Slinking in to the New Year...

Ah yeah, happy new year and all that jazz...

Slunk into new year without too much fuss or fanfare.

Looked after my Sister and Brother-In-Law's place while they went and visited Mum and Dad.

Started up at training at Mantis, Tai Chi and Jian again.

Heh, actually last Thursday after training, Sifu, took me aside after the lesson just to let me know about about some of the disciple stuff and what he will be teaching as a disciple. And Sifu told me he is unsure what to teach me first.

To explain, Sifu is quite traditional in the sense that although Sifu knows a LOT of styles, he will only teach some of it to disciples. This, from what I can gather is what he knows of Ba ji, Pi qua and Bha gua. These are some very nasty styles. Don't get me wrong, if you came to him and showed you were really sincere about wanting to train, he would probably teach you. But this would also probably be the basics. The higher level things he would leave until you became a desciple.

Same with Tai chi. He has got quite a few forms, but will only teach the second one once you have been training with him for many, many years. He says it would be a waste of time. You would need those years getting the energy right.

Anyway anyway anyway.

Apparently he is unsure what to teach me is that with my body type (stocky), I should be a ba ji or a ba gua (short powerful strikes), but I am also good at some of the flowing movements of pi qua.

We'll sort it in the end I suppose.

Oh yes, also found out what the style of Mantis Sifu is teaching me. It is called: Cha Chui [cha chew-wei]. Smashing Fist. It's the signature move of the form.

It's about 5-6 months until Sifu Wong comes out over from Alaska. Really looking forward to that.

Sifu is also going to be doing another couple of seminars next month. One on San T'sai Jien, or Three Powers Sword. This time teaching the other side of the form. One on a mantis form, and one on Qi gung. I'll probably go to the first two.

- Grover.