take it further, it is kind of like, in a way, a giant theme park or fenced community. You have to be this tall to enter this ride... and by that very virtue it sets up a baseline meme that gets reinforced by newcomers who are then influenced by the meme and react according to it and which reinforces it even more. Not quite a direct reflection/representation of FirstLife.
Current Possibility: Being the artist where every situation is a blank canvas
Wow, much time has passed.
The new Hung Gar class is proving to be fun, and we've got a good sized class to boot, with several familiar faces re-joining and getting back into it, which is absolutely fantastic. We've also found a slightly different location for our Sunday practice which has the advantages of being a) sheltered b) receiving the morning sun and c) secluded and hidden in a way that if we wanted to practice weapon sets it would be quite alright to do so there, I'm sure. This was the second weekend we've practiced in that spot and it's great. Had a great lesson today, learning a whole tonne from Sifu, really delving into the concepts and the connections in Sun Style Tai Chi (concepts from Xing Yi mostly today), coupled with him testing us in various positions and having us do the applications so we could feel the power and body linking. I realized it is a lot like riding a bike: someone can tell you all about it, you can understand it, but until you distinguish balance you'll just fall right the heck over. (Some of you reading this might get that quote from a different source too...) So Sifu will test us and give us the chance to distinguish internal power. It's a privilege and very cool.
Afterwards I practiced #6, #7, #9, #3, #1, and #8. It's kinda crazy but in a way makes sense that my understanding and skill in a more external art like Shaolin is being informed by and improved by all the internal work we are doing. Sun Style has made a big difference over the past couple of weeks, and Bagua earlier in the year made a crazy difference in my tornado kicks (even if I get a lousy or tired takeoff I can still turn it into a good powerful kick). Really they all do come together at the higher levels.
Dogged with a bit of a cold right now, but not letting that slow me down. Held a Lofty meeting the other weekend, creating ourselves anew and crafting our game plan for the first quarter. No gaming the past two weekends. Been reading a book, more of which I will share with you later. At work we've 'finally' started our first ADT pilot project, and studying for the next registration exam is underway by me.
And, yes, I have indeed purchased and am playing the Burning Crusade. 2.5 years into it WoW continues for me. I had the rather unfortunate experience of logging in about a month ago and noticing my level 60 character naked -- logging in confirmed that all his stuff had been vendored and the gold transferred out. In short, it quite appears I had been hacked. The GM/Customer Service team was unable to verify it nor to restore my equipment, so they sent me a 'baseline' set of equipment to get me going. Thanks to the in-game generosity of a few friends (thanks to you all!) and the baseline gear I was equipped well enough to take up the reins once again and ride into the Dark Portal with my trusty nightsabre Myrra at my side.
I've only played for a short while in the new realm known as the Outlands but it's been cool so far. The land/sky/etc is quite funktastic, the quests have been slightly more in variety and 'interestingness'. Tones o tones o tones of people there though, which makes for a slightly odd experience (so many running around doing the same quest as you) and a bit of lag in the town. The dropped and reward gear so far has been insane, as in insanely good. Don't know if that will continue the further in I get, but if so... wow. A bit of Rifts-itis. 'Course, we all like nice shiny gear...
Current Possibility: Waist Power
Saturday I snuck away up to a sakery in Berkeley for a surprise party for Patrick's. Which turned out to be amazingly successful. The look on Patrick's face was one of abject shock, confusion, disbelief and of having been hit with a frying pan. Mo did a fantastic job of organizing it all on the sly over the course of a couple of months, and much amusement and merriment was had by all. Oh, and great sake!
(And having been the recipient once of an equally successful surprise party I can totally relate to the frying pan look!)
Alas, the following is not a surprise: ExxonMobil has spent over the past few years around 16 million in a tobacco-company style FUD campaign, giving it to various front groups and the scientists who are members of about 9 to 12 of these groups at the same time. Their aim is delay and stagnation, under the guise of 'sound science.' As I said, not a surprise.
Bloodstone continued apace on Sunday, the party making their way through the heart of the Duregar's realm. Also did some studying, some Kung Fu/Tai Chi, and other weekendy stuff. Much niftyness at work this week that I now return to attend to!
So I went to the ER last night... (how many stories start off that way!) Nothing to worry about, as it turns out (though pain a spot that would give cause to worry) and after diagnosis they gave me some pretty potent anti-inflamatory medication. I have this thing about taking over-medication but thought it prudent to do so in this situation, so I took it last night and went to bed.
This morning, I HAVE NO PAIN IN MY WRIST WHATSOEVER, no matter what angle I've pushed it too. Wow. Amazing stuff... and also good to know that it really is just inflamation/tendonitis there and nothing horribly damaged.
Funny side effect, though.
I've been somewhat avoiding speaking about Kung Fu over the past little while. With the close of Tiger/Crane came the closing of the school. Sifu has retired from public teaching after four decades, and the space itself has been repurposed. Sifu has not, however, dropped out from our lives entirely; we (being a group of the senior students) still meet twice a week to learn. Currently we are learning Sun style Tai Chi, which is exciting given Sun Style's background and union of Xing Yi, Bagua and Wu Tai Chi, bringing the art back to a whole.
If I thought Bagua was an interesting switch, Sun Tai Chi is even more so. The whole feel of it is very different, naturally, and most interesting is its subtlety. Turning a hand or a foot even one inch one way or the other can lead to a total lack of strength in a position. It's fascinating and illuminating, and the sensitivity being developed is really fun, as is the greater energy generation and control (this especially will be useful for me in winter when my hands tend to go bone white). We're definitively just getting into it, so it will be a nice long learn, and that is just fine with me.
We're also working on arranging for another space to practice in at least once a week, which will give us a larger area for Hung Gar/Shaolin sets. On Sundays right now we're meeting outside at a local community centre, and this past Sunday was a) sunny and warm and b) the first time in a long time I've done actual KF sets. I have to admit I have not been being responsible for the upkeep of my training (especially on Thursdays) so I've been actually feeling my body/heart complaining about not getting enough use. To this end I've done some runs again at Rancho San Antonio, including a quite amazing (to me, didn't realize I had it in me) 5.5mi run / 2mi hike over the turkey weekend. But the sets winded me this past weekend, aptly showing the 1 day missed / 3 days lost rule.
Winded or no, it felt real good to hammer out those sets again.
Learning continues, in further and further depth, still practicing, still committed to it and still loving it. The times and particulars have changed, but my passion has not.
Put the last Kung Fu class for the year and Halloween together, and you get me going to class in my blue/grey monk robes. Which, I have to say, is extremely fun, the sleeves whipping about adds something to the movement. Plus, you know, the badassery look...
To cap off the evening was heading to WendyL's party in time for the Eye of Argon reading. Much mirth was thenceforth had. Note, don't read the spoilers on the wiki, 'tis much funner to participate in a reading. Also note that the game of reading is made much more difficult as the rest of the audience members are allowed to make comments and act out what you're reading. Making it more than a few sentences or words for some can be quite difficult...
Nanowrimo begins today, and I have added one more goal to my game. As I stated earlier, I intend this to be quantity over quality, and with no premade outline. BUT my intention is not to go so far as to Eye of Argon myself.
On my ride into work this morning I got really present to something interesting, something that I began toying with and ultimately came out of the Bagua training earlier in the year: a new way to ride my bicycle.
It's hard to describe really what I'm doing, or doing differently. When I began to play around with it I only had the intent to 'use my centre' when riding the bike. What resulted and what I really noticed this morning was interesting to say the least: the bike moving along as fast or faster as the 'old' riding style, with my legs feeling like they're doing almost no work at all (no exertion). I thought originally that with my legs feeling so unused that while comfortable I must be just plodding along, but a look at the speedometer proved that no really, this not only was working but working quite darn well, even uphill.
It's weird, it's effortless (not totally, but by comparison for sure) and fun to play with. And given I realized half way to work this morning that I had forgotten my change of clothes and had to double back I got plenty of time to notice it.
Weekend was mostly great, with a couple of Halloween parties (one local at Tiff's, one not-local with one of Melissa's friends) and a wedding for another of Melissa's friends at a local winery that featured great food, great people and some fantastic wine. The red was a Pinot Noir, but with a twist: a blend from seven vineyard all up and down the California coast. Sure, many wineries will blend like such, but imagine doing a blend sort of in the European model (where all vineyards blend different grape varieties to create their wine, hence most wines being known by region rather than grape type) using different terroirs rather than different varietals. Very nice.
Also within the weekend was a great KF practice with a great run, Tiger Crane, Shaolin and even some Bagua. I need to practice the latter some more, it's been a while.
So my question is... what the heck happened to October? Nanowrimo begins Wednesday! Aie!
We finished the Tiger Crane (Fu Hok) set last night -- something I consider quite amazing given the length of the set (and given my last 'Fu entry was before we even started the Tiger part!). But in just over a month we've completed it, leaving us a good chunk of time to review.
What a fun set! Tiger Crane is just one of those sets that, while all the gung fu sets I've learned I enjoy doing, some sets just stand out as being particularly fun. Shaolin #7 is one of those, the cane set is another... and there are more. And now I'll add Tiger Crane to that list. Something about it just makes it a blast to perform, a good combo of 'exoticness' (given my northern focus), some very nifty and funky moves, and, well, you get to make noises while doing it. It's a fairly long set, but once you get going it seems quite short to actually do.
It's also been fun learning a southern set -- I'm sure I still perform the set with a 'horrible' northern accent. One difference Sifu mentioned is the staccato-like movements, with a just discernable pause between each movement (making each movement 'crisp') as opposed to northern where many moves flow seamlessly into each other with continuing momentum. The stances are subtly different too, as is the way you strike (more diagonal or to the side vs northern's straight-on) and add-in the difference in how the arms are treated (the solid forearm of southern versus the rock-and-string model of northern). Tiger vs Dragon claws, Drunken Unicorn steps, Butterfly Palms -- lots of new and lots of nifty.
Of course, having Sifu teach the set was a real treat, as he brought in concept after concept after concept, offering us to test different hand and feet positions for power and stability, demonstrating, inventing and testing applications, tying movements to the basic concepts of all traditional Chinese martial arts ("135 degrees!" was my oft-given answer to his questions about angles) and comparing it specifically to moves from other systems we've learned (Northern, Bagua, Xing Yi), and all the knowledge a life-long TCMA teacher can bring to the table, er the kwoon. Fantastic.
I'll miss some of the upcoming classes for my trip home, but hey, big basement at home = lots of space in which to practice.
Oh, and my wrist is in the 'sorta kinda' phase now, which is proving to be both vexing and frustrating. The injury is mostly healed, now it's the joy of my tendonitis being angry, which leads to moments of perfect clarity and range of movement with no pain at all (hooray!) back to moments of dull pain (boo!) to movements of small twitch equals owie (wtf?) back to mostly good (woo!). This latter is the worst, in some ways, because I'll do things w/o thinking, reaching the point limit movement and then it's ouch. Grrr.
Things at work weren't terribly smooth this week, as my machine decided to start BSODing constantly (this after weeks of being used for heavy rendering with nary a problem). By Wednesday noon the problem seems to have been the PATA drive in the system -- either it is going out, or it was somehow conflicting with the SATA drive, or the OS was getting confused, or something. Basically put, we pulled the PATA drive out and the system's been stable since. Despite that interruption I still did manage to get about 90% of where I wanted to be in terms of being ready to implement Architectural Desktop for the office. No problem, as no job has yet been identified to be the 'test' project, so I've a few days left. Then I get to recreate texture maps and models that were lost during our server's RAID crash. That's not so fun.
Gaming was good last weekend, and we're doing a triple shot of Granite's game this weekend as not to break up my Bloodstone game with my trip home. Two very amusing things happened:
1 - We had to negotiate our way down a narrow ledge into a deep crevasse -- though smart in how we approached it we still needed to make some balance checks on the way down. Removing my armour, quaffing a potion of agility, I wasn't in too bad a chance to make my roll. I then proceeded to roll, on three dice, no lie, six rolls of 4 in a row. It became crazily comical as each successive 4 showed up on the die. Nevermind that I needed a 5 to succeed, the statistical improbability of that happening (1 in 64,000,000) is just too funny.
And no, I didn't buy a lottery ticket. The last time I tried that was after I rolled six 1s in a row (including two 1s at the same time on two separate dice rolled simultaneously) I got zero numbers matched on my ticket. Remember, these were _failures_. Six 20s on the die? I'm buying a ticket!
2 - Locah got his mount. It's one of the paladin powers he's never used -- for one from where he hails riding wasn't a big thing and for two, well, he's never had anyone to follow to know what his conviction in Aathome would grant him. A certain dilemma presented itself to the group: four summoned steeds and five characters. I chose to stay behind to return to our regular steeds and make my way slower to our destination. Shortly after my companions left what should descend from the sky and alight itself next to me but a wonderful gryphon. (Conveniently a gryphon mini was available on the table, hmmm... ) I am one happy paladin and player. (Ok, so Locah's not a dwarf and doesn't use a hammer, and it isn't WoW...)
On tap for this afternoon: 5.5 hours of the next Architectural Registration Exam!
Game: successful! 22 Students were there to begin the seminar last night, and at least a confirmed four more will be starting next week. It is great to have the kwoon packed and have Sifu Lam teaching us (for a full two hours this time too). Sifu split us up into three groups -- those who've done T/C before, those who've not and those who are starting kung fu for the first time (six new students). There was no time wasted and soon we were deep into the first movements of the set. Very amusingly, my legs groaned under holding stances again for minutes at a time. You'd think that the low Bagua walking plus doing sets would keep them in shape but apparently not, there's just something different about holding stationary stances...
My wrist wasn't terribly pleased with it all but didn't give me too many problems during the night. There was great energy from everyone there and great camraderie as well... a great kung fu class.
Another week went rapidly by!
Last Friday was the big push for the rendering project at work -- with all the horsepower I was rounding up it was done with nary a hitch (at least until our colour printer decided to start streaking the images) and the images look mighty fine, MIGHY mighty fine, if I do say so myself (I guess I just did). Now it's on to the animations... about 2-3 mins worth. Time to round up even more machines to put onto the farm...
The best part about this project, other than the fun factor, is how much I've learned about mental ray and about making good looking stuff. Nicely will come in handy for the next big project(s).
Saturday had a rather light kung fu workout as an old-time student came by to visit. He was a bagua student and Sifu and I caught him up to date with what we'd done with the class, and then he and I and another student did a full circle set. Some running and the stairs (which, all things considered, didn't feel bad at all) and it was time to go. Less than a week until Tiger Crane starts up, and I am totally psyched! We're playing the game to PACK the kwoon with students, and I've got 3-4 new students who'll be starting up, four more who came in and whom I told about the course, and some feelers out, and we're getting in touch with a few who drifted away. This'll be a great class, I can tell already that it will be one of shared growth and much fun. Like Bagua it'll be all learning for me, this time in a similar yet subtly different style. Plus I'll be finishing up Six Harmonies Spear, learning Six Harmonies Broadsword and hopefully Kuan Do.
Wrist, after another Dr Wong visit, is healing nicely, and should be ready to go next week.
Saturday eve, Melissa and I heading over to Frederick and Ofelia's house eat, visit, party and see some slides of their recent trip to Austria before returning home for a rather quiet evening.
Sunday turned out to be a Bloodstone Sunday (the player who was to be absent discovered his trip starts next week), and the party spent much time interacting, searching, figuring things out, planning. A speak with dead upon a deceased svirfneblin brought more information, and his tale of enslavement roused a few party members. The portal (the one guarded by the demons) was eventually activated and the party took themselves deeper into the Underdark. They soon discovered a work detail, dispatching the duregar overseers and learning of a way to reach the svirfneblin kingdom-in-exile. One very amusing trap later as the party reached the city-under-captivity they wend their way down from a waterfall, through a field of fungus to a small passageway that their rescued svirfneblin companions said would take them to the kingdom-in-exile. Given the 1st edition nature of these modules it was a nice break from the majority of combat that has often dominated the sessions, and everyone got into it. Oh, and I think it's safe to say that Sir Barus loves his new hammer...
On a much sadder note, it seems Shadow is not doing all to well. She is 18, which I do understand is old for a cat, but that she was mousing (two mice in as many weeks!) just a couple of months ago makes this turn all the more sudden and harder to take. I called a vet and spoke to him today, and spoke to my parents and got a list of vets in their area who may do house calls. (Shadow could never stand going to the vet, she would get very violent and traumatized -- having someone come over is what I want for sure, having her freak out in this state would not be nice nor good) I should find out soon what the prognosis is, and will make the choices as they come.
That's it for this evening...
Much to catch up on!
Sunday past was Eberron, and wow, a damn good Eberron game. A great mix of action, investigation, searching, dialogue, interaction, events, mystery, discovery, creepiness, shock, running, fantastic locales (and mental images) and exhausted and taxed out characters. We were short two players/characters and rocked the house. I've never rolled so many diplomacy checks in my life. Good good good stuff.
Tuesday, we had very few in Kung Fu (practice month) so we were going through all the basic sets: Lian Bo, Tan Tuy, Tun Da, Staff, Moi Fa, Broadsword, Bot Bo, Spear, Moi I, Chum Sam. Mid-way through broadsword I fracked up my wrist. I felt it go OW, and I backed off somewhat, but completed the set. Did the rest of class, trying to not go to hard on the wrist. As to be expected, Wednesday it was really not happy. I've been to Dr Wong twice now and am giving it the herbal bag treatment -- let's just say I really whacked it up good. Ow, and much rest I will give it. It must be all healed for Tiger Crane Hung Gar in September...
In other news, the temperature has shot way back up again, I'm still studying, I still get to play with 3D stuff at work, editing Sifu's book, saw Wendy2 on Sunday for an excellent lunch (both food wise and especially company wise), discovered and uncovered some profound things for myself which have shown up in my life immediately, and another packed weekend ahead.
"The joy in journey is not the destination, but the journey itself."
This morning I had a meeting with a contractor/builder to discuss the Lofty project (mainly info gathering). I check the address, check the traffic... check what's around the address. Hmm, down by the ballpark, parking could be nasty. Oh, hey, there's the Caltrain station. Oh, double hey, it's a Spare the Air day. Train time!
The meeting was fantastic, lots of good information, good dialogue for what's possible, and the train trip was just a bonus.
A good end to a good week -- more just-in-time create-the-course in the morning, train at noon, tighten up in the afternoon, coupled with the other two projects under deadline at work. Much work, but I'm making it all smooth. Wednesday night's special evening was fantastic. Bagua was good learning, along with the spear set, though the heat (it was 30ish C) made me a bit more sluggish in my after-class workouts. And now, the weekend coming up!
So let's start this weekend right with some ky00teness! http://sfgate.com/n/pictures/2006/06/22/lynx.jpg
Then we'll add in some low-level flying!
Now you're ready for the weekend...
Wild wild days. Much text after the cut!
What has really opened up for me over the past couple of weeks is being calm in the midst of all the plates I'm juggling. Neverminding Lofty, my course and all the other things I've got going on, but just at work I've got three deadline-intense things on my plate. Yet there is no upset, no panic, no franticness, no deer in headlights of what to do next. It's really quite an amazing and new space to be in... and I get to enjoy a rendering project at work, continue to work on the new labs and implement, create and train the ADT deployment. This works for me, I think I'll keep it.
Bagua continues to be a total learning experience. Saturday's workout was a good one, with a not-to-deadly run and stairs, and then a focus on all the short, explosive Shaolin sets (#4, 5, 6, 7, 8, Tong Bei and Emperor Tai) along with the last third of #1. Evan and I have now learned the first four lessons to Six Harmonies Spear (no injury this week!) getting in practice every night. We also did a second workout on Saturday, to practice some two-person Bagua exercises -- quite the full day of exercise.
Then, I indulged in a couple of hours of WoW in the evening and got Khyborr up to 29. Just another 14 levels to go 'till he's back where he was at the end of closed beta!
FoodFu: Picnic! was held on Sunday with the usual gang. It was a good smattering of fare, lots of varied things (fruit, cheeses, breads, meats, hummus, guacamole, southwestern meatless wraps), and I made a Raspberry/Blackberry Gratin (which is an odd name considering it had no cheese, but it was broiled lightly) that met with much praise and appreciation and tastiness. Then, tennis was played by some in the courts nearby. I jumped in, having a good time and not sucking too horribly (I have more fingers on my hand than the number of times I've played), though I had forgotten my sunscreen upon leaving the house and now have quite the red tinge to show for it.
Sunday evening's D&D game was a great conclusion to the sub-story arc as we awoke in the midst of a carnage. Aathome said I wouldn't like the 'hero' who was chosen to wield the sword, and he was right. We faced off against some lizard folk whom we had not seen in two years (their lands being way to the south), we paused, sized up the situation, learned of a language barrier, troops began walking towards two of our party members, actions were taken, combat was joined. We were seriously outclassed (especially given the quite powerful sword). One member fell, but was healed up to 0 (by the mount of the hero, no less), another of our members was attacked repeatedly and fell well beyond our help. A short engagement between myself and the hero led to me backing off, looking/glaring at him as if to reach an understanding. He understood, for he went after Tito, testing him with his smite (and the blunt of his blade) to discover that Tito's aura of evil was just the taint of his fiendish transformation, not of his character.
With that the battle ended. A spell of comprehend languages allowed the hero to speak to us, and with that we learned the carnage around us was caused by an oath/law of their land that for every fallen of their number they extract a price of two upon the offender's race. (I really don't like him!) Further, the mage in our party, who had been slain, radiated enough evil to likely be seen from the high heavens. Quickly I realized it was the wraps he was carrying that he had taken from the fallen Archon. I said this to the hero, who cared not much a whit. What he did care for was that we had killed one of his troops, and a debt had now been incurred. The judgment was to take Tito's life as he was the 'transgressor', unless another would take his place. To which I immediately stepped forward.
And was struck down on the spot. The lizard folk turned and left.
Alexia turned to heal me and was rewarded with an electric shock. Tito was grief-stricken -- he and I were the last of the original band to leave the caulderra (where the campaign began). As Gravax went to check the other bodies, both I and our other dead party member rose into the air on crackles of energy, to be struck by lightning from above. With that, I awoke from the dead for the second time that day. I had taken oath to protect Tito so many moons ago -- the oath fulfilled Aathome brought me back, and once again I was able to commune with the divine (read: my paladin powers are functioning once more).
The rest of the evening was taken by our task to aid the island sisters recover and to destroy the evil magic item (over the protests of the once-again alive mage). The GM had little to do as for an hour+ we self-generated content. All in all, a great evening with some good roleplaying by all.
Great stuff ahead this week, with Wednesday being the current highlight with a special evening led by the most loving, direct and generous person I have ever met. I invite everyone in my life to come Wednesday night to think, to be moved, to see what's possible.
I got a spear injury yesterday! I took one right in the chest, it truly was a vicious battle.
Too bad I was the one holding the spear. Hmm. (Photo to come soon....)
Otherwise the stairs also kicked my butt yesterday, wasn't a good deep breathing day (doubly odd that later on, just walking to run an errand, saw some tightness at the bottom of my chest, could be allergies). Saturday wasn't really an 'on' day. Among other things, the spear was totally misbehaving even before I managed to graze myself, and that was on the third repetition of the set.
Class has moved into Bagua applications, and let me tell you there is nothing like seeing how your form and structure isn't all there than having someone resisting a technique. Bagua's moves are simple, but getting the internal energy and structure is what takes the skill development. I think during these two months I may ramp down on the amount of Shaolin and practice Bagua more, working everything over and over and over again. I was getting rather frustrated on thursday when I wasn't performing a move correctly despite repeated attempts, and I often feel like my alignment is all off and I'm not keeping things neutral when circling the opponent with arms touching (ie I'm losing). Though there have been some instances where we've both felt like we're not neutral or in control -- there's some sensitivity still to be learned, it seems. So, practice, practice, practice!
Of course, that being said, I'm also starting to learn a new Shaolin set. Evan bought the DVD for Six Harmonies Spear, so we're starting to learn that, and it promises to be a very crazy nifty set.
Saturday evening we shuffled gaming to that night to avoid another week off, and returned to Granite's game. When we'd last left our intrepid heroes, we had 'died' (purposfully) to enter the land of the dead. My Paladin has been walking around for quite some time without any divine powers, and following the fortune telling by an old lady in a city we'd made our way to the Green Isles to see the Seer Sisters. Oh, did I mention the fortune said they wouldn't be able to help me, but that I must go see them? Indeed, they couldn't help me, the solution to my ills was beyond their sight. Their suggested recourse was dying to enter the land of the dead to seek out what we could seek out. And there we began on saturday, having already been warned not to cross the river by the boat man (breathe the mists, forever forget your past) and to find the bridge. En route we were assailed by a fallen archon, and after a lengthy battle (due to our etherial nature we were not very combat capable) with much much much healing we were victorious and quite lost on the plains of the dead. Even trailing a line behind us couldn't keep us going straight (though we did at least know when we'd recrossed our steps). I suggested Tito hop up on my shoulders for a look, which through the haze he was able to spot the river, and with Alexia's further suggestion for him to remain there and keep it in sight, we made it to the bridge.
In the gleaming city of the dead we found our way to the library, where I met my diety, Aathome. Seems a sword given to me by one very ancient imprisionned warrior had caused an uproar as the sword was dedicated in the service of another diety. We interacted with Aathome, asked questions, got some answers, I had to ask the GM for some background info on my char (I inherrited him from another player), interacted some more, and then were returned to our bodies in a nice cliffhanger moment. Nicely done.
This week promises to be another packed one. Let the games begin...
QotW:
Kannik: how the mighty have fallen
Murrgon: They're not mighty, just "super sized" :P
Wow, crazy. Been quite the while! The Lynx update in brief: odd spaces.
It's all after the cut...
Sifu Lam is away this month at the kwoon, so it has been a month of review and practice. I've been leading classes on the tues/thurs class nights, insofar as calling out the basic eight palm routine, then creating with the class what we'll work on for the rest of the night and guiding from there. We've done nights of going slow (and by slow I mean molasses in January slow, it's WAY harder than one would think), doing some two-person drills, some bagwork, and random/quick palm changes. Last class we paused to watch some DVD/VCD/AVIs of other Bagua masters. Sifu had suggested we do so to observe differences in styles, to see what they were doing, and compare to the basic Bagua fundamentals. Just another week before we start onto the next class (application) which will be interesting -- even after five months I feel like I'm only scratching my understanding of Bagua, which is probably an accurate assessment. Easy to learn, difficult to master.
Otherwise, Kung Fu has been somewhat binary (one of those odd spaces) for me, with great nights/weekends followed by nights of low energy and poor performance. I started to run the stairs again, with the first week being not too deadly if not particularly fast, the second weekend being pretty brutal. I also (finally!) got to start up Iron Palm for the year, and in three weeks I'm starting back on the steel without too much problem, which has me happy. Very late start this year, given all the rain.
Amazingly we haven't gamed since the Bloodstone at the start of the month -- various vacations have put a crimp on those plans. I've also only played another smattering of WoW during the time. Did play a game of Settlers of Catan; it was a fine game though I do prefer Carcassonne. The Heavy Gear expansion I did the graphic work for was duly posted to the DP9 website.
I scheduled my latest Architectural Registration Exam (on Contract Documents) and wrote it this past Monday. It was very refreshing, being who I am now, to be calm and composed over it and over my uncertainty about how I fared. A lot to know in that exam about drawings, about law and about contracts and my sense is I could have spent more time reviewing all the material. There were a few questions I hadn't heard material about, a few questions that were in non-related areas but I could've known the answers, and some that were tricky. And some I knew dead-on, of course. I should know in about four weeks if I have a P or X.
There's also been much friend visiting and some visiting friends. Lofty continues albeit somewhat slowly. Did some property scouting both near and afar (well, Vallejo far), had one meeting with a planning official and one coming up with a council member, starting to get some harder numbers on construction, looking into funding.
Really, the last few weeks have been pretty non-stop with my fingers in many pies. I'm amazed how many pies sometimes, and how well they're turning out. Also been a time of some self-discovery and exploration and a lot of observation/noticing, which accounts for much of the odd spaces. I'm definitively getting what I signed up for!
Well, sore glutes, at any rate. Went for a nice hike on Sunday morning with Christi at the Monte Bello open space preserve, heading up to Black Mountain (I so want to type Black Rock Peak there... especially as it does, indeed, have some spiky black rocks at the summit) which is probably one of the highest points on the ridge at 2800'. Our hike took us down 400' of elevation, then up to 1000' to the summit. Not huge, but enough to give those not-often worked glutes some working out. Total hike around 7 mi, nice and calm. And DAMN was the weather perfect -- 28~ (C, of course), nary a cloud in the sky. Sunscreen was in order, was worn, and protected well.
I think we've jumped right into summer.
Rest of the weekend was busy and good. Good practice Saturday morning at the Kwoon (Run, Straight Sword, Broad Sword, Staff, #1, #4, #5, #7, #8, #9, Tong Bei, Emperor Tai, Bagua), followed by lunch and a Lofty meeting. Sat eve was a bit sedate, many little things taken care of, with a whole 90 mins of WoW playing. Stunning!
Bloodstone was brought into existence once more on Sunday eve, and a good one it was. Still in the Underdark, the party found their way to a carved stone passageway that itself dead to a long bridge crossing a huge deep chasm (lava below for good measure) that lead to the largest stalagmite they had ever laid eyes upon. Inside they entered a small temple of sorts. Much of the evening was carried in combat time, with successive encounters outside, in the outer chamber then the temple's inner chamber. Undead, hideous beasts, human and hobgoblin and ogre guards, a high priest, and one opponent that surprised and shocked (and caused much consternation) for Vex -- all this and more! The whole thing moved along mostly smoothly, with some good flavour and good playing. Though we still finished the combat(s) quite late and into the early morning�
Amusingly, the next couple of weeks finds our varied schedules all jacked up, so it'll be some patchy playing.
This morning, I discovered a screw embedded in my beautiful new tires! Had to get that patched up at lunch... And now, onto the evening!
In a surprise move, Sifu Lam just posted a 2006 Study Tour, for September. Aieee! I love these study tours... but I'd thought there wasn't going to be one this year yet and had thought of other things in its space. Choices! Things to work out! Oh noes!
Also, what not to do to Sifu: either this or this or even this.
(repost as the original was eaten)
Just a quick note to, er, note that my wrist is no longer on fire. Dr Wong, the herbal bag and a night of rest left me feeling pretty good by tuesday. The wrist still feels a bit off and a bit weak, but the tendonitis has pretty much been extinguished, nicely. I did class last night (just Bagua, no Shaolin) and it was fine. Woo!
... to mention my wrist/hand is acting up again, phooey. Even kept me up for a bit as I slept sat night/sun morning. Saw Dr Wong today, and he worked on it, putting the herbal pack on it, hopefully that'll calm it down soon enough. Silly paw.
...Dragon, Bear, Monkey, Unicorn, Phoenix. So are the eight palms of Eight Animal Bagua.
The lessons in learning (that make any sense?) continues. In two months we've essentially learned all the moves to an entire system (think of learning all 10 sets of Shaolin in 2 months, or 10 Hung Gar sets in 2 months) -- but as I say, that's just the moves. To get the energy, rooting, power, sinking, motion, turning, walking, speed, reaction, etc, will take much longer, and the subtleties therein. MMMmmm, internal styles. Even walking has taken on a new meaning (and is a chance to practice). What's fun and a bonus is that I can feel how Bagua's been making a difference in my Shaolin, in certain sets and certain moves. Indeed I've kept up with my Shaolin practice, usually doing eight to twelve sets after class.
Riding into work in 3~ weather these past few days has been fantastic, nice crispness to the air not often felt here. Also a great way to ensure you're awake with all that chill. We had a small spot of rain, but now it's sunny as all-get go and clear skies, which makes for pleasant afternoons and frost overnight... good stuff.
Bloodstone ran its course on sunday, with several important encounters, some individual, some for the whole group. The party's travels through the Underdark led them to the bazzar of Grezneck, where goods were traded, information found out, and much hiding from drow by some of the party members. Mid-way through their visit, one of the players asks me "Wait, what race are these guys again?" (these guys being the majority of the merchants) to which I replied "Goblins." "I should've known, given the voice you were using..." Apparently I do a good WoW goblin impression, woo!
Outside the influence of Goblins, today at 16:40 on our server (Silver Hand) is when the Ahn'Quiraj event can begin, in the sands of Sillithus. Five days prior all the materials were turned in, and the buildup began. At least three, perhaps four, guilds on our server have crafted the staff that can strike the gong outside of the gates. The forces are gathering. The tension is mounting. The war is about to begin. The... servers are likely to implode. It doesn't bode well that our server was brought down for emergency maintenance this morning, and given the strain placed upon them when Eranikus was summoned into Moonglade, this event promises to punish them pretty hard I'm sure. Ajathka will be there with his ever faithful Myrra, lending both claw and gun to the effort. I've been taking many screencaptures of the buildup, and will likely take many more.
If the gong is rung tonight.
No, I hadn't gone completely mad, it was rabbit hole day. But it hasn't been all aliens, all the time at lynx central.
One month into Bagua. Every time I walk into the kwoon, I feel like a total n00b, and it's been GREAT. So very different from what I'd done before, and it's just plain fun to feel myself learning and gaining a deeper understanding every class. Long long long long way to go still, and that is fantasticness in itself.
We made a return jaunt into both Granite's game and into Eberron in the past month's worth of gaming. Continue to walk down the path of LoftyOne, which is an adventure on its own. Saw a Lego exhibit one weekend, pretty fun with lots of local landmarks, ships, aircraft, mecha, structures, cranes, etc, all well made. Also some impressive bridges (including one spanning I swear 12') and some Lego trains -- now this is interesting. I knew of Lego fan groups, I knew of many a model railroading club (with my own interests there), but never had I known until that day about Lego Railroading clubs. Apparently not so rare.
Studying also continues for the next ARE exam, though it seems everyday I learn about more and more I need to study for this particular exam; like the so-called real world, things/exams overlap.
Interestingly, SW:RotS wasn't nominated for F/X at the Oscars this year -- as the granddaddy of modern-day effects, while ILM did get nominated for another film, the lack of SW seems almost odd... the two are almost synonymous (even though I say WETA is the newest gods of F/X).
This has been a life-update post!
Dragons, dragons and DRAGONS, oh my!
With the start of the new year is the start of the new format at kung fu, and it's all dragons there. Dragon Hands Swimming Body Bagua began last Tuesday, and by Thursday we've grown to quite the large class. We learned and practiced the basics last week, from the Bagua Wuji stance, Dragon Palm and Single Palm Change, Circle Walking. We've also pushed on each other a bit, done a bit of application, and definitively gotten a taste for the pace. No mistake, this will be nice an intense: Sifu even got rid of the couch that used to grace the kwoon for the parents. There are some students who know they will be missing one class a week, and they're totally jazzed at making it up on Saturdays or just coming in early on Tuesdays to catch up. Good energy, I like it muchly -- and I mean not only the energy of the class, but the energy in doing the Bagua. Circle walking may seem 'oooooook' when you first think about it, but practicing it on Saturday on my own I had no problem keeping focus or it getting tedious. I think this will be a treat.
Sunday had a slight niggle in our gaming plans, so we played Three Dragon Ante, a new (non-collectable, blessedly) card game from WotC tied a bit into the DnD lore. The most any of us had played was J who had played one hand with a store owner to get a feel, so it was all fresh to us. An interesting game that seems to have good potential for tactics as you try to take to both take the gambit (to win the pot), or try to use the special powers on your cards (for advantages, get cards or steal from the pot), maybe try to bid high into the ante to start the turn (but give up a high card to do so), match strengths or dragon colours, and so on. We played three games over the course of about as many hours, and it was good fun had by all.
But what about those DRAGONS?
Last Tuesday saw patch 1.9 come out for WoW, and the start of a world event known as the Gates of Ahn'Quiraj. Ostensibly it's a 20- and 40- man raid area/instance, but the kicker is that to open the gates to Ahn'Quirj requires a world-wide effort. At first glance, to me it didn't seem too complicated of an effort -- both factions have to turn in thousands upon thousands of supplies. Though, even this has gotten people talking about the oncoming war against the Silithids, and even gotten the factions working together to an extent, much like they did in Warcraft3 against the Burning Legion. There's even ambassadors in the other faction's cities, there's visible supplies and activity around the 'warrior' areas of two of the major cities.
Interesting, but I was thinking 'meh, it's just a series of turnin quests, whoop'.
Oh. Gods. No.
Blizzard has implemented something on a MASSIVE scale that is just packed to the brim with lore. I've been seeing web pages with it (http://www.fohguild.org/index.php for example), read about it on the WoW forums, found videos of it and even participated in part of it.
Saturday night I got a message over our guild channel that something BIG was going down in Moonglade. A whack of us hightail it over there, and find the zone just LOADED with people, and the place being attacked by a huge number of LVL 62+ Elite Shades. Apparently, as part of the major quest line Eranikus the corrupted is summoned into the world, is HUGE and is MAD. Alas, by the time I got there Eranikus was no longer seen, and there were so many in the area that lag was horrendous -- at least 20 secs from button pressing to action, and just targetting things was a chore. Soon the Shades were all vanquished, and the zone fell silent. (and the quest may have been bugged and not completed, argh)
But then I started to scour more, seek out videos, and saw one very nifty event where a raid party participates in an event that has the events that led to the sealing of the Ahn'Quiraj gate replayed out in the world in front of said gates in a sort of cutscene (albeit one you are in the midst of, kind of like the Pensive from Potter), with four of the five Dragonflights represented as a dragon in turn flies overhead, sealing the gates, all with much dialogue ensuing.
Some other quests have you chasing after crazy people to gather items, you interact with many dragons, there are hints to the old gods... it's massive, involved, in-depth. I'm seriously impressed with Blizz on this one. They've drawn upon their lore and put forth something that seems appropriate for those who spawned the very acclaimed Warcraft (and Starcraft) games.
My only question is whether many of these quests will be repeatable by others later on. The gates themselves, once opened, will stay open, that's no question. But the replaying of the sealing? The crazy gnome quests? It'd be a shame to let only a few percent of each server have a chance to witness this fine work. One CM has mentioned that they will be repeatable, and I really can't see Blizz throwing out that work and not letting it be reused. It may not make sense anymore, but then, does anything really make sense in a persistent world (where the completion of your quest leaves things just the way they were)?
So, yeah, lots of DRAGONS. For my part, I spent a chunk of the weekend with a reptile of a different sort, doing my first bit of grinding ever to gather materials for the war effort, in an attempt to raise my faction so I can buy a Nightsabre mount. I got to Revered, but I've calculated it would take me another 80 hours to get to Exhalted where I need to get. Ugh.
I did manage to score the new music used in front of the gates of Ahn'Quiraj scene -- very haunting, great depth, evocative. Glad I managed to extract it.
And I hit Lvl 60, the cap, with my main character. Crazy.
Last night, at Wing Lam Kung Fu, saw the completion of a chapter. Evan and I co-led the last class before the new format begins in January, thus it was the last time either of us will teach (at least for the forseeable future). We began the evening by lighting incense at the altar. The class was about completion, a reflection of where everyone was in their training, where each of us excelled, where we lagged, what we had accomplished and what was next. Quickly the class went through many of the excercises and drills that we've practiced in conditioning over the past years. As we sat in horse at the end, we exchanged words of wisdom and thanks, before one final burst of energy for low-horse and crane stances.
Evan brought with him some large calligraphy (the characters for kung fu), and we presented them as gifts to those in attendance. Testing was then had.
So it now dawns over the never ending road as we take our next step along the path of Kung Fu. Bagua begins in January, taught by Sifu Lam, continuing with more seminars through the year.
Welcome to a beginning.
As in crazy good. Play by play, starting at lunch on friday: Lunch with friend, LoftyOne, Gaming, Kung Fu, Party (1), Party (2), LoftyOne Meeting, FoodFu, Gaming. Whiew!
In more detail, the FoodFu on Sunday was actually a TeaFu, wherein the fu-gang got together and sampled approximately 6 teas, accompanied with cookies and other sweets. Many of the teas were from China, and half of mine didn't fare very well in a large-pot environment. The famous Monk's Blend tea though (I must get more! I just rediscovered the address of the Tea Party store in Ottawa!) was a huge hit, as it always is. A black tea, but with an added layer of delicate flavour. Evan brought a red chrysanthemum tea that bloomed in the pot and was a great ending. And speaking of cookies, I ate WAY to many this weekend. With the various parties and get togethers I ate a lot this weekend, though I can't say I ate particularly well. Waddling like a penguin, filled to the brim with baked treats (and more).
The return to sunday gaming (been off for many a week) was I continuing the Bloodstone game. Exploration and discovery was at hand that evening, with the environment dishing out some amusement (or, at least, providing an area where amusement was dished into). The encounter that rounded out the evening was a drawn out affair, unhelped by the players' less-than-stellar dice rolls (though amusing for me) and certain events that didn't transpire as they'd planned it to. Tactics were present though, and everyone gave a good showing of their character in action. A good evening, made late only by the late start of the game... I'm looking forward to the next time I run it.
Got a lot of legwork done on LoftyOne, set up more things, researched more things, and things are just happening there. }:) Now, I am preparing to fly home tommorow evening -- I feel so disorganized this year, it's odd, amusing and mildly unsettling. There are gifts I haven't bought, or sent out, not sure I've packed everything, what should I read/bring/work on for the week away, etc. I have a day to figure it out!
At long last, my travel Journal from the 2005 Wing Lam Study Tour is now available!
You may find it here: Shaolin Lynx
Four day weekend, much to say! I'll put it behind a cut lest this get to long for the front page.
Turkey day this year was spent in a languid manner over at T&Es, with food, lazing, desert, more lazing... very relaxed-like, very nice. I brought over a bottle of Archibald's Oak-Aged Ida Red (Apple) wine, and it was perfect with dinner.
Friday saw me mostly studying furiously for the upcoming Architectural Registration Exam I scheduled (fast approaching this coming Thursday). The evening, however, was dedicated to much WoW playing with my Tauren Shaman, Ahahthurne. JimM and I headed into the Wailing Caverns, joined by a pick-up group of... well, originally three others, including a level 60 shaman, a friend of the orc warlock who had joined. Oddly, this shaman took note at rule one of our group: this will be an RP instance, stating they didn't like to roleplay. Once in the instance, it was gang-crazy with them rushing forward and plowing through things (as a level 60 can in a level 20 instance), making it not very amusing for the rest of us. They agreed to leave, which made Ahathurne happy, for while the warlock had pledged his allegiance to Thrall, those who toy with the burning legion's power leave him rather uneasy. We were later joined by another player from JimM's guild, and the four of us had a fantastic roleplayed instance, culminating in taking out the world's largest murloc. I kid you not.
Saturday I returned to the kwoon for practice, thus ending my Week of Healing (tm). By that point my legs were actually hurting and jittery from _inactivity_, and as was expected it felt odd in the endurance and heart area as I got back into it. I did a double-run, then did mostly weapon sets for the day (with some hand sets for good measure). I also began to work on double-spinning as that came up in the DHS lesson I missed last week. Having never done double-broadsword (where it is usually taught) I am SO not graceful nor even fully capable of doing it w/o thinking, which'll make the DHS part of it very... amusing when we get to it this coming Tuesday. Much practice I will do!
That evening saw me heading off to the Firefly LARP, my first LARP experience ever. Given that, and that it was the third episode of this particular LARP, I didn't know exactly what to expect. I had my character, I had my backstory (4 pages of it! I'm very proud of myself about it), I had a ship image chosen, I had props, costume...
It went FANTASTIC. For the evening, I think I ended up with three compliments on my costume, a compliment on my backstory, a compliment on a previous discussion I had with one of the GMs about the map of the 'verse, I got some compliments from the director's on my RPing, AND to top it off, my accent stayed intact for almost the entire evening, never slipping into that of Cortez (one of JimM's characters in our Friday games). The game was rockin, everyone staying well in character, and the Directors having plotted things out nicely, obviously having read my backstory and incorporating it, timing things so that they could work the story with my character, and also working with what the players were doing in-game and crafting something quite grand. I have to say, I was quite impressed, and I had a blast just RPing for 4 hours straight. Nearly straight -- there's a way to go OOC so you can ask Qs to the GMs.
In short, my character arrived on-station (20 minutes before start of game), was herded along with everyone else onto an Alliance Cruiser, where we were interrogated in turn while the rest of us stewed, got gassed and knocked out, made some contacts for his business (he's a Navigator, and I had made business cards), did Tai Chi, found his ship had been searched, had to make some deals to save his life AND to top it all off had to contend with chickens running amok. Next game is in January.
No DnD tonight, so we're getting together for some Circus Maximus -- which is Renegade Legion, so that's all good (though a beer and pretzels game unlike the other RenLeg games).
After class last night, I have begun a JimA-aproved Week of Healing (TM). With a course I'm taking this weekend plus next tuesday evening means no KF on those days, then it's the oddly-timed thanksgiving, and when it's all said and done, it'll be the 26th before I 'fu again. Wonder how jittery and itchin' to kick I'll get...
Mine heart pines for mine auto, stuck at the dealership, who's communication is compared onto thee of that a pool of flaming cess. Thy integrity hath been broken! That the work was not done in your estimation is not the dissapointment, no, but that such was not communicated is what has sundered your word. Hote, I do say! On others I thusly depend for transportation, this fine weekend.
And a fine weekend it has been. Yesterday, headning out to KF, it truly felt like a real fall morning. Dry, chill, a bit of crispness on the air. Very nice. Also, Villa Ave is coming into its full riot of colours.
Starting in the new year, the kung fu school will be undergoing quite a shift in the way things will be run. All classes will be collapsed into a twice-per-week seminar-like series, with Sifu teaching a particular style (or its applications) for two months. I'll stop being an instructor (all instructors will), and return to being students as Sifu will literally teach it all in pure training fashion. Definitively a big change from what I've gotten used to in my five years there. I'm somewhat lamenting the loss of conditioning (at least, there may be a loss of conditioning) though I certainly know that two hours straight of forms training, not to mention application and sparring later, can be a workout on its own. I also still want to learn Shaolin #2 and #10. And I'm excited by the prospect of all Sifu all the time. Learning Tiger/Crane promises to be be cool and froody. Tantilized by the depth to which training will be given, along with many months of technique, application and partner drills and sparring. Interested to see the dynamics and the energy. Walking the line, mournful, worried, intrigued, hopeful.
Wow, basically November already. TWO years of my blog have now elapsed. Ca-razy!
A fairly low-key weekend was had. After a great visit, I drove my parents to the airport early Saturday morning, returned home to nap and head to practice. I didn't do the stairs, but did the main run almost double (the way the route worked out), then did the Shaolin stairmaster of the sets in order (of the ones I know), plus the two sets from shaolin, punctuated by straight sword, cane and DHS. We're but a few moves into the set, and it's already a very good challenge in some coordinated spinning/hooking/curling maneuvers that look anything but coordinated or smooth right now. A good workout, good lunch then... I took a different tact that day and kicked back, set up an athmosphere in the appartment and relaxed for the rest of the day. Woo!
Sunday I caught up with some studying, maintenance et al, and also headed over to Wendy2's place where I querried her about some things to expect for the upcoming Firefly LARP I'll be joining. We also worked our magic and developed a good chunk of my character's background, and I finished choosing stats/skills/etc. Besides the char sheet, I have a bunch of querries for the GMs and have to pin down some solid info on the 'verse...
Of course, there was all the info that came out of BlizzCon this weekend, about WoW and the Burning Crusade expansion pack. I'm still waiting for patch 1.9 (paladin revamp, baby! Khyborr will be back!) but even without the expansion there's nice stuff a-coming -- linked auction houses, weather effects, that sort of thing. My interest in the expansion is there, but I'll wait to see what the new alliance race is before I go ape or just woo about it.
But what would a post be without some architecture. For one, I link to you Foster's new Faculty of Pharmacy at UoT, a building I wouldn't immediatly associate with Foster's name or feel. Also, some very attractive looking prefab by Marmol Radziner, available now, made in their own factories, with renewable and enviro-friendly materials. Wowza!
Those who play BattleTech will read the title and think, reflexively, Double Heat Sinks!
However, I refer to Double Hook Swords, which is the set Sifu started to teach us last week, another of my "hey, I bought this weapon in China... can we learn that next?" coups. This will be my second double set -- though in all honesty the double dagger is not a very difficult double set, meaning that this one will really kick my butt. Generally DHS are taught after double broadswords, so I'll have a lot of spinning and groundwork stuff to catch up on when we reach it, neverminding general coordination of the left and right hands.
I chose to forgo falling/throwing practice on saturday at KF in the hopes of giving my back/shoulders time to get used to being re-set after, well, having been re-set by Dr Fuji friday morning. The strategy seems to have worked, and it gave me some time to do some extra sets, meaning I did the run, later cane and #3 three times each, some DHS, #6, #7, #5, Tong Bei Quan and Emperor's Boxing -- a good gaggle of sets and a good workout. I'll catch up with the throwing this week with Evan. And speaking of he, we went to his place after class and spent most of the afternoon with wood, tape and tennis handgrips to wrap up and create good handgrips for the often-mentioned DHSs. (The only boo on this whole thing is that the DHS I bought are, for lack of a better term, crap too-thin-at-end things)
Saturday night saw the arrival of my parents down to visit, and sunday we trucked down to Monterey to the Aquarium and some sight seeing. I'd never been to the Aquarium, and it is quite an interesting building, with some on-site building and materials reused, the rest is poured-in-situ concrete, steel and glass. A display near the entrance chronicles the site's former use as a sardine canning factory (of which contributed to the depletion of the sardine stocks in the bay). Overall, the exhibits are well done, with a moderate focus on local/nearby marine biology. Certainly for me the highlight were the sea otters; I was more partial to river otters but after seeing them swim about amazingly gracefully and all their playfulness, I think I'm a bit more equitable in my like for otters.
For dinner we ended up in Carmel-by-the-sea, where I had the most fantastic braised rabbit dish. The rabbit was crazily tender and tasty, the red cabbage and mango salsa accompaniment was a great counterpoint, and to top it off it a triangle of excellent polenta really rounded it out nicely. Given that the rustic Italian bread was some of the best bread I've eaten in a long time, a very fine dinner.
The rest of the weekend was also shiny. Friday saw the start of a new campaign, this time a Champions game. I haven't played Champions in ages (about the same time as when I'd last GMed, as I GMed the Champions game). Pulling from a humourous picture/situation from China, I've created the character named Zed. His superpower: the ability to generate random stuff and project it at high velocities. Thing is, he really has no control over what he generates. If he's unlucky, he'll create pens and markers. If he's luckier, he'll generate knives, or even swords, maybe heavy books. If he's being lucky, he'll generate a stove, or a safe. And if he's on top of the luck game, he'll generate grenades, rockets and other instruments of hurt. If he's lucky.
Gamer geek: Basically, he's built on a multipower with a limitation: random (-1/4), rolling each time he uses it to see what of the four multipower slots is chosen: EB(P), RKA(P), AoE EB (P) and Entangle. Then, each of those Multipower slots is itself built on a series of nested activation rolls, each adding more damage/dice. The rest is primarily stats and some armour given to him by another team member.
What's interesting is that I have many points left over after building the character. Since FREd (HERO 5th ed) came out, you are now built on 200 base points rather than 100 -- that's quite the increase.
Saturday morning was, as always, Kung Fu practice. I went a bit sluggishly, and did the run, and was in this take it easy funk (with a bit of a stressed inner thigh). Evan was there, and he was starting his training for the next Berkeley competition, and was going to go over Cane and #3 -- so I joined in. A full, solid hour+ of cane and #3, it was awesome. Then the Bagua student showed up and we worked falls for about 40 mins. And sunday all soreness was gone.
After spending the afternoon distinguishing things with Evan, we headed over to Wendy2's place for a b-day party/gathering/shindig that was full of food (yes, the weekend of food!), wine, and the oddest assortment of conversations... very amusing.
Sunday night was Blodstone, as the party ventured to the mines. Not quite as packed or engaged as the previous games. The party is about to hit... the start of some interesting bits. And also about to hit 17th level -- 9th level spells. That'll be interesting for me to see what that does to the game...
And that was the (packed!) weekend. To finish this off, something that'll bust your ky000te glands...
Extraordinary.
Following up on Tuesday's awesomeness, Thursday's class also came off very well, and Saturday's practice felt great after a bit of a slow start. While I haven't, generally speaking, learned anything new (ie, any new sets) since the return from Shaolin, I've learned lots about the sets I know, and presenting that material. I'm creating a framed poster that includes material from the Shaolin temple as well as Wu De, the martial code, for the front of the kwoon, and helping Evan to create a page for every set that includes name in chinese characters, mandarin and cantoneese pronounciation, english translation of the name, the character of the set, the focus of the set (ie, what we're looking for), and the set's lyrics. Things are happening.
Friday was, of course, Serenity, sandwitched between two good friend-food outings. Saturday afternoon was busy getting the car waxed, which is, indeed, shiny.
Sunday saw the return of the Bloodstone campaign, as the players head onto module H-2. One player is out for this one (temporary leave), but we also gained another player, a former instructor from my KF school. The session rocked. Everyone (save the new player) finished up and accomplished what they wanted to in the two months game-time downtime, everyone got a chance to describe what parts of their backstories they wanted known or would have shared during the two months, the new character's introduction went well, the setup went well, and the whole game just generally went off smoothly, with RP present, with the players ready to tackle things, some funny moments, some great ideas by the players, and some shocking in-game events. The only mar was a server problem that took one of the players away for 60% of the evening.
A new week to create now lays before me.
I just want to say that the class I ran tuesday night at KF rocked, it was high energy, very fun, everyone had a blast, and it felt great.
Also, I am very sore from it. Tiger Balm for everybody!
Yesterday I had an interview about LoftyHeights with a reporter for the Mountain View Voice, and I've gotten in contact with someone at the California Report.
And the one-day countdown has begun.
Robot Performs Taijiquan: http://www.chinanews.cn/news/2005/2005-09-19/11146.html
Good weekend of practicing. Worked on speed, contrast and power and things felt really, really good. Also did straight sword a couple of times, and focussed on linking the sword to my centre, which also felt very good. This came atop a good week of letting the wrists heal up (too much weapons, too soon) and working on the longer sets along with staff, cane and double dagger sets. Iron Palm also felt good, and I talked to Sifu saturday morning and explored some areas of improvement.
Then, came the falls, of which I do want to improve. A bagua student has been coming in on saturdays who also has a background in other falling/grappling arts. He's been open to our questions and we're starting to develop a curriculum for the Shaolin conditioning classes. I'll need to work on my falls more, though -- neck muscles are stiff and sore, they're not used to it yet. And I saw Dr Fuji last week, alas...
And... I'm back. Wudangshan, Songshan and Beijing, much training, much travel. Flew in yesterday, two flights, 13 hours in the air, landing 2h after we left (date line and layover in Tokyo). Went to class last night and lead conditioning then taught my students. Jetlag be dammed!
Actually, feeling kinda wonky today as lack of sleep catches up with me, jetlag plays havoc with my rythems, the last of the illness is purged, and I try to catch up on what I missed at home for two weeks.
Journal, photos et al to come soon!
Or so says one of the art house theatres nearby...
I know it's been quiet here on the blogfront, and it'll be quiet again for two weeks as I'm flying off in less than 12h on Wing Lam Kung Fu's 2005 China Study Tour. I am totally excited, it's going to be a blast, we're going to learn lots, and I'll take a tonne of pictures.
To tide you over until my return, you can read about my previous trip in 2002. (Hopefully the server on which the images are stored will be alive again by the time you get there)
Off the Lynx goes...
Dear Microsoft. Please fix your CSS implementation in IE to actually work. Thank you. -- Kannik
Guess its time for a bit of an update on what's new and been going on, for things have been busy these past few weeks.
Kung Fu has been going well, with the classes I've taught feeling very good with energy and interest both present. My own training has also been moderate-to-good, especially saturday mornings. Finished the Broadsword vs Spear set, and started the other side (ie, now learning the Broadsword side) so that we'll know both sides soon enough. I had stopped practicing 3SS for a little while to let the wrist catch up -- what a difference a couple weeks make. Feel like I'm going to bonk my head badly already, it's quick to run from the mind. Iron Palm has been off and on, depending on the condition of my wrists, but when it's on, it's been on, with the steel feeling very good. Lasty, and of course, there's the China trip that's in just over a week -- must finish preparing!
For the trip, I bought myself a Tilley hat to protect myself from the blazing sun while we're over there. Many of you may have heard the elephant story vis-a-vis Tilley hats. Short version: a zookeeper has had his hat eaten 3 times by an elephant, and it's always survived and been wearable after a wash. Well, what's amusing is that this story happened at the Bowmanville Zoo(!). Small world.
I also bought a 12" pre-seasond cast iron pan. But I'm not bringing that to China. Work has also been busy, and I'll be teaching an InDesign primer to everyone this coming thursday. Our Friday Cyberpunk (sorta, see previous entries) game has ended, with brilliance, pizzaz and fun. Jim, Jim and Matt, it's been an awesome game, hats off to you (and now I even have a hat to do that with).
Our Sundays have been full of Eberron as various people are absent, and they've been pretty cool as we've been tooling around the tower-city of Sharn. Assasination attempts, interacting with the Dragonmarked Houses, deals and sub-deals, and to top it all off, the Race of the Eight Winds. The GM and I got together to hash out the rules for it (originally considering Spycraft chase rules, but choosing something simpler), then the GM simplified it even more, made a nice little diagram, had the other players run the other contestants (I managed to kill all three, including two VERY spectacular impacts), and with commentary turned it into an amusing episode. Natch, our party member won, and we finished off the evening with the party arriving together once more (we were all about doing our thing), an ambush that had me nearly depleated in power, and the halfling, with his sling, Natural-20ing an uber-long-range shot to knock out a fleeing mage. Wow.
This weekend, it's time to dust off Locah for Granite's game. Of course, I'll be gone for two weekends in Aug, so I'll miss a couple of Eberron games, but I plan on working on part two of the Bloodstone campaign and should have it ready to go by September. WoW-wise, 56.5, amazingly.
Lasty, been working on a Community Project that has been taking up a lot of time and has been fantastic...
Last night was a good night. I lead class, and Kung Fu was definitively present. The energy was good, the attention was good, when drilling on something people paid attention and improved quickly... I did some basics, some 'reverse' moves (left-sided tornado kicks and the like) and dug back to the days of Gene and brought forth some more advanced line drills. Everything flowed really well and I was having a lot of fun teaching, and already know what I'm doing when next I teach. Learned a bit more of the Broadsword vs Spear set, and what a surprisingly tiring set it is. A lot of up-and-down motion makes for a good leg workout, especially the inner thighs. Sifu said we should finish the set before we head off to China as it is short enough, so that'll be nice, not leaving a set half-done while we learn a few more while in China. This sunday a few of us whom are going will get together to talk China, general travel stuff and the like for those who haven't been.
Also saw Dr Fuji for the first time today in a couple of months -- with all the hard training and the falls, plus the teaching heating/cooling cycle, my muscles were apparently a mess that no ordinary hand could deal with -- not even the evil thumbs of Dr Fuji. No, it took weight and elbows...
Saturday, was Kung Fu. With the long weekend, the school was closed, but Sifu invited us to stop by his house to pick up the key for the kwoon, and also suggested we run on the track at the high school accross from his house if we wanted to. So, we did. Rather than our regular run-and-stairs routine near the kwoon, we did a run-on-track-then-bleachers routine at the school. It was good, running on the track was a bit nicer on the knees (even though it was but a dirt track, not a fancy material thing), and while I thought the longer run/rise of the bleachers would make the drills harder it actually was a slope that made it much nicer. After several sets of high knees, hops and fastascans, plus another lap for good measure, we headed to the kwoon to do all the hand sets.
Sunday, was Food Fu. Compared to the others, it was a hastily arranged one, but the theme fit that well: Tapas. The "Little Plates" meant simply prepared but savoury myriad of dishes. Asparagus, bean & sun-dried tomato salad, corn, cheese and quince, roasted potatoes with garlic aoli, salami, brie and nectarine turnovers, and more, were all passed around. A pinot gris (from Oregon), followed by an apple blackcurrent (from Archibald Orchards in Ontario) accompanied the meal. Casual and befitting the theme the dinner lingered with conversation flowing.
Afterwords, we settled in to watch a film. While the chosen film suffered technical difficulties, our substitute, Donnie Darko, was quite something. A film that is hard to describe, I enjoyed it a lot as it wove many a thread of characters, stories, commentary and exestentialism together. It would fall into the 'not really only a narrative' type/category of films, one that I know upon second or third viewing would reveal ever so much more. Definitively good viewing.
Monday, that wrong-day long weekend, saw me get much work done on some rules for SilCore -- likely nothing official this time, but something I want to finish up. That, and cleaning up from the mess of dishes used to make my tapas... small dishes, large mess o' cookware when I'm in the chef's hat.
Despite the angry quads, I led class again last thursday, taking the class for a run along the creek then back for a few lines of kicking before breaking out the pads for some elbows and punches. I then made good on my tumbling promise and we pulled out the mats and practiced rolls (some people over sucessively higher stacked pads). I also managed to get through a good number of sets after teaching, if somewhat lightly -- all in all, a good night.
Saturday was also good. My run and the stairs were actually kinda easy despite the legs, and I continued to focus on endurance by doing all the hand sets one after the other. Again, I took it somewhat lightely through the sets to give my legs some chance to heal, but that simply gave me the chance to focus on precision and grace, and I left the kwoon feeling very satisfied.
Also continuing to practice the three section staff, and on tuesday we began learning the next set, Broadsword vs Spear. I chose the spear side (though it's a short enough set it'll be easy to learn the other side afterwords) and spent the lesson stabbing at my opponent -- there'll be a lot of stabbing/thrusting in this set. It's what the spear does.
And with my final payment, the China trip is now but a waiting game. Well, that and I need to check my innoculation records...
Tuesday evening saw me leading class. I wanted to have some fun and also focus on, well, focus: sharpness, energy focus, contrast. There were only a few students in the class (about 1/3 normal, perhaps -- I think it's graduation week and the start of the summer holidays) so we created the game that if we stayed focussed and had amazing sharpness, we'd run through the line drills quicker and pull out the mats for some tumbling.
What an intense class. Rather than the usual 'do 30 of this excercise, sit in horse, do 30 of that excercise, run a bunch, etc' we worked on short bursts of activity -- so we ran around the kwoon, stopped, did 10 of something, ran the other way, stopped, did 10 of something, etc, non stop for a while. Then we did squats, leaps, and much kicking -- low snap kicks, high snap kicks with jab, double kicks, tripple kicks, reverse tripple kicks, snap kicks into pads, etc. Ten mins before the end of class, I asked "Have we done a good job tonight of focus?" No one raised their hand. So we did a few more kicks, and did not pull out the mats. We did end the class a little differently, however, with a sort of push/pull excercise that was a simple version of push hands (very simple by comparision) that everyone enjoyed. After a slow return to big ranks, the penalty for which was 10 pushup squats, class ended.
Afterwords, I taught my smaller groups, practiced 6 and 7 combined with a couple of students, did 1, 4, staff sparring, and then practiced three section staff.
My reward: oh my do my quads ever hurt. As in 'touch them and go OW!' Much snap kickness... Class again tonight! China in 2 months!
Last weekend the school was closed, so I went running at Rancho San Antonio instead. It had been a while, and since last time I had great difficulty I was interested in seeing how I'd fare this time.
Let's just say I learned the rule of why one isn't supposed to go swimming for at least an hour after eating. Oy!
This weekend I played the game of doing all my hand sets, and I did. While I still contemplate of registering serialinjury.com, if they keep away, I'm getting back into my game of Endurance/Speed&Power/Weapon weekends.
Then China in two months! Woo!
I think I got a bit of a sunburn today. Guess summer has indeed arrived again, at least in between the bouts of rain.
Tuesday's KF class saw me being asked to run the group class, so I took everyone for a run to the stairs. It was very fun, and no one died. And when we returned, as everyone was so bouncy at the start of class, we did a bouncy class, with lots of double kicks, tornado and lotus kicks, tripple kicks, etc. Again, very fun. But sure did a number on my legs, wow. Despite all the stair running on the weekends something really did them in on tuesday -- maybe it was the quick-freeze from teaching sets afterwards, who knows. But still was able to get a good conditioning in on Thursday, including doing most of the sets together with the class (a lack of instructors so we did a group thing). Today's stair run went well as well, though my legs by the time I was done were pretty killing, and I didn't work much on my sets, which wasn't what I was expecting when I went in, but still felt good when all done.
But that big shiny ball in the sky! It hath fried my face a bit. Curses!
Yesterday, I ran the stairs, and yesterday, I only 1/4 died. My legs may be tired as smeg from the tues/thurs workout, but the stairs I am near to conquering again, and this makes me happy. Otherwise, I did #6 and #7 a few times, along with #4, and practiced more 3ss. My legs/knees were feeling a bit beat up from the sets this week (and getting back to Iron Palm, who would've thought 15 mins of horse/bow stances would stress them so much so?) so not too brutal a workout yesterday, but the run and stairs felt excellent. Forearms are kinda tight from the 3ss, which is kinda interesting. It was actually pretty quiet at the kwoon, most seemed satisfied with a relaxing day. The sun was out, it was nice... and I'll have to start worrying about sunburn again.
Today equals studying, studying, geting ready for game, studying, Bloodstone.
For your reading pleasure... Kannik's Spampoo has been updated as well.
A good weekend was had, with a couple of instances tackled and under my belt (WoW, what else?) sandwitching a good practice on saturday. Sunday saw the return (gasp!) of the Bloodstone campaign (it's only been, what, 4 months?). The gaming session itself got off toa bit of a rough start, with a forgotten power cord for a laptop and a rapidly dead battery, and two other laptops that just wouldn't work out. So we all trucked out from the infamous kitchen table and into the living room, where we got the game on using the HTPC that was there. Worked out very well, actually, complete with full-screen surround sound paladin action. While I had made (dire?) predictions about this being the last session for this adventure, with the late start and much hijinks from the insanity-ed elven archmage, one more session to go. The game itself was rather jovial and filled with ease, and ended with a perfect montage shot to roll the credits over and set up the next session (cue party coming out of a Windwalk spell, appearing in front of the town's walls, in front of the advancing remnants of the bandit army, in perfect battle poses o' doom, with the paladin flying high above on his dragonel mount... niiice). Been getting a few projects done, also been very powerful at work, banging away on some projects and enjoying myself (though the actual tasks/projects/job itself haven't changed). Busy week again this week, but class tonight was good, I'm loving the three-section-staff (even if I did whack my ear rather nicely) and I practiced a bunch of #9 and #3, both long sets. Also starting up Iron Palm again (after the rain/sore wrist incidents of the past weeks) which is always a good thing. And to cap it off, they poked fun of Frank Ghery on the Simpsons this past weekend (I'm sure Jason will post about Ghery, I swear these last few posts have all been about memories from uni days, interesting...)
Yes, this post was the attack of the ellipses (as if you didn't guess).
Starting last thursday, we began to learn one of the weapons that have intrigued me for a long time -- the three section staff, the first flexible weapon I've learned. Flexible means, of course, "likes to come back and whack you on the head/shin/elbow", which is what makes training with it such an interesting experience. Using it is a cross between standard staff/spear techniques/moves, and something completely unknown and new. It's when you forget that second part and treat it like the first that the weapon reminds you with a tap to your body. As tough as it may end up being, this will be a very cool set to learn, in part because of the differentness and difficulty factor -- learning how to handle something completely new.
Fortunetally, I went to see Dr Wong this past weekend and he fixed up my wrist pretty good. It started to be irritated near the end of class last night, so I took that as my stopping point, but otherwise fine. And I worked out pretty hard last night, practicing three-section a lot and doing #5, #8 a bunch of times each, as well as #3 and #4.
Silly time change has me feeling a bit 'off' this week, though.
Yesterday night marked the retun to KF afer the 4-week illness 'break', and as totally expected, soreness is my name today. Which actually makes me a bit relieved -- I felt really good post-workout last night, which usually spells total uber-pain the next day. Add to that the usual 'not sore the next day but the day after' routine, and feeling a bit sore today gives me confidence that I shan't be a wreck tommorow, and may not need to marinate myself in balm yet again.
Its rather amazing how quickly the body forgets. Just a few weeks off (or heck, even a single week off) and workouts seem monstrously ouch. And I could certainly feel the rustiness in the flow and accuracy of my sets, so a good whack of practice I will need to partake to get things back to where they were.
The problem with my server at home, if I may switch focus, is that it is too stable. Running FreeBSD, I've twice had uptimes approaching a year (both times kaiboshed only by a power failure, something hopefully rectified with the purchase of a UPS). Which means that when something does go wrong (almost always hardware related) I have to dig back a year into my memory for the how... and given that I only needed that knowledge for one or two days at that time, and the time prior was a year as well, it isn't easily recalled knowledge. So then did it take me a couple of hours and a phone call to a friend to remember how to edit the fstab in a non-fully booting system (non-fully-booting because a drive sliced listed in fstab was no longer there, as I unplugged the failing HDD until I could get another in there to backup as much as I could).
And no matter how many details I draw at work, I always feel like I'm learning them for the first time.
While Dave was down, I had a chance to check out Kung Fu Hussle, the new Steven Chow film. When I saw the trailer, I thought it would either be fantastically brilliant, or really, really bad.
Turns out, it was neither.
To me, there is some comedic brilliance in both Shaolin Soccer and, especially, God of Cookery. For me, this film didn't reach that brilliant mark. KFH does maintain the same Steven Chow excellence in creating what can be best described as Kung Fu Slapstick (or at least visual humour), and boy, giving this man access to CG was a dangerous thing to do. The visuals of the fight scenes in the film are very good, and the fighting itself is kinetic and just the right amount of over the top. Matrix million person fight scene(s): eat your heart out, for this is how to do it. The homages to other films as well as tradition is also as good as always.
What kept this film from touching brilliance in my book, leaving the film solidly in the good category, was the overall package and story. The premise of the 'universe' and its stylings is interesting, but the excecution was rather straightforward, and even I might say the unfolding was a bit awkward at times. Not that it is unusual for action films, but given his previous work this 'lack' seemed to stand out a bit more.
Good fights, good gags and a killer end-move that I so want to learn, but shy of brilliance. Do see it if you have a chance.
I am a big proponent of 'adaptive reuse'. Slash/Burn and build is not something to aspire to. That being said, grafting onto existing buildings can be the most amazing exercise in frustration, pain, and many trips to field verify. It wouldn't be so hard if builders (and the clients) actually had REAL drawings, shall I say ACCURATE drawings of the buildings, or if the buildings hadn't been added to over many years, sometimes without permits, in a hodgepodge way. Or if columns actually lined up over each other. Or other similar things. And I'll continue to advocate for reuse. But right now, this building, which IS going away in 3 years anyway, could use a good wiping out and let's go for ground up!
(It's not like the building is much material at any rate -- a butler-style prefab mostly. That steel could probably easily be recycled)
Last night I ran class, and in honour of the New Year of the Rooster, I ran a single-leg and bouncy (?) intensive class. Felt a bit rusty, but felt good. Didn't feel so good afterwards, I don't think I'm over my cold yet. And my ankle/leg, ah, pain, I know you too well.
I have received... my new phone. And wow, is this thing small. If I hold it next to my current phone folded up, it's maybe actually bit longer, a bit thinner, and a bit narrower (though egg shaped), but it just feels really really tiny. Its charging right now, so I haven't tried it out yet, but woo, at least I have it. While this one also has a retractable antenna, it fully, completely and entirely sits inside the phone with no protruding bits, so hopefully the days of broken antennas are over. Of course, silly thing doesn't come with a belt clip or nothing, so I will probably have to spend to get one of those.
Don't you just hate it when you know you had stuff to say and share but now can't remember what the smeg it was?
Starting with work, for a change, which has been uber-crazy due to discovering our plans (which mostly derived from as-builts given to us by the client) were, well, kinda wrong. Civil gave us a drawing and showed the building 2 feet shorter than what we had. Much mad field re-verrification ensued to discover where the problem was, and if it affected all the new bits we were adding into and to the sides of the existing building. Even had to rush in to do some work today. Verdict: we're not as screwed as we might have been, and all may be ok.
Also didn't go to KF this morning as I felt like I did last weekend, and I didn't fancy a repeat of last weekend's festivities.
CSSzen garden has been rather placid of late, but this design is kinda neat in some ways.
Now that comments are back, I have something I want to post that I was saving for said occurance -- so stay tuned!
So, feeling a bit under the weather saturday morning. Go to practice, and enjoy it. Do some instructor training, enjoy it. Get to the sparring portion, and I end up with a chest nicely constricted and unable to breathe very well. Fast forward to the evening and find self practically flat-on-back with full-on sore throat, serious constriction, and ughness. Heavy-breathing when coming down with cold = bad. Atop that, my body is very very bloody sore all over from the sparring (nothing like getting your head jarred around) and the various falls and twisty things we were doing during instructor training, as my body is spending energy to fight the cold, not to look after those muscles. Whee for feeling like crap.
In the end, I think I need to replace my cellphone. I like it a lot, but I just can't keep the damn antennas from breaking. I've gone through four, and I have a fifth but I can't get it out of the other phone to install it on this one. Looking at the models, all the clamshells (my preferred form factor) are either a) expensive or b) crap when it comes to features or capabilities (like, say, call clarity). I think I'll have to bite the bullet and get one of the little bricks -- I'm not crazy about them in use (so small!) but I'm thinking of the Nokia 6015i: it's new on the market, is simple (I don't need a camera, seriously), is tri-mode, and etc. Anyone have experiences with Nokias they'd like to chime in with?
Well, not really. But the floor at class last night was about as slippery as the Rideau right now. Slab-on-grade next to a ditch, just-rained and not-the-greatest ventilation combined with 30+ students workin' hard to make for a rather slick floor. Jumping and fast movements are kind of a no-no, and as such we did some more stationary drills and cancelled lessons and instead pulled out the mats for more falling and rolling around. It was a low-chi day anyway given the weather, not to mention the nice clammycold feeling with all the condensing humidity.
But a bunch of us went out to a good dinner after, with both Jim AND Wendy2 being there, even though the table length interferred with the latter somewhat.
A date seems to have been set for the next Food Fu event (which I seem to have accidentally usurped the order a bit, as it will take place before Bernadette's Pasta night) for the end of February; obvoiusly our one-per-month is already off. Maybe 6/year is a more reasonable goal. The theme for the festivities this time will be: "Bleu, Blanc, Rouge", with the movies being shown and food enjoyed.
QotD:
"It's like a strange world of Ayn Rand crossed with Spirited Away."
"Oh, that's just like Canada."
(?!?!?)
So, some things.
You can compare apples to oranges.
Libeskind to design again in Toronto.
Weekend passed relatively well, though both games suffered a bit of a late start. Saturday practice was fine (new pants, I still hear thee), and I even got the first (two, actually) 'that looked/was good' I think I've gotten in ages. Also torqued the hell out of my ankle some more, so looks like that'll be on the DL for another X months. Studied a bunch, and found myself borking some questions I was doing for a second or third time, overcomplicating them -- need to step back a bit and realize to take them for what they are.
But of most import is that after some fantastico work by Mike, comments have been turned on anew. I await your pent-up flood!
Performing falls can be, not surprisingly, hard on the neck.
Demonstrating a straight-legged kip up, and then turning it without intention into a no-hand straight leg kip up, is even harder on the neck.
Sore neck. So don't do that.
I did succeed in the kip up though, despite it being unplanned. Maybe I surprised myself so much (WHAT AM I DOING?) right up onto my feet.
When I started Kung Fu some four-and-a-bit years ago, I bought two pairs of the then-current black kung fu pants. They were, quite literally, my kung fu pants. With the exception of a few rare occasions where I practiced in shorts, if I was doing kung fu, I was in those pants. They came to China with me to train. They survived all my weapon sets with only a small nick in one. The leg elastic broke on one, and I liked it enough to remove the leg elastics on the rest (but then put my legs into the monk socks and wraps anyway). They turned blue from the frequent washings. They were, in a sense, as much a part of my kung fu as anything else.
Despite this, when it became apparent they were getting a bit thin in places (or I should say when it was pointed out to me) I simply bought a couple of new pairs.
"New pants tonight?" Around a half-dozen or so variations of this was repeated to me last night. As much as they were a fixture for me, for many in the school they were even more so. I probably could have gotten a tattoo and it would've been less noticeable than replacing those pants. For all those that began at the school within the past two years, for all the time they've seen me train and teach, I've been the one in those dark blue pants.
What's funny is that I myself noticed 'new pants' while training. The material on these pants is quite different from the old, more canvas-y and less of pure-cotton-y. Every fast leg movement brought with it a rustle of fabric I was not familiar with, and every time I noticed it and almost paused. Four years of noiseless kicks now hitting fullsteam into swishing fabric.
One of those interesting unexpected things from something one gives little thought to... like your pants.
So, last week it was only the hamstrings that hurt -- this week, the rest of the body decided it better catch up on that hurt department, and in interesting ways. Always a joy, that, but after a few days of rest (with another holiday today, the unfortunate clumping of holidays down here) I'm feeling pretty good. Plus, I see Dr Fuji this friday. I bet he'll love the block of stone that is my lower back.
Otherwise, a weekend like most other, with friends, games, and studying. Well, studying isn't usually in the cards, but with the first exam fast approaching, it is now. And, I guess, with 8 other exams past that one, it will be for the next while.
There's something I like about candles. I know it's not just me, given the exorbanant price many stores charge for them now, but nonetheless, I do like them. So imagine getting a 19" high by 4" dia candle. Yes, it's very nice... and imposing!
FotD: Model T MPG: 25. Avergae MPG in US last year: 24.
Well, the return to Kung Fu after three weeks off resulted pretty much as one could expect: sorness, especially in the back of the legs from high kicks. Still workable, however. Practice on saturday, after the initial sorness, was a great one! A small run, then just able to work on sets, running through almost all the weapon sets and my most recent hand sets. Nice.
Work was pretty busy in spurts. Was donated a 21" monitor that unfortunetaly just doesn't fit on my desk anywhere (!). Played way to much WoW (no surprise). Decided when I'll take my Lateral Forces exam.
Returned to Peggy's game on friday -- and two very interesting things happened. Other than the two new players. The first was that Keldorn (which I learned today was used in one of the Baldur's Gate games? Gah! I didn't know...) started speaking in a rather amusing accent, likely due to RotK and WoW. The second was that Keldorn's speech and behaviour turned into a sarcastic, biting, banterful pattern. That's what happens when you approach a shard of the gods -- not only does perception of reality get altered, but so too does the dwarf!
With no gaming tonight, I'm off to Vicki's for a dinner making night, the first in a long time! On the menu tonight is a Lamb Stew, and a Thai-inspired Chicken Curry dish. Woo!
Yesterday was the last day of the sparring seminar. I had a bad feeling going into it, feeling a touch of illness, but it was the last day so I went into it. We were doing two rounds of two minutes each. I got really, really tired near the end of the first round, and was really having trouble breathing second round -- and then at the last second was dropped by a good kick to the midsection (toes in solar plexus, rest of foot into liver). That wasn't so bad, I from that quickly enough, but the hard breathing from the match did me in. My chest constricted a bit, and I imagine asthma feels a bit like this, and it's been that way since the match. So I guess I really was getting a bit sick... so much for the bit part now. Cough cough!
The WoW beta servers came down last thursday, and sure enough, they unleased an appocalypse on the world (each server, really, some shots viewable here, images 1177 to 1200). Since I was in class, teaching, I missed it all. Booo! Ah well, game goes live Tuesday. Joy of joys, they've decided to create some RP servers! Ever since my amazing RP encounter, I'd been hoping they'd create a server to cater to the RP crowd. While the ruleset really hasn't changed much (all it really does is postulate more GM oversight), hopefully the name "RP" will gather the RP-crowd together, making experiences like the one I had more prevalant. That, and hopefully scare the 1337s elsewhere. Wile a few tweaks could've helped, it's really the people that can make the RP more immersive, and that I really look forward to.
Of course, I also fear the assholes, jerks and twinkers who will join the RP server, be assholes, jerks and twinkers, and when called on it will simply state "Oh, hey man, I'm just RPing a jerk!" Riiiiiggghhht. Well, in RP, then I say "@#$#@$! off"
After all of yesterday's 'festivities', a bunch of us gathered last night to watch the entirety of Macross Zero... (spoilers ahead, perhaps)
For some it was new (new to Macross in general, even), for others they'd seen some but not all of the Macross Zero episodes. I had not seen the last episode yet, so it was a new conclusion to all of us. And... what a conclusion. It really makes me wonder if Macross Zero is really supposed to be a prequel to the TV series, or the Movie. While the events between the two (TV, Movie) are ostensibly similar, the latter is actually a 'dramatization' made within the TV continuity. So it's not 100% cannon -- but at the same time, the director had a chance to add and elaborate on some themes not covered in the TV show. So to watch MZ, and especially the... strangeness that occurs at the end and the heavy ties into proto-culture, mythology, and spiritual transormation seems a bit more tied to the Movie than the TV series. Especially the latter, with people turning into bird-humans and streaks of light. I'll admit I'm a bit undecided on the ending. It was odd, and even odder in a Macross continuity, but somehow fit nonetheless. Though I'll agree that the tinkerbell appearance of Mao on Shin's shoulders was the writers getting themselves into a tight spot and going "crap, how do we get out of this? he needs to learn some information!"
What's not in doubt are the battles, which were crazy-amazing, with good CG/Classic Animation combo to boot. They got a bit long in the tooth at times, and perhaps a bit too MTV-hyperkinetic, but wild rides, no pun intended. Worth watching the seires for that alone, if you're a mecha fan. (Which, no doubt, I am) That, and there's a hauntingly beautiful choral song that appears many times (and even changes lyrics-wise at the end, if you notice). Mmmmm.
Definitively, if you are a Macross fan this is well worth seeing.
Oy. The good news (to begin positively) is that the pipe is fixed and the slab is repaired, though the flooring won't be fixed until later this week. I've had the patio and front door open sunday (and propped open a hallway door to try to get cross ventilation) and managed to exorcise most of the smell -- for the previous few days I'd been given another appartment (fortunetaly only 2 doors down) to sleep in. The joke? The previous tennant there smoked. Carpet fully steam cleaned, the unit looks pretty spotless, but let me tell you, the smell lingers. And sticks to whatever is brought in there. A choice of foul scents was on the menu.
Speaking of menu, Tiff and Evan invited me to join them and evan's parents for dinner Saturday night. We went to Il Fornaio in Palo Alto, and had one very nice tasty dinner. Been a while since I've been out to a semi-fancy place. Really helped make the weekend better.
Kung Fu practice was also excellent on saturday. While my ankle isn't 100%, I had one of the most fun workouts I've had in a loooong time. I didn't do the stairs (only ran), and with no instructor meeting or sparring class, outside in perhaps one of the last days before it rains continually, I just progressed through a series of sets. It was nice, relaxed, and felt good to work the stiffness out of a bunch of sets.
Quote from the previous weekend:
(Ramstein plays in the background)
Where did this music come from?
My car.
(look of suprise)
Wow, I think we'll have to add some points to your column... didn't know you drove to Ramstein.
Last night's class was... eh.
Forget the silly so-called world series. The F-22 Raptor finally entered service yesterday. I remember reading about the competition between the YF-22 and the YF-23 while back in high school; in fact, I had just assumed for the longest time that they must have had some squadrons equipped already. The name itself points to just what was popular at the time. But no, it's been taking forever, and ballooning in cost to 260 million each. Given that the current crop of fighters cost, I believe, 30-40 million each, that's one hell of a jump up. Plus, there's no denying that the YF-23 was far sexier. With vectored thrust, supercruise and internal bays for some degree of stealth, let's hope it performs crazy-well. I'll dig seeing fly.
It will be interesting to see how the F/A-35 Joint Strike Fighter proceeds after the F-22s long haul. (Interesting -- I just realized I think both prototypes for the JSF had the same designation) With three models (perhaps four, counting export) it could indeed take a while... or maybe they'll have learned a thing or two. Makes me chuckle to remember seeing the amazing renderings produced by Aristomenis Tsirbas at the 3D Conference and Expo back in 2000 for Boeing, for their JSF concept. Un-freakin-beliavable quality 3D animations that to the entire assemblige of 3D enthusiasts looked pretty damn real. I'll also dig seeing it flying.
Of course, he also showed off the intro movie for Mechwarrior IV. That was amusing.
Now, if this isn't today's winner of Best Blog Title, I don't know what is.
As these last days of non-rain (even though it has been raining off and on the past few days), it is tripply frustrating to have my wrists acting up again, for I know that once the rain starts, there goes my Iron Palm schedule out the window. This is definitively one place where having a garage (or basement) would rule. I've done it in the past at the school durng the spring (nov-mar) here, but that's only 3 times per week. Damn wrists!
QotD: "Some of your stances weren't as stance-y as we'd like them to be."
Testing was held last night at the kwoon. As Justin was out, it fell upon myself, Evan and Phil to run the testing -- a testing that ended up with way more people testing than we thought there would be. Made for some crazy time trying to organize it all. And natch, I'll admit that the above quote is actually said by me...
But I can live with that quote. Unfortunetaly, I said far worse during the evening, mainly the F word: Fail. After the testing it was pointed out to me (by, oh, everyone) that the word "Fail" has never really been used to describe a not-pass result. Instead, it has either been described as "See it again", "Not quite there yet", "Good, but some issues" or "Not a Pass". But never "Failure". It felt weird when I was saying it, and I couldn't figure out why... now I know. And I feel terrible about it. It was an overly harsh assesmet on my part, and a misrepresentation of what testing is supposed to be about, and the fact that I said it given my own feelings about testing makes it that much worse. Wendy and Mike, Bernadette et al said they don't think anyone took it the 'wrong way' but I still think that, well, I failed in that part of the evening. Unfortunetaly, I don't think there's much I can do about it now.
I feel bad about it. Not happy.
It's funny when you discover something that shines an amusing light on a memory and experience.
While practicing yesterday, Sifu comes out to talk to us and do some Tai Chi. As we warmup, he mentions that the Wudang hotel at which we stayed during our trip in 2002, the infamous 'living postcard' hotel, was in fact illegal. While they had done a fine job in converting parts of the temple into a hotel, they had no permission do to so, and the central government has shut them down. The Fuzhen Temple is a temple in whole once more... though I do not know what they may have done, if anything, to remove/revert the conversions. Kind of thing that makes one go "huh. Interesting."
And a bit of a bummer, should we return. Staying at that hotel was one of the highlights of the trip, the best of the hotels (and also some of the best food, surprisingly). Serene, idyllic, and a great place to learn Wudang Fist. Staying in a regular/generic hotel if we go again will seem kinda wrong. Though I think Sifu mentioned that there's a wushu guan there too (for wudang fist), so if we stay there, it would be a two wushu guan trip!
Sifu is, however, making noises of going to a town where they hold huge tournaments, rather than going to Wudang. While seeing a large tourney (of the best kung fu possible) could be cool, it would be a real shame (for me, at least) to miss out on Wudang Shan.
Here's this week's scoop. I actually managed to take it easy and stay out of conditioning this week, hopefully giving my heel some time to rest. It felt better some days, not quite as good on others; I'm hopefull it recovers by next week. I still went to class, though, and practiced my weapon sets a bunch, and taught my individual classes. Meanwhile, I was amazed at the perpetuation of ignorance and untruth by some prominant speeches. I also rolled up my character for the Eberron campaign (whenever it may begin), with the idea of capturing the die rolls as the GM watched others roll their characters. The result is rather funny to watch, mainly because it has the feel of watching something very dirty! I also worked on a new character sheet design (I will post soon), and also worked on some stuff for DP9. Bought a nice teapot today, and some other things to tweak the appartment.
Also, we seemed to have skipped summer but second summer is here, with the high high high temps. I've been wanting to move my server box onto new and less-heat-prone hardware since July, but until I re-get access to the backup box on my MX record I can't, as I'll lose some mail. Seeing the temp in the box, though, aiya.
Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the Kwoon... all else is doing fine, but now I've crunched some ligaments inside my right heel. Dr Wong says I need to take it easy and no practice... which really means no practice with feet, of course (upper body workout time!). Still, le sigh. Evan will fill my shoes during conditioning this week, and I'll find something to do for level 2s so that I can still manage that part w/o killing my feet. On a cool note, Wendy C seems to have survived her first week of leading class, and re-joining Sifu's class is great.
Bernadette grabbed herself a D70 this past weekend, which is pretty darn nice. Ok, understatement. I have a good old Pentax K-1000 SLR, but digital backs are still $10k easily right now, and the quality isn't quite as good. Not that I wouldn't get a D70 per se, of course. Wendy C ran out and bought a Sony 4.1 in "retaliation". I'm still thinking that next trip I take I'll be borrowing Vicki's Ixus 330, which is basically the same camera I used on my trip to China and produced quite admirable results.
Today's practice turned out to be a good one. My legs remain borked, with an odd tightness and pain just above the knee -- but I talked to Sifu pre-practice (went to buy some new monk socks) and he re-instructed me on the pressure points to hit to help loosen them up and to help them heal. I will have to work those over the next week(s) to see if I can get them to stabilize.
However, for today I was actually able to restrain myself and tried to workout in a way not to kill them more. Which meant I forwent the stairs and instead did a double loopback on the run (to make it longer). After working with #6 with W^2 (or should that be U Quad?) I only did #1 once and spent most of the time working on my weapon sets, which, to be frank, I hadn't done recently. Staff, Spear, Broadsword, Double Daggers, Shaolin Staff, Cane. Straight Sword I had done thursday, so I didn't re-do that today. It felt good, very good to go over those again, and I was pleased that, while a bit rusty, they all felt good and nothing forgotten. I left the kwoon feeling accomplished.
Going back in time, Thursday evening I worked Staff Sparring with Phil. I'd never practiced with Phil, and it's been a while since I did the set, let alone with another person. We had some false starts and then false moments, but in the end it seemed to go pretty good.
Also, this past week(s), Lori has returned! She had dissapeared for a while to do some classes, but she's back, and even joining in the conditioning again (along with her teaching technique). Very cool to have her back around!
Today in the kwoon, we had 3 generations of Ox: Myself (Water Ox), then Thomas (Wood Ox), then one of the kids (Fire Ox).
Nah, doesn't make me feel old. Not. In. The. Least.
Really.
QotD: "When your tough military guy texture looks exactly like a naked man smeared with guacamole, it's time to think hard about where you might have gone wrong."
It's interesting. Over time, doing heavy training, one gets to reccoginze and become quite aware of different states in their body, specifically, differentiating between kinds of pain (strain vs sore vs injury) as well as different kinds of energy. Sometimes one just has no energy, sometimes the energy is there, but the muscles just refuse to not be tired. That kind of awareness is cool.
What's not cool is that everything felt like it was going to fall off last night. Iron Palm felt great, but in class, my legs tired out quickly, my shoulders began to tense up, it was a real struggle overall. I had energy -- I didn't feel overly winded. Just my limbs were brutal. And today, OY, I am the walking pain, with legs going badaPAIN! badaPAIN! over and over again.
I hate weeks like this, especially the fact I can't pinpoint the cause. Sure, I worked out hard last week, but after some days off it shouldn't be this bad. Ah well, I'll work through it on thursday... leading the class and working through it.
But this I find funny. Geek!
Saturday was, as indicated, mostly good. Workout began with another private look-over by Sifu, who watched me perform #1 quite poorly (cv dead legs) but didn't riducule me too much for being winded, and just had a few little tucks and suggestions. We also got into talking about power generation and began talking about 'generating power from the ligaments'. I querried him on this, as it seemed a little strange (it had been brought up at the party a few weeks ago) and it turns out there is only one word in Chinese for tendon and ligament. So when he says ligament, he actually means tendon (since ligaments really don't move on their own). More discussion ensued, and then I went to working on what he had taught me. Skipped the full-mile run and just did the stairs, which was killer enough. Worked on #1, #9, Double Daggers and Cane. Of course, by the time I started to get my energy level up, it was time to head to lunch.
At lunch, we had a new inductee it seems. Evan says, "I'm not sure you've met R**lf before, he works with us." Who in turn looks at me and says, "You look very familliar." The name and its pronounciation clicks. "Not that Rolf?" I ask, "The climbing Rolf? From Ottawa? And MediaAge?" Sure enough, it was that Rolf, who has been hiding out at MS for a couple of years. I knew he'd moved to Cali, but never really knew where and had lost touch with him. Turns out he worked about 500m from where I do.
Of course, this does nothing to disprove the "Oh, you're a Canadian, you must know ______" stereotype.
Rest of day was good, even though an item didn't show up in my inventory as it should have, so I couldn't complete a quest and will have to re-do the Stockades instance dungeon. Not too much of a biggee.
Sunday was a different story.
Gaming that night was to be a resumption of my campaign. We'd left the game at a semi-cliffhanger, in the middle of a large battle the previous session, some month+ ago, and it was high time to pick it up again. By now, those who have read this blog before are seeing the warning lights. For whatever reason, combat in this campaign brings whatever happens to a terminal bout of cold molasses. Maybe it's the high-levelness, maybe it's more simply the unfamiliarity with high-level abilities, maybe it's their size, maybe it's this group in this situation. Looking up things, arguing things, fretting (even by my the most trustworthy of my players! gah!) or challenging things... it just goes to poo.
Minutae ends up overwealming the flavour.
Instead of an intense battle of characters it instead felt like an intense battle of effort. This group's combats have often felt flat, but this brings new meaning to the words "pool of mercury flat". (Actually, I just made that up) If this campaign survives into the next module, I'm going to have to make some changes (and some changes are inherrent) to the scale and types of encounters/combat.
Granted, this is an odd module flow-wise (now I see why many groups just play the 4th module of the series), and I guess I wasn't explicit enough in detailing the types of chars appropriate. It's also setting up a nasty task for myself, GMing a high level game right off, with players who take time to get into things in many ways, and with the players not fully versed in their character's abilities. I keep hoping once this turns more narrow in focus things will rectify themselves into a more workable feel, but...
Wow, what a week of training. I pushed hard while leading conditioning, worked hard and finished off #1 (a brutal set), worked on double daggers (now that shoulders are fine), started learning the cane set (will be joining Sifu's class) AND did some bag work when I got home both days. My. Quads. Are. Dead. I feel good about the work I've done, but I flopped asleep before I meant to last night, and my legs threaten to not work right as I walk/bike.
Can't wait to workout more on saturday. A day of rest today, some massage, maybe some jow, and hopefully I'll be able to polish everything up this weekend on the sets.
What is additionally not so fun is that I have been practicing ground flowers a lot this week, both in #1 and in double daggers, which has the unfortunate side effect of griding my hip bones into the ground, not so bad but which in turn grids the skin into the ground. I have two prominant scuff abbraisions that hurt like the dickens, one on each side. Not very condusive to further ground flowers. I'm thinking of trying taping them up to see if that helps...
Oh, I am just full of links, aren't I?
NPR report on a trip accross China along Route 312. As I noticed on my trip to China, and noted in the subsequent articles, China, as always, is changing. Going 5000km+ is not a bad way to explore some of that change, as well as the disparities. A good 7 part series, worth the listen.
QotD: "That's less surprising. I have had falafel served by certain street vendors that could easily survive a nuclear attack. If war ever breaks out, duck behind a falafel." -- SF Chronicle
Wasn't planning on leading group class this week (I have to remember not to call it conditioning, to, uh, un-condition people who have pre-conceived notions about what it shoud be) but it fell to me to lead on tuesday. Had a very good class and received some positive feedback on the quality of the classes. Also did dinner both nights with Tiff, Evan and the visiting (traitorous) Jim. My knee is in a world of hurt right now, though, I think the calf tightning caused me to change my stride/stance, which caused the whole knee area to go kerblonkers. Dr Fuji worked on it this morning, though, so hopefully I can practice Koy Moon a heck of a lot tommorow.
Gaming tonight, gaming Sunday. Some rollerblading probably on Saturday. Movie with work in about half an hour, followed by shopping and Iron Palm.
Somewhere in there I really do need sometime to a) catch up on my reading b) catch up on my game rules design c) start studying for the Arch Registration Exam d) probably lots of other things too.
Saturday was a bit of an odd day. I managed to unlock my calf a bit by lying it forcably on the upward-facing ball prong of one of those massage tools, but nonetheless I decided to not run and just work on Koy Moon and drill it as much as I could. Sifu showed up, and instead I got a somewhat-lengthy private session on little tweaks and theory. So, I didn't get to work on it much, and now I have even much more to work on... but it is all very good stuff. Soon thereafter we had our instructor meeting, with more theory and practice and working out some teaching techniques.
What got very unusual was Sifu invited all the senior students in Hung Gar, Shaolin and Tai Chi to his place on saturday afternoon, for a large ask-the-Sifu sort of session, where we ate, traded stories a bit but mainly talked about theory, energy and linking. Almost too much theory to absorb. As the afternoon turned into evening it was getting more and more into the internal realm.
It was nifty, unusual, and kinda cool (for lack of a better word). So much information, so much to work on... the path leading forever towards the horizon indeed.
Despite the hiking last weekend, the return to KF was amazingly without soreness. Evan had to work on tuesday so I lead conditioning and Level 1, but on thursday Evan led and I got to do many sweeps in the Level 2 training. Surprisingly I'm about one-half of the way through Koy Moon already, though I'm still working hard to get some of the movements down, especially the reverse tornado kick and the reverse tripple kick. This set will be a good endurance builder, that's for sure -- it may not be the longest, but its one of the most relentless so far. Speaking of which, now that I'm sorta back into the game, I'm hoping to get back to my endurance/speed&power weekend routine. That and making sure I practice all my sets. And start learning how to do rolls again so I can get the double dagger down finally.
Otherwise, this week ended with far to much money going out towards INS crud (remind me why I'm wanting to do this??) and work that was steady and not terribly exciting. The early part of the week, however, was much better being the tail-end of Su's visit. We tried to dine at Dishdash on sunday but it was closed, so we went to another Mediterranean place across the street that was pretty good. Monday night saw us at Elba's (though the owner wasn't there, boo!) and tuesday was the traditional Midori Sushi Boat night. Her visit was all to shortly shortly over as I drove her to the airport on wednesday o-dark-early morning...
Well, now that I have completed this very bizzare string of out-of-chronological-order bits of additions to the blog, maybe I'll get myself back in some semblance of order. It was that kind of heady visit/week coupled with the "balance" of vanilla work.
Seems I'm slacking off a bit from my blogging duties. Just been busy. Flight back was uneventful. Busy at work catching up on stuff. Returned to class on thursday with Justin teaching, so that was really good. Learned some new techniques, learned more of #1. Friday, well, it had sorta been 2 weeks off (I practiced one day at home, and some demonstration kicks for a pair of kids at the cottage) so soreness was mine to be had! Muahahaha! Er, ow. Not as bad as it could be though, mainly in the shoulders/arms. The run/stairs was good, didn't work on my sets as much as I would've liked to as there was the instructor meeting/training, where we talked a bit, did some teaching style critiques, and did some training and drills.
What was unusual, and funny, was a rather odd outburst by Jimmy. I'd just finished working on some drill with M, and as I walk over to get a drink he suddenly exclaims "Man Oliver, you are ripped!" -- I'll gladly take any compliments, but it wasn't something I was expecting, it was very amusing.
I realize that I, despite my ATC talk the other day, have neglected to point out some great ATC exchanges/humour: here and here. There are, of course, some repeats between the two (and skip past the first part on the second link, as you've seen it at the bottom of the first link), but spleen-splitting funny.
Gaming this weekend will be of the not-me-as-GM variety, then it's two weeks off as various players are on vacation. Including me as I take off to Yosemite next weekend. Looking forward to it, we're staying at Tuolumne Meadows this year. And, as luck would have it, while my stargazing at the cabin was ruined by the full moon, Yosemite = 2 weeks from cabin = 2 weeks into the lunar cycle from full = new moon = no light. MmmmMMmmmm, soooo looking forward to it. Even niftier is that Su, whom I did attempted the stargazing with at the cabin, took me up on my "you should come down to camp in Yosemite!" invitation and will indeed be joining the gang (30 of us :P) so we'll get our good stargazing in after all. Oh, and we'll do a drive through the valley so she gets a glimse of hard-core climbing.
And just so you know, my machine runs WoW juuuuuuuuuuuuust fine. w00t!
It's kind of funny. On the nights I feel as though I didn't do enough, I end up quite sore... on the nights I think I'll end up sore, due to work or not stretching out afterwords, I end up not sore. Hmmm. Tuesday's class had me not leading and the class didn't feel all that strenuous (though probably working areas I haven't worked in a while) and good for working on some problem areas. But when I got home I decided to wail on the bag for about 20 mins pretty much non-stop. That did it. Back, shoulders, arms, legs = sore. Which means I should do it more often, those muscles obviously need to be worked out more. Now that my shoulder only hurts during excercise, I'll be able to work that in more.
There are interesting differences between gaming groups in their approach to the game/campaign. Some groups I've been with, when something weird happens, take it in context as 'wow, that's powerful magic' or 'yeeps, that was weird, what was that?' Others take it from a slightly different perspective: 'WTF?' 'what spell could possibly have done that?' It seems to be group dynamics at work -- I don't think I know of any group where some of the players did A, while others did B, and I'm pretty sure my take on situations are coloured how the rest of the table speaks about it.
How come is it that some of the most vocal proponents of 'the oil companies are ripping us off' are the same most vocal proponents of 'free market or death!' ? Also, even if ANWR was opened to so-called exploration 3 years ago, a) nothing would be coming out of the ground yet so no price break b) the amount that would come out when it did is so miniscule (2% daily output of the world) as to impact prices by about 1c per gallon, if even. Production != solution, dimwits.
TJ's got their Soba noodles back! Too bad they're Wheat Flour first, then Buckwheat -- dagnabbit. Speaking of asian foods, I should go hunting for a nice shallow-pot tea set again. The kwoon actually sells one, maybe I should see if it suits me...
Another night, another night of leading KF. A while ago there was the "Summer of Jimmy" -- a period of time (maybe 6-8 weeks) where the gaggle of instructors we had (5 or so at the time) were being quite late, except for Jimmy, thus, it was Jimmy leading class most of the time. This year, it has turned into the Lynx Spring, with myself leading class quite often. Not quite as often as Jimmy, but with Jason, Jimmy and Justin (I need to change my name to something that starts with J, obviously) in and out, it has been me leading class more often than not. Jason is now out for a long time, and Jimmy is sort-of back (when his back isn't causing him grief) and Justin shows up occasionally... though sometimes when the others are there it's fallen on me as 'they don't feel like it'. I love teaching, but there's something about being a student that I miss, the ability to just focus on yourself and work your hardest to improve. That, and I very much enjoy different instructors: each instructor tends to work different things and/or in different ways. It keeps the classes interesting, fresh, and also trains one more roundly.
At any rate, I'm certianly not slacking off by teaching, I do feel it from last night. Also, started learning #1, Koy Moon, Opening the Door. A fun set (I've seen it done many a time) if grueling, looking forward to getting into it.
On the way home from class, on the BBC news (playing on NPR) they're interviewing Philip Glass on a new work of his, to be played for the Olympics. The title: Orion. Of course, that caught my attention (as attributed here), especially his reasoning for the name. For this work, he collaborated with musicians from all over the world (including one piece they sampled, a Chinese pipa with an Australian didgeridoo -- a rather interesting combination that worked out very nicely) and as he travelled to these different countries he realized that you can see and identify Orion from everywhere. Quite nice.
My obsession with Flight Sim continues, with yet more terrain, night effects, config utilities and planes downloaded. Yikes. Not sure if I'll have time tonight, though, as Vicki and I may finally try attending one of the French Language Meetups
. We first thought of checking it out back in, oh, november or something like that last year. Good we're about to get to it. :P
This is an interesting read on the world's most marketed cat, who never sold out because he was never unsold to begin with.
Vacation fast coming up; BTW, to all I know in the Toronto area, if you haven't guessed I'll be there the week of the 1st (though busy on the 1st-5th). Ballot will go into the mail tommorow.
Time to run.
So the good news is that last night I had plenty o' energy and ran hard and sprinted fast and kicked sharply and felt great. Jimmy even taught.
The bad news is that, while I did some pushups and stuff, my shoulder remains @#%@#!. I saw Fuji this morning and in an amazingly odd short session (did he double book the time slot??) he proded and pushed and reset and finally managed to pop the 'shoulder head' (or something similar) back into place. He seemed very pleased at that, and actually suggested I start ramping up in intensity beginning on tuesday, so that when I see him in two weeks I'm going full bore. Oh, and ice lots.
If this was the magic bullet that'll finally get it to heal up, I'll be quite happy.
 Enlarge |  Enlarge |
Warning: Jubilent Vanity (*) ahead.
Workout today began as a not terribly spectacular affair. I did warmup, some kicks, some pretty decent double-kicks. Wendy1 arrived (as opposed to the other Wendy, Wendy2) and we went for a run, a run that my inner shins didn't like too much. Didn't push to hard, went to the stairs, ran some stairs and ramps. Ran back, not totally used to the sudden return of the heat, feeling a bit winded. Which was alright, as I wanted to practice my sets lightly as to not jack up my shoulder more... and we all know how well my attemps at lightly usually turn out. Did all the sets, including Tun Da once with a bunch of the 'kids' class who were there (Jason told 'em to line up and to do it with us, esp. since they'll apparently be lining up with us in the adult class in a few months). So, it was good. Jason later calls "10 minutes and I'm out of here" around noon. I whip out my double daggers to do the set (very lightly!) to remind myself of it.
As I'm practicing a bit, Jason talks to one of the Internal students (who knows Xing Yi and took the push hands class with us) if he wants to try some breaks -- I'm guessing there was a yes, as Jason returns from the warehouse with a few bricks he'd bought. They set up, and the guy tries a few smacks, no go. Jason provides some suggestions, no go. A few more tips, still no. Sounded good, but no break.
Jason then asks if I want to give it a try (I'd asked him some questions earlier about his bricks (*)), and I ask "uh, sure, not warmed up for it or anything." "Best time to do it," Jason replies, "That way if you don't make it, you have an excuse." Good point.
I do about a half-dozen arms swings, and step in behind the brick. Place my hand on it, sink the stance a bit, sink my energy to my tan tien. Raise the hand to head level, and bring it down in a loose slap.
Tink.
Woah.
"Alright," chuckles Jason, "Now try one that hasn't already been weakened by someone before you." He sets up another brick. I step, raise hand.
Tink.
Right through, like it wasn't even there. I'm happy. My first two breaks.
* - OK, some depreciation here. We'd discovered earlier that the structural capacity of the bricks could vary quite a bit between different lots. I'd asked Jason what kind of bricks he'd broken recently, and he mentioned they were the easy ones. I've got some at home that I've tried to break on two earlier occasions without success -- definitively a different lot that seem to have less aggregate and thus is probably stronger in tension (or something similar). I am, of course, now quite interested in going back and trying those bricks again, but didn't get a chance today as I spent the rest of the day at lunch, washing cars, dinner, then hanging out with the gang.
So far this has been, on all acounts, a pretty normal week.
Tuesday's class was a bit unusual in that I taught the first 2/3, and Jimmy actually taught again, teaching the last bit. Given his recovering injury, and my leg-intense workouts, he had the class practice Sam Sing and do about five thousand pushups and some punches for good measure. I did some of the pushups and they didn't feel to bad -- though the shoulder wasn't too happy the next day.
Prior to the Jimmy switch, I had way to much energy. All my kicks were especially high, as were the jumps and jump kicks, all snappy and powerful. And as can be expected, I paid the price by being rather sore the next day(s) for having pushed the legs to their limit. Thus it was when I led conditioning on thursday. Luckily for me, I had planned on less kicks that night, and we did various line and stance drills. Nothing like balancing out the hamstrings by making the quads sore too.
Game tonight, practice saturday, game sunday. As I said, pretty normal.
Last night, Jimmy arrives at the kwoon. Knowing my shoulder is injured, and that he and I are the only instructors are there, he asks if I want him to run conditioning. Thing is, he's still not fully recovered from his own (back) injury, so I ask him if he'd be alright with that -- he thinks so. Hmm. Well, I kind of feel like running it, but not sure if I should to be sure I don't push things. He thinks and feels the exact same way.
So, we flipped a coin. :P And I ran Conditioning of the Legs part VI.
Another class, another conditioning of the leg. Thursday was Jump night, wherein we jumped, did double (jumping) toe kicks, lotus kicks, tornado kicks, and just generally ensured we were airborne as much as possible. Fortunately, I got my shoulder worked on on friday -- it still feels like crap, but hopefully it'll pull itself together. I am considering seeing Dr Wong too, though. While I'm not sure this falls under (what I perceive) his speciality (to be) I'm figuring it may not hurt to get it worked on more often and from different angles. Its really starting to bug me.
I may price my system and put it together today! Or, I should say, order the parts. :P I have started to re-arrange a few things in the apartment in preparation. I visited Ikea to extend my Sten (I don't care if they call it Gorm now and have changed the design slightly, its still Sten!) shelves, considered getting some more Sten shelves to form an area for my new bookshelf speakers, and am considering a new table. I love the table I'm on now (6' long by 3' wide) its just that since its a folding table the legs are a bit obtrusive. Getting something similar with better legs would allow better use of the space underneath. They have exactly what I want -- but really I'm also tempted checking out home depot to get a door, since that's basically a) what I would be buying at Ikea as a desk surface (and then attaching the legs) and b) it may be cheaper to buy an actual door.
This weekend, I'm taking care of Vicki's cat. She has a Maine Coon Cat who exploded into growth a few months ago (I saw it in November -- saw it again in January and it had flipped the Kitten/Cat bit entirely). Iffn' and when I get another cat (I have one back home with my parents right now) I was thinking of maybe getting a Russian Blue, but I'm starting to be very enamoured with the MCCs. Kohai is a wonderful cat, very playful, soft, active, stealthy and cuddly, all in one. And hey, any cat with ear tufts can't be that bad, right?
The scene: WLKF. The personages: One with an injured shoulder, one feeling ill. The story: I ran conditioning again.
And ran is the right word. With the shoulder still fending me off with an icepick like I was some unwashed sock monster, it had to be another leg workout. The bad news was that the stairs are permanantly gone from the nearby Caltrain station. The good news is they've been replaced.
A new tunnel going underneath the tracks has, on each side, a ramp and a set of stairs. The stairs aren't nearly as steep as the old stairs (in fact they're a bit disturbing with a very low rise to run) but the ramp is long with a nice switchback and running up it can add a surprising (to many) amount of effort. Plus with the ramp/stair combo (which forms an H pattern if viewed overhead) there was a plethora of routes/ways to run about. Only problem was some people got confused/lost as to which way to run. Next time, I'll have to spend more time explaining the drill beforehand, so we can get back into the single-leg hops, high steps, etc.
QotD: "Share your bandwidth!" (A poster for Linksys wireless routers at Fry's -- given the unintentional sharing by most wireless users, I'm not so sure that's the greatest marketing slogan.)
Plan for today: injure the shoulder less. How: go running at Rancho San Antonio rather than going to practice at the school. (Though I did go there after to help someone out). The result? Well, something I unfortunetaly feared. The mountain whacked my butt (not kicked, just whacked).
There's a particular course I like running along the trails there. When I first went during my, er, climbing days, it was not pretty watching me trying to run it. Fast Forward to 2002, after many Jimmy classes etc, and I could run the whole course, non-stop. Practically killed my boss that way one day too. It was fun. Fast forward again to now, after an ankle injury that kept me from conditioning for four months+, and a bunch of other stuff, and I had to walk some stretches. Of course, doing that leg-intense workout thursday didn't help...
Either way, I ,and especially my legs felt, stupid tired.
I injured my shoulder a few weeks ago. Oddly, it went pwang while doing sweeps, but there were probably other circumstances that lead up to it and it just went pwang during some twisting motion in the sweep. I've been getting some treatment, but I've gone skiing, climbing and done push hands with it, since those three were things I couldn't/didn't want to miss.
Still, I understand in theory (if not in practice) that I need to let it rest a bit to heal. Tuesday I went to class, trying to not work it much, doing conditioning but avoiding any serious arm exercises. As usual, that didn't work very well in practice. So, last night I hmmmed and haaed and tried to think what to do, whether I should skip conditioning and just go in to teach my students later, or practice some kicks/etc at home and go in... eventually settling on going in, going for a run when conditioning starts, then kicking the bag and the like.
19:00 rolls around, I'm finishing up my warmups. The children's class ends. I look around. "Uh, Tom, is Jason here?" "No, he's home sick today." I look some more. No other instructors. Looks like I'm running conditioning. Heh.
In the end, it worked out damn well. I ran a leg-intense workout with running and jumps and kicks and pad work. I also had tonnes of energy and felt great after class.
Ironically, I taught my students and just that little bit of form work left my shoulder sore. Grrrrrr. Sigh.
As part of their exhibitor status, Dave's company got a few passes to the expo, providing me the opportunity to check things out at the GDC last Friday. It'd been two years since I last saw the expo and four years since I first attended. Biggest changes I noticed this year were three. For start, the rise of professional training programs, be they four-year degree programs or one-year-super-intense-training models. Next was the 'come work here' contingent, for Maryland, for Singapore, for Korea... Lastly was the loss of the big black box of doom, aka Microsoft's rather imposing edifice that anchored one corner of the GDC floor in years past. In fact, ATI was the only booth with two stories this year. Having AMD and Intel's pavilions be literally right next to each other was another interesting touch. Otherwise, nothing too knock-your-socks-off-ish. Next year the GDC is being held at the Moscone centre, which either means they are expecting huge growth or... um. Not sure what else it could mean; it'll certainly cost them more for the space.
Saturday offered us a chance to head out for some climbing, my first time out climbing since I climbed with Dave and co when I visited Ottawa over the holidays. We trucked out to the Belmont Planet Granite gym as he'd never been. Overall the walls there are not quite as bulbous as the ones at the Santa Clara gym, but there is some very good geometry and the walls are on the whole much higher.
To list off the restaurants he is now acquainted with: E&O (Fusion, San Jose), Midori (Japanese, Sunnyvale), Dishdash (Mediterranean, Sunnyvale), Elba's (German, Palo Alto), Hobbies (Breakfast, Mountain View) and Le Petit Bistro (French, Mountain View). I think we covered a good number of the bases...
Back to the regular routine for both of us this week. My shoulder is giving me some problems so I took the week off from class last week; it is still not feeling that great, but we will see how well it does this week. I'm also working on getting ready to start the campaign I plan on GMing this weekend.
Unfortunately, a friend and Kung Fu brother is looking like he may be moving out of the area in the very near future. I haven't seen him much lately due to conflicting schedules and the lack of gaming, but with both of those changing soon that should have rectified itself. It does mean that some netmeeting-type setup may have to be worked out to keep him in the campaign...
Hehe. Was thinking about it post-class last night, and realized that pre-trip 2002, I kind of kept a blog before realizing there were blogs.
And this, well... this is just too weird for words except maybe for Weirdest. Thing. Ever.
One interesting thing about SF Bay Weather I have learned over the years: no matter the temperature outside, if you can find sun, you're warm. It can be cool outside, but step into the sun, all's good, or even too good.
Remember how I said it had gotten warmer? Make that it has gotten hothothot -- 28~ or higher today. Add in that sun, while doing sets, and its "I'm on Fire!" time. At least it doesn't get too humid here.
A couple of weeks ago I decided on a new training pattern for the saturday workouts. They are appropriatly and explanetor-ily named the "Endurance" and "Speed & Power". Endurance is simple: do all the known hand sets w/ only a minute rest between them, followed by various weapon sets. Speed & Power focuses on just a couple of sets (or just one of the longer sets, broken into two) and works them over and over with an eye to increasing speed/power without completing all the moves. (Admittedly, a pet peeve of mine; there are some who do the sets blindingly fast but their form and completion is terrible, sometimes mushing through whole sequences where it was tough to figure out what was supposed to be done. I tend to be a bit slower than others as I enjoy focusing on hitting all the moves; the purpose of this day of training is to thus speed me up w/o killing that aspect).
Today was endurance, in the sun (at least I remembered sunscreen). I did the sets in the order I learned them (6, 7, 8, 5, 4, 9) but later i might mutate the order closer to full numerical. Went quite well, did the weapon sets, worked on some more hand sets with others, then practiced double daggers, doing all the groundwork on the mats to save my poor body from the various bruises I now have (the groundflower just grinds my tailbone and hips). A good workout day.
Last night's gaming was also very good, and surprisingly was held in my smallish appartment w/o much cramping (though we were only 5 last night). Tommorow a bunch of us are trucking up to the Asian Art Museum to check out an exhibit, hopefully we'll be awed and soothed by much beautifulness.
As quickly as the 'colder' weather started last fall, the warmer weather has returned with temps in the low 20s for the past few days and even nights (despite clear skies), which has made both the Push Hands class and the Shaolin class rather perspiration-inducing. Speaking of the latter, good practice on saturday and a good class last night, albeit one that was co-opted by Jason about half-way through for his own brand of kicking drills.
Quote of the day: "Since a paper recount is impossible with the majority of these machines, one has to wonder if touch-screen voting might eventually inspire nostalgia for the hanging chads, political wrangling and mass confusion (...) The old system may have been a nasty business, but at least we know what went wrong with it."
People with sensitve info on 'netserver'puters, beware! (quite interesting read)
Had a LEED seminar today at lunch, which was very interesting. Its not something that is done enough, but it may be something that is gaining some momentum... at least I hope so.
Out for now...
Yesterday's practice went off very well. I managed to do all the hand sets I know in the order I learned them, with only a few minutes rest in between each. Taught me I have a way to go to regain my earlier, er, vitality. I also practiced most of the weapon sets, and focused on a few little nit spots here and there. Overall, I'm happy with how it went, no dramatic insights, but solid.
Whoever said that small towns never have excitement was, well, apparently wrong. I do remember Pine Ridge, it was a bit of a place of mystery for those my age for during our younger years, at least until it was turned into a school for a while.
Work continues along on the RPG book I am doing helping with. I will certainly say that after looking and trying to correlate a whack of designs, tweaking here, having that cascade everywhere, making sure that is reflected over there... I'm starting to appreciate good editing and consistant design much much more.
Where has February gone? I know, I know, I tend to say that at the end of every month, but dang.
So, yah. Another week of crazy legs, with tightness and soreness and knots and weakness moving from place to place to place, and continuing to baffle and annoy me. Ah well. Teaching conditioning tomorrow night, and I've got some nifty stuff planned.
cssZenGarden wise, there hasn't been anything uber-exciting recently, though this is kinda cute I guess, and Makali's page pointed out this interesting concept piece.
Also trying to organize a ski/board trip for March when Dave comes to visit, hopefully a) it'll work out and b) the conditions will still be good. I've skiied Quebec, and it's great, but the western hills are a wee bit larger. I also stopped my membership at Planet Granite (it had been on hold), for while I really want to get back into climbing regularly it isn't looking like I'll be going often enough to make a membership worthwhile, with KF et al taking up plenty o' time on their own...
Work continues to be busy busy busy!
And that's the haphazard update.
One of the downsides to being a senior student is I rarely ever get any "well done" or "nice!" comments while doing line drills/etc (anymore). -grump-
Happy to say that yesterday's practise went pretty good. I stayed away from the hand forms, due to the continuing string of weird aches and tightness that is my legs, and instead focused on the weapon sets that I have been neglecting. It certainly showed that I needed to brush up on them, and also allowed me to have a pretty full workout w/o worrying about my legs giving out during a kick. I also practised some rolls and groundwork stuff that will be coming up in the double dagger set to finish off. All in all, a good practise.
Otherwise, as usual, I haven't been getting done as much stuff as I'd like to get done. As a case in point, take a look at my grand 3D project, which has languished for about a year now. Not due to lack of interest, just lack of time -- I'd work on it every 6 months or so, and spend the first 3h re-learning LightWave (since I need to use other 3D packages for the rest of my work). Still, one day I'd like to complete it, and so much more...
And I really should get out for some skiing one of these weekends.
Well, I can't promise to be less caustic than on the 29th. Its not that I didn't have a very good sunday, for I did, and its not that I didn't have a great pair of leading conditioning last week, for I did (running a good techniques conditioning on tuesday, and a never-stop-go-go-go conditioning on thursday). No, those are not the problems. That I missed a brush-up course on Iron Palm during the instructor's meeting I missed on friday (and wouldn't have known about it happening at all had Evan not mentioned it) is disappointing. I think my IP is doing quite well, but a) it never hurts to have it looked over and b) it just reminded me that I have been unable to do IP for a couple of weeks now.
But the worst was saturday morning. We ran, and ran well. Couldn't do the stairs due to construction. Then, the sides of my shins, right by the bone, decide to smegging CATCH FIRE. Such pain I have known almost at no other time. No reason, they just decided to hurt like distilled and concentrated hell, and continue to be as uncooperative as possible. WTF? Not happy.
So, I can't promise any sunshine and roses. Maybe its good that work is so insanely busy right now, what with finishing up a submittal for building permit and bid-set, that I can't post more.
BTW -- I realize what I said last time may be a bit redundant, as one could argue they are already fucking their children, or at least grand-children or grand-grand-children, or other children. But maybe seeing it first hand, starkly in front of them, would make them think differently.
Workout saturday wasn't the best, but I was expecting it since I was sick (actually, given Gan Mao didn't stomp it, I think it was my california allergies). But this brings up the question: was the workout not the best because I was expecting it not to be? Or was the cause/effect the other way (sick = bad)? Hard to know. At any rate, still managed to do the run-and-stairs routine, so that was good.
This seems Stranger Than Fiction (tm).
My professor for my second thesis has done this paper. Dr Loten is very cool, having worked at Tikal during the early days of its discovery, looked at some of the codex in detail, excavated and drawn other sites (including Altun Ha, the subject of my thesis), etc. But -- this paper seems to share a lot of base elements of my thesis. Is he allowed to do that?
It may be a tricky and cunning year, but here's to hoping it will be a good year in the end. Mine is starting not too auspiciously, with what I think now is allergies bogging me down (the Gan Mao can't wipe those out, alas, which means 2 weeks of ugh), which portends a year of not-so-good. Hmm.
Saturday's workout wasn't bad at all, as it turns out. I started with a run, which I wanted to, but a bunch of us also went and did the stairs (there's a Caltrain station nearby and they have a set of those stairs that goes up one side of the tracks, over, then down the other. We run up and down them, sometimes fast, sometimes with knees high, sometimes hopping) for the first time in a while, which proved quite the more exerting than I thought. This may be partially to blame for my not-as-hard-as-I-wanted-to workout for the rest of the morning, but nevertheless I did manage to do all of my hand sets twice and most of my weapon sets once, which is what I wanted. So it's good.
Wow, what a night last night. The usual pattern is this: arrive at class feeling good = lousy class. Arrive at class feeling lousy = good class. Ie, in odd fashion the amount of energy and staying power and competence I have seems inversely proportional to how good I feel when I arrive there. Except for last night. Arriving feeling good, went for a 1 mi run. Then, called upon to teach conditioning, my body rose very admirably and I had pretty good energy the whole way through, and ran a pretty intense class. I was bouncy and feeling good.
Alas, post-teaching (my forms classes) I didn't work out quite as hard as I should have, a disappointment given how much better I did on tuesday. Et bien. I'm just hoping this upswing in energy and feeling is an indicator of better training ahead. 2003 was a letdown on that front (especially after 2002 which rocked pretty much all the way through). Getting 'back into it' in good fashion would probably help my mood in a big way.
Quote: "The hotel didn't have an elevator ... which made it a bit of a pain when we arrived, as we had to carry our luggage up ... in which we had two cast-iron pots."
So, there's all set to be a biiiig announcement of 'the return to spaaaaace!' -- or, more correctly, to the space race -- by this administration. Never mind the fact that the ISS isn't funded worth anything already, and that the country is on a massive deficit budget and that the Apollo missions, as grand and amazing as they were, involved a huge amount of luck. Woah, you say, Mr Lynx, I thought you were a huge fan and supporter of NASA??! And I am. Before the Columbia accident, I would watch the live feeds from the ISS as they were building it. I watch ever launch I can. I have read countless books. I love the space programmes. But coming from an administration where information has just surfaced about pre-pre-emptive strike discussions, I am worried about exactly what will come out of it. Will the ISS be thrown to the space wolves? Will the planetary explorer probes be curtailed? Will engineering research (such as on the ion engine) be kaiboshed, all in a great 'patriotic' push?
All because the Chinese became the third space faring nation (the election year doesn't hurt either). But, given the right Push Hands master, they wouldn't even need a booster. (how's THAT for a segue) I started learning push hands tonight, and like most soft internal styles, the movements are easy, doing them right isn't. Ever try to unlearn using your muscles? I'm sure, like everything, there are people out there who grasp it w/o problem, but while I think I did a job of not overdoing it, I could feel the tension where there should not have been. Sifu says it takes 2 years of 2h practise every day to become a push hands 'master', so I don't feel too bad. I'm really looking forward to learning how to relax and flow more, hopefully it will carry over into my climbing (if I actually start climbing more regularly again, grrr) and into my shaolin sets.
Over the xmas break I read Tad William's latest novel, The War of the Flowers. Tad read us a chapter during a book signing when his previous novel (the end of the Otherland trilogy) came out, and it was very cool and very exciting and sounded very fascinating -- he is an excellent reader. The book was interesting, but unfortunately I (and other friends who have read it) found it was not as gripping as Tad's reading was. I can't quite place my finger on why -- it wasn't a bad book, nor was it devoid of action or twists, and it avoided the pitfall that made the end of Otherland drag a bit. A fun read without the ohmygodIcan'tputthisdown pull.
Or so claims my sports medicine/chiropractor doctor. My quads have been feeling odd for a few months, feeling rather tight but worse (and more odd) is that they feel very tired very quickly, as in when I begin class within a few minutes they feel as though they have been working already for an hour. Turns out they are indeed rather borked, and have a lot of scar tissue that needs to be worked off. Painfully. With the thumbs of doom. Did I mention painfully?
So the message to me is 'ice those suckers up!' after class, and also being sure that after teaching class I should be sure to warm up again and stretch out a bit before beginning to kick the ceiling. But then the ice. Freezing body parts. It may have to be my friend, but I don't think he told me I have to find it enjoyable, which is good. Since I know I won't. :P
Otherwise, it'll feel a bit strange not to do class for the next couple of weeks as I take off on vacation, though it will give me time to practice Shaolin #9 (Lien Wan (Continuation)), which we finished last night. Very esoteric set, lots of things I have not encountered before, lots of interesting transitions and moves. Plus a very different experience to be in the 'advanced' class taught by Sifu, a very different method of teaching (kind of much more traditional, thinking about it). I'll need the time to begin work through the movements and appropriate them for myself, begin to feel what's behind them.
Its a good thing my parents have a very large downstairs I can practice in.
Quote from Jimmy last night (our resident drill Sergeant-like instructor): "Harder everyone, we're playing the touching game!"
This post bears sad news. Sun Jian Yun, daughter of Sun Style Tai Chi founder Sun Lu Tang, has passed away. The Traditional Chinese Martial Arts community has lost a great teacher, leader and spirit. Sun Jian Yun continued to teach Xing Yi, Bagua and Sun Style Tai Chi late into her life, and continued to supervise teachings until the very end. She had lived through many tumultuous times in China, including the cultural revolution, but remained forever accessible as an instructor, and worked tirelessly to pass on her father's knowledge in the three prime styles of internal martial arts. Sadly, she leaves us just a few short years after seeing the completion of a new gravesite and monument for her father. The mantle is now passed onto her disciples, who in turn can pass on this wonderful art, supported by the many books that she published with her own and her father's writings.
Grandmaster Sun, 1913-2003
I am going to have to marinate my legs in tiger linament before going to class tonight.
I hurt.
For a couple of months, I have been an instructor at the Kung Fu school, teaching some of the beginning students their basics and the first form (Lian Bu Chuan). There is an interesting thing about teaching, that I hadn't really paid attention to before. But first, let me expound with a small aside...
I loved fall back home. It was an excellent season (actually, I loved all the seasons except for spring): the temperature would begin to drop, slowly at first then picking up speed, but always at a pretty constant rate, the air would become crisp and the leaves turned colour and the hills would be awash in a vibrant display. It was wonderful. But not so here in the SF Bay Area. There's really only two seasons here: summer and spring (curses! spring!). And gradient transitions? Forget about it! Last week, we had 35~ weather. This week, its 4~ in the morning. Sure, it doesn't get below zero very often, but when the rains come, that matters little. (BTW, that's 308K and 277K)
So, back to Shaolin. Teaching is 'interesting' as we do our conditioning (one hour of warm up, running, drills, stance training, strength training, exercises, and a bit of stretching), and one becomes very warm and sweaty (and steaming when the weather turns cool enough). Now, as a simple student, you then receive your individual instruction, where you continue to work hard learning and practising your sets. As an instructor, however, you, well, instruct. Which, while you do demonstrate moves and do some work nevertheless means a lot of standing around as you watch your students and correct them. In the cold air. Muscles tighten up, body cools down. THEN you have your lesson, for which you must re-gain your flexibility and try to re-warm your muscles, pretty much as you're doing your set and trying to kick high.
As I said before, now I hurt. At the time, the muscles seem to perform well enough, but the next day, despite some pretty heavy-duty stretching post-workout, my muscles seriously feel like they've been ravaged. Tomorrow, I get to do it all over again. It may be time to start wearing some thermals I fear, fear only because I'm not sure how that will affect me during class (I feel hot enough already!).
Kung Fu: Skill attained through hard work. And the trials and tribulations of your body.