Cool stuff I learned this week

[bushido_man96]

Sorry to hear about your job, aurik! Glad your prospects sound great, though.

Patrick

Same, sorry to here about that. But its great that you've got interviews lined up, and hopefully you won't be out of the game for too long.

Congrats to your son on his tournament experience. They are a great time. My experiences with our tournaments have been opposite than yours here. The TKD tournaments our school has bee attending don't allow the kids to do head kicks anymore, not until they are 14 or something I think. Personally, I don't like it. It narrows the scoring area too much, and doesn't allow for the skill and strategy that head kicking allows. But at the same time, control needs to of paramount importance. I remember a time when both could be done.

[aurik]

So there is a lot of good news in my world right now. First of all, I start a new job on Monday. I was able to negotiate a 20% raise plus signing bonus over my last job, plus they are still paying me to another 7 weeks. I took the time off to, among other things, train a little weapons. I’m now getting the hang oh Sushi no Kon. I’d like to get good enough with that to compete in our next tourney this November.

Also, my son just passed his test for junior brown belt (sankyu-sho). This means he gets to move up to the next class early, and he can test for his full yellow belt (kukyu) at the first testing after his 7th birthday. Our sensei also says that kids who have earned their junior brown belts tend to advance through the program slightly faster than other kids their age.

The best part was that my wife was able to be at the testing. She cheered louder than any of the parents there, and you could see my son beaming with its pride at his accomplishment.

[sensei8]

So there is a lot of good news in my world right now. First of all, I start a new job on Monday. I was able to negotiate a 20% raise plus signing bonus over my last job, plus they are still paying me to another 7 weeks. I took the time off to, among other things, train a little weapons. I’m now getting the hang oh Sushi no Kon. I’d like to get good enough with that to compete in our next tourney this November.

Also, my son just passed his test for junior brown belt (sankyu-sho). This means he gets to move up to the next class early, and he can test for his full yellow belt (kukyu) at the first testing after his 7th birthday. Our sensei also says that kids who have earned their junior brown belts tend to advance through the program slightly faster than other kids their age.

The best part was that my wife was able to be at the testing. She cheered louder than any of the parents there, and you could see my son beaming with its pride at his accomplishment.

Congrats on the new job!!

Great news all in all about the MA journey of both you and your son!! As well as your wife being present at the testing!!

You've much to be proud of!!

[bushido_man96]

I agree! It sounds like it was a good week!

[Wayofaswede]

Congrats on the new job!

Happy to hear the clouds are parting for the sun to shine upon your path again...

[Patrick]

Great news! Congrats on the new job, aurik. And to your son, as well. Thanks for the update!

Patrick

[aurik]

So it's been awhile since I have been in here. The new job is doing pretty well, -- I'm in that massive learning curve where you feel like you're struggiling every day to figure out what's going on. My first 3 weeks on the job had me in San Jose for onboarding and getting up to speed on the technologies and the product.

Well, I also took this as an opportunity to meet some other Uechi-Ryu people in the bay area. They were in the Okikukai branch, so some of their techniques they did a little differently, but 95% of their stuff was the same. Also, I had the opportunity to train pretty much 1:1 with both a 5th degree and an 8th degree. They gave me some very subtle pointers on my katas that I feel really increased my understanding of things. For one thing, they really hammered the "eyes, feet, hands" thing into my brain, so I'm starting to do it more instinctively.

One other change is that since my son turned 7 last month, he's now eligible to attend the adult/children classes at our rec center (run through the same school). I figured we'd try it for a month or two to see if I could get what I need out of it.

We've been training together there for one month now, and there are some good things and bad things about it. On the plus side, I am guaranteed my two nights training per week -- otherwise Mrs. Aurik complains that she's always having to watch our son while I'm at Karate, and she doesn't feel like she gets her exercise in (it turns out there's an aquarobics class at the community center at the same time).

The downsides are that there are exactly two adult students in the class -- me, and one of the other students' moms (incidentially, the kiddo is really good friends with my son). Of the kids that are there, only about 4 of them are anywhere near my height (I'm 6'2"), so it's really hard for me to do 2-person drills with them, and kote kitae with them provides no benefit to me.

Now Wednesday nights are different, because one of the other instructors comes to help out with the class, and I get to work with him a fair bit, especially on the 2-man drills and kote kitae. He has very crisp technique, and I learn quite a bit just observing him on the other side of the drills.

The other issue I'm having at the rec center is that the room we're in has this slick industrial carpeting, so anytime I need to get into a low stance (shiko-dachi) for one of our katas, I can't go nearly as low as I probably should for fear that my feet will slide right out from underneath me. There have been several occasions during our katas and bunkai that I've found my feet trying to slide out from underneath me. (oops).

So I'm going to spend the next month or two deciding whether or not I can adjust to these issues. If not, then I'll be talking with the wife and mini-me to see what the best options moving forward for us are.

And... last but not least, this coming weekend is a testing day, and our instructor told us that both my son and I will be testing. My son will be testing for his full yellow belt (9th kyu), and I'll be testing for my 2nd stripe on my yellow belt (7th kyu). This will be my son's first formal testing, but he's seen me go through 2 testing sessions so he should have an idea what to expect. I hope to have some good news to post about that this weekend

[Patrick]

Glad that the job is going well, aurik, and thanks for the update. I'm surprised there isn't more in Denver for you, but that's great that you have that time with the other instructor.

Patrick

[aurik]

Glad that the job is going well, aurik, and thanks for the update. I'm surprised there isn't more in Denver for you, but that's great that you have that time with the other instructor.

Patrick

Oh, we're very happy with the instructor and the school in general (keep in mind this is a satellite school from the main school). The two options I see are to stay with the rec center or go back to the main dojo. There *are* other options in the area (including other rec center options affiliated with our CI), but they are less optimal than the 2 I'm looking at.

[Patrick]

Gotcha. Cool. That's great then.