Drunken Monkey

but um, isn't it 'traditional' to be free from ANY sort of adornment in the karate dojo, a tradition that over-rides any other that the normal everyday outside world has, regardless of the culture/country?

...y'know, this sounds a lot like wing chun in the way taht it is taught/trained.....

Odd, i could have sworn i responded to your query there DM. But, it looks like i never did. Ah well don't worry about it... i'm used to being ignored. in any case, from what i've read around these parts, it seems to me that the teaching methods is a lot like wing chun and kempo where speed/force/pressure is built up over time and the original 'moves' are broken down and put back together again as required. sound about right?

tsoi li ho fut hung is it any coincidence that these are major martial arts family names? no, i really am asking. cos well, of the five names, three are from the famous five big families and the other is another major player in the canton region, and fut refers to buddhist (i.e shaolin) hands i'm assuming. anyway. i have to say i'm a bit suspicious of the 4000 year old thing. i mean for a start, it is widely taken (by the chinese) that there is 4000 years of written history in the chinese culture. that would equate the art to be as old as chinese writing and that is just a little bit 'fishy' to me. of course, unless the argument is that it too, like most chinese martial arts, has its origins in the (shaolin) temples and the original long fist....

just a few things i don't like the sound of... My problem is they're trying to pass off fun and good vibes as self-defense while your statement is true, i don't see how you can possible know that they don't actually teach good self defence. by the same token and turning things a little bit, why can't learning self-defence be fun? also, if it ain't fun, you ain't gonna get a four year old to take part. they should learn such thing as the "ball kick" and the "throat punch" i understand you are giving general terms but their presentation is wrong. we don't to kick the groin or punch the throat. we learn to punch and we learn to kick. where we punch and kick depends on what is available and what we want to achieve. you do not need to kick the groin or punch the throat to defend yourselves and dependence on such 'moves' could land you in even more trouble. When I see them teaching to three year olds and talking about how kids are superstars, I see fun and entertainment, not a way to keep your kid from being stolen by a pedophile and used as a funtoy you do not need to take a kid to a martial arts school to teach them to be sensible and to stay away from strangers. if the aforementioned pervert really does want to kidnap the kid, there isn't a lot a 5/6 year old can do to a fully grown man. as i said before, you have to make it fun or else the kids don't want to learn. also, how else do you propose you teach kids? line them up and make them go full contact against each other? bleeding knuckles and bruised faces? was me having a laugh by degrading an organization I've never had experience with enough to pass judgement i do not know you. does that give me the right to make unsubstantiated statements/judgements about you? I was kind of disturbed by the self-defense thing, though. If they are teaching stuff that's not valuable in a "don't be killed" kind of way, then that's something to be worried about and that is exactly the point. you don't know the school beyond the advert in the directory. i could claim some kind of crazy un-provable yet un-deniable connection to yip man's wing chun school and teach kung fu for reasonable prices, advertise locally using a nice innocent looking ad with very little real 'flash' advertising. by not conforming to what you have jokingly pointed out, does that mean i am not a mcdojo?

(it should be 'honda+bmw+porsche) i mean, the bmw range is more or less the same all over the world. same with porsche and honda, except honda have used the same platform to make the odd car or two specifically/mainly for the u.s. (i.e honda legend) AND with honda, even when they make a car for the u.s market, they don't just go and make a bigger car, they go the whole shebang and develope a new AWD system at the same time. honda seem to be following the bmw route and making a single range of cars for the whole world, as is toyota. the other car makers, make cars that do not sell anywhere other than in the u.s. Might be foreign in origin, but increasingly engineered and made in the USA well, the thing is, i'm not saying that everything they make is poo. just that there is more of the ones that are poo being sold under lots of different names. i mean, i think ideally, there should be no poo and just maybe 5 or 6 models or cars from each manufacturer that are good. y'know, i'd rather have a more limited choice of good cars than to have a bigger range of cars that might not all be as good.

i think whether or not you wake up in a daze depends on WHAT green stuff you sniff.....

tsoi li ho fut hung is it any coincidence that these are major martial arts family names? also, should point out that death was the focus of a lot of martial arts. somehow, that meaning got lost as the modern 'peace' philosophy, as well as fascination with shaolin/buddhist ideals became popular. i mean, with sets called 'sup juet sau' (ten fatal hands) and 'duet min jeun' (life ending palm), you could hardly say the old styles were about being 'nice' to your opponent....

well.... those surveys aren't always a true representation of what's going on. a lot of things depend on the age of the car. take the new mini. in it's first outing, they regularly set themselves on fire. this was quickly fixed following a mass recall. BUT all minis following that (very big) probelm have been pretty much trouble free. in any case, did you notice that in the top 5 VDS rankings, four of them are foreign in origin.... and three of them (honda, porsche+bmw), don't make cars for specific markets.

"ji" is a nexus point or point of conjunction hey hey, i've asked about this. as i said before, "tai" is a superlative in the same vein as 'very. as i thought "chi" is also a superlative in the same vein as 'most'. the nexus point of conjunction is an implied meaning that comes from the combined use of tai+chi. what i mean is, by itself "chi/ji" doesn't mean anything like that. the meaning only is there when talking about "tai-chi". so, it isn't a case of tai=grand chi=nexus. it is "tai-chi"=grand nexus. make sense?

basic gist=car makers in the u.s get away with selling crap. the same car makers sell good versions of the crap cars in the rest of the world. who is to blame? the car makers? or the buyers? the thing with the EVO. let's use martial arts to illustrate. style A teaches a complete syllabus all over the world. however, in one country, the most important aspect of the syllabus is omitted completely but still call's it self the complete system A. that's basically what is happening.

basic gist=car makers in the u.s get away with selling crap. the same car makers sell good versions of the crap cars in the rest of the world. who is to blame? the car makers? or the buyers? the thing with the EVO. let's use martial arts to illustrate. style A teaches a complete syllabus all over the world. however, in one country, the most important aspect of the syllabus is omitted completely but still call's it self the complete system A. that's basically what is happening.

i really don't know that many people who own or buy ford that just illustrates my point. outside of the u.s.a, ford are actually quite good and if given the choice of buying a good small/medium family car, you'd be stupid not to consider a ford. the best things they have/had i.e mondeo st200/st220, puma, focus RS (in fact, any focus with PROPER suspension set-up), you guys don't get even a sniff at. the sad thing is, other car makers also have to alter their cars for your market, making them INFERIOR versions of what the rest of the world gets. i mean, mitusbishi lancer EVO VIII that doesn't have the AYC??? how can it call itself the EVO when it doesn't have the one thing that makes it drive like it's supposed to?

......i'm not bitter. i just don't understand. you are a nation of people who expect the best service and the best products. you also are a (generally) very proud/patriotic nation. this has lead to the majority of car buyers choosing u.s cars over a foreign car. the car manufacturers know this and hence sell you guys big steaming piles of poo and you don't complain. instead, you eagerly await the next, newer bigger pile of steaming poo. what makes it even more galling is that the newer bigger steaming pile of poo, is just the old steaming pile of poo, with new clothes on... AND we share quite a few similar cars EXCEPT the ones we get here are better for actual driving. witness OUR ford focus ST170 vs YOUR focus svt. where-as we have nice taut, sharp, responsive steering+suspension+ride, you have spongy, treacle laced equivalents. so even if they share a name, they are often, not even very similar beyond the shape.... back to my opening of this post, you guys are a nation people who expect the best service and the best products, yet you are willing to accept trash in the name of patriotism. you shouldn't accept it. you should complain. the old business adage is true; customer is king. you have power yet you choose to not exercise it. i'm not bitter. just a little sad...

what can i say? i'm a fountain of useless trivia. unfortunately, what i got was whatever was available to the uk from hk. in the early years it wasn't much; just the odd t.v series and the once a year tvb celebrations and occasional specials that we could rent. i mean, it's only been quite recently that we got some sort of semblance of a t.v channel on satellite in uk. we did get all of the gossip magazines though but it doesn't help that i can't read chinese that well....

...well, you must remember that we sell GOOD cars in the uk so they're not easy to tip over. but yes. too many times i have been stuck behind a land rover being driven by a woman with a single child in a child seat in the back, trying to park.....

i haven't seen many schools around me that use a belt system. i know of one wing chun place that uses yellow-red-black to denote what form you have learnt but it's not like they have a strict syllabus or big formal grading session to follow. the belt is more or less a reminder to the sifu of what you know or don't know. i do know that the 'original' schools in hk don't use belts and neither do (most of) their 'offspring' in the uk.

...the thing with the drums? i'm not sure where it comes from but an old hk 'pop' star (with very dodgy moustache) of the 80s did a song using that tune. for some reason, the tune is strongly associated with wong fei hung; probably cos the song is a very patriotic song about being a good strong (han/chinese) man... blah blah blah hero... blah blah.... bleed for the people blah blah... i.e everything wong fei hung was supposed to have been. i'm not really sure where the song comes from beyond the pop song i mentioned. but y'know, if it (the drum beats) is of wong fei hung's period then it's more or uncopyright-able, much like bethoven and shakespeare (or something similar)... anyway. a simple answer to why it can be used in so many films is that no one owns it. and we're not all money grabbing greedy sons of beeeeeetches.

the speed at which you do the movements depend on the purpose of the section of the kata/form (or individual movement) or even the form itself. i.e: there's no point doing a section fast if it's meant to train positions.

hey, have a look in your local asda to see if they have digital printing service for pics (on any recording media). the one near isle of dogs (i know, NOWHERE near you) can do prints for 10p each if you have 50 images. it works out cheaper than running a printer just for the usual 6x4 photos. i mean, it would mean you don't have to think too much about the photo aspect.

also, a weight on your hand isn't really natural resistence for punching/extending motions... but this has been mentioned before in another forum. have a look around. lots of discussions on the use of weights during training.

but they did! he was the secret ninja. that's how good he was....

...probably... but then i'm only saying what i've noticed. the places around me here teach another style as the main focus i.e lee gar or shaolin, who also have a san shou element. in this format, the san shou really is like a side activity but then thare are some who only tru up for the san shou (and hence, do not take part in the 'main' art). in the u.k, san shou isn't that big. could be cos of the big time kick-boxing/muay thai gyms in central london. what's it like over in your part of the woods?

...you wake up late on a lazy sunday afternoon. the sun is drawing a plane of light across your bedroom wall and you lay there watching the specks of glittering dust, dance in the gentle breeze that whistles along with the trees' whispers outside. time passes and you have had a shower whistling that song that was just playing on the radio. you've brushed your teeth thinking of that girl you haven't seen for two months. you get downstairs feeling a little bit hungry and so you venture to the fridge where upon opening, you spy a nice fresh packet of bacon. turning around you see the familiar baked beans wrapping on the loaf of bread and the thought of a lovely bacon and egg sandwich comes into your mind. you turn on the cooker and place the brand new frying pan on top of the heat with a little oil. you tear open the packet of bacon, savouring the fresh cold smell of raw bacon before gently lifting and placing strip after strip of bacon onto the now hot frying pan. the sizzle splatters little drops of oil on your hand and you singe a few hairs on your fingers but the smell more than makes up for it. as the bacon nears being cooked, you prepare a sheet of kitchen towel to dry off the bacon. you reach into the fridge again for an egg which you crack open and drop onto the bacon fat left in the pan. whisle the egg is cooking, you take out two slices of bread and apply too much butter for your own good but who cares. it's sunday. you place the strips of bacon on top on the bread, add the bacon before placing the final piece of bread on top. finding a nice clean plate you take your lovingly prepared sandwich into the living room. you take a sip from your tea as you switch on the telly. after sitting down you pick up the sandwich and take a nice big bite, relishing the feel of the yolk spilling into your mouth, the rush of saltiness from the bacon as well as the drizzle of melted butter. after taking the bite you chew, nice big actions, taking care to enjoy every taste and texture in your mouth. when it is done, you swallow, and prepare yourself for another bite. you pick up the sandwich and look for a suitable secondary atack point. that's when you see the little trace of green and blue specs in the fold of the crust.....

hehe, my cousin's place in hk has a smaller than usual bathroom cos his grandad gave the builders measurements in inches but they built it in cm....