Holy Smoke Batman... I trained with the Master!

After attending Matt Tucker's class in East Grinstead I came away very excited at the prospect of learning Wing Chun again. So you can imagine my excitement upon receiving an invite to Master James' Instructors class yesterday evening!! Really I didn't know quite what to expect other than the fact that I would be training with a bunch of instructors all having trained with Master James for a number of years... An ass kicking was inevitable.

I arrived at the class in good time.. nervous as hell but hey that was to be expected. After meeting with Paul and Matt, we were formally introduced to Master James who invited us to observer his instructors practicing for some demonstrations. Here we witnessed some great sticking hands, lok sau and dan chi sau. And then even more impressive use of the pole and knives.

After relaxing quite successfully, thanks mostly to resigning to the fact we wouldn't be training, Master James then asked everyone on to the mats to practice their Chi Sau. This is where I realised that my Wing Chun was not gonna stand up to much pressure!!! I trained with 5 different instructors, and the beatings varied from mild to major! I managed a few hits here and there but overall I was being taken apart (thank goodness Paul was aswell! It wasn't just me being rubbish!). All because of the slight differences in training and application!

Sadly for me the last instructor I trained with was a bit lively. Managed to get a good elbow in with a chop to the neck follow up... Great you say, except Master James Sinclair saw and complimented me... Even better I hear you.. well it seems that Billy McInstrutor wasn't too happy about the new boy getting one in on him and proceeded to rip me apart with blows to the head and body coming thick and fast! Ah well! You live and learn! And if you take a hard hit, acknowledge it - don't try and continue fighting!

Then it was time for some Q&A with Master James. He such a polite and humble man. Always taking time to explain something and encouraging you to question him. He has a great knowledge of the art and his is school is without doubt the way forward.

I think I shall have a de'belting ceremony, where I will burn all my belts awarded so far as an offering to the great Kung Fu god. This will show that I recognise my belt means nothing and that I am glad to relinquish it... Or maybe I will just put them in my drawer as a reminder that my old style didn't even come close to this one.

Thank you Master James for a fantastic class. I will be attending many more!

theflynnmeister

(oh and by the way, I have stopped smoking again!)

A New Beginning....

Well some of you may know that I am a secret ninja. Having studied the art of Wing Chun Kung Fu for around 5 years or so. I have reached a certain level of ability having passed my Brown level grading and teaching classes here and there... Well the time has come for me to regress the ability levels as far as belts are concerned and become a billy no belt once again. I learnt Kung Fu under the Kamon Style (http://www.kamonwingchun.com) and was very happy. I achieved excellent results in all my grading - its a shame I won't have the opportunity to go on to get my black sash. But ho hum. I can take being a beginner again as ultimately it will improve my Kung Fu no end.

About a year ago my instructor left the country to further his training. So far he has never returned and I am not learning anything. I need to move to new pastures new or my skills will deteriorate further!

So on Saturday I went to a class run by one of Master James Sinclair instructors (http://www.ukwingchun.com). I was impressed, although slightly disheartend at first with the comments 'I have seen worse' with regards to my Lok Sau and Chi Sau!! You would not believe the subtle differences that can exist within the same style of martial art. Still ultimately the instructor seemed impressed and was pleased with my ability even though there was 'lots to work with'. Their style is very aggressive and a lot 'harder' in touch than I am used to. One student commented that he could hardly feel me when training... that's a good thing as far as I am concerned.

There was a mixed ability of students in his class. I managed to spar with some of the higher ranking ones and felt confident that I held my own! When working some distance judgment I even managed to poke one of them in the eye as my guard hand sailed past his... Brilliant.

In short I have reignited my excitement for Kung Fu. It was beginning to disappear and the enthusiasm wasn't there anymore. But now I can't wait. Master Sinclair is the daddy having trained most of the instructors in the UK including Master Kevin Chan and Sifu Shawn Rawcliffe.

So bring on the new era of Kung Fu. I can't wait. Maybe one day I will get to China to train!

An interesting morning

Well I smelt burning(well smouldering paper sort of smell) when I got in at 7..... but thought nothing of it. At about 09:15 one of my colleagues was underneath the building putting a fire out!! I don't think it was very serious as we are now back in the building but there is one fire engine still here! My biggest concern was that I had left my Oakleys in the office :O

The Crocodile Hunter

It was a sad sad day when Steve Irwin died. You can see him stroking the stingray now - 'You're all right mate...' , 'But you're not' thought the stingray... One of televisions greatest and most enthusiastic of characters.

Here's some great reminders of the legend..

International Blog Day

So apparently today is international blog day. Quite appropriate then for me to update this thing as I haven't done for ages.... Apparently I have to link to 5 different websites as part of this. So in no particular order are my 5 most visited sites(currently)

1) http://www.fruitforums.com

There's lots going on in the land of fruit machine emulation at the moment. Most notably the current WIP of an S4 emulator(think crazy fruits!). I am not a great fan of S4 machines. Most of them played terribly and that's probably because they all had emptiers for them. Such lazy coding and testing. However it will bring a new lease of life to the *scene* and maybe get Wizard to release his version of MFME with S4 that he has had for years! (he doesn't like other people releasing emus before him. Geeks eh!)

2) http://www.se-nse.com

The Number 1 Sony Ericsson forum. Most of you will know of my love for Sony Ericsson phones and this is the place to go for news, help and stuff!

3) http://www.digg.com

A site for news/info where the users get to choose the top stories. Quite a geeky site but good for news and entertainment in all sectors.

4) http://www.bbc.co.uk

Self explanatory - I read the news bits!

5) http://www.stuffmagazine.co.uk

Gadgets and stuff!

So there we go. I have fulfilled the international blog day criteria.

So now I will get back to fixing other peoples messy NetBackup environments. Sort out failed channels on the 9980 disk arrays and generally be the storage guru that I will be renowned for.

theflynnmeister