ovine king

my name relates to my birthday. let's see you try to figure THAT one out

after all this time, the one that still wears me down is the basic warm up sets of punches. Thankfully, how many we do depends on how many people are present but still, it's always at least 500+ of just punches before going onto more advanced punch drills. not sure if anyone else does it this way but we only tend to do heavy sparring when we're already totally knackered.

if you're after wing chun training, I'd say you're better off going to hong kong, especially if you're from one of yip man's students' lines. yip man's old school is currently being used by a lot of his old students as a base and they all seem to teach from there as well. believe it or not, this place is even noted in the time out hong kong city guide so have a look the nest time you're in Waterstones. The major Hung kuen school is alos only ten minutes from Yip Man's wing chun school class and it might be worth going for a visit as well. back to wing chun, here are another two major schools in china, namely yuen kay shan and pan nam but i don't think they have many schools outside of their own areas. as for my own little dream trip.... right now, that one involves a mountain or twenty...... it's not somewhere i want to go but more like something I want to do.

if you're ever at a drinks machine with a cup, do a mix of equal parts fanta, coke and 7-up/sprite. what you get is a quite pleasant drink that unfortunately looks like the remains of a toilet that hasn't been flushed properly.

just curious but are you learning under mestre bimba's system of teaching?

that site and the videos on it has just confirmed all of my worst fears regarding the national chinese sport wushu.

well, that's kind of what makes people sceptical. it doesn't help when not everyone will agree on what it is. the pedantic chinese people will go on about how what most people call chi is nothing but a twisted misunderstanding of chinese ideas that were used to describe something that they couldn't/didn't understand fully 200-300 years ago. AKA body mechanics. the modern western guy who worships all things chinese up to the point of cultivating a strange moustache, dodgy skin tone and wears a chinese jacket everywhere he goes will tell you about the magical mystery tour he went on where he saw first hand displays of the wounderful chi. AKA bunk. then there are the ones who can perform some of the 'tricks' (no offence meant) but have no real explaination of how/why it works, only that it does. AKA the ones who want to know what it is. okok, i know this is a horrible generalisation but it's just to give an idea of what i mean.....

.....i swear by issey miyaki pour homme. i've had one girl say that it makes her want to um, eat me up cos of the smell...... i'm not a big fan of anti-perspirants. something about using a substance that effectively blocks up your pores seems a bit well, dodgy.

but that's kinda only half of the answer. if you say it exists, then what do you say it is?

ninja and samuari aren't always as different as you think.