090807 Day 1

Heh heh. Looking at my notes I must have been pretty wiped out after travelling for nearly 20 hrs. I think I wrote this on the train from the Airport to Tokyo.

Sing - Tokyo managed to get some sleep on the plane. Impossible on Tiger.

Tokyo - Hot and humid.

Got through customs, heaps of people. (Well durr, what was I expecting)

JR (Japan Rail) Train - went the long way around the Yamanote line (a line that loops around Tokyo).

Disembark train. The First Challenge: Make it to the Ryokan before 1am (they have a curfew).

Noodle Place. (WTF?)

A very telling list of my first impressions that stayed with me for those first 24 hours. Looking back I do have some additional memories that I'll share.

Starting out on Tiger made much of the rest of the trip really hard. Those uncomfortable 4 hours seemed to really take quite a bit of energy out of everyone. Arriving in the discount terminal, we had to make our way to customs, this involved a half hour walk dragging our suitcase through 34ºC heat and humidity at 3am. Yippie.

After getting through customs, we had about 3 hours to kill, so we took the opportunity to grab something to eat. But the only thing that was open was a place that had the greasiest stir-fry rice and chicken that I have had the misfortune to purchase, but I was hungry and had some anyway. Bleah.

We then made our way to the bigger terminal (Terminal 1 I think) to check into our Singapore Airlines flight. That terminal is amazing. The rows of checking terminals for each airline meant that we were only in line for a couple of minutes and then check in was done and dusted!! Compared to Darwin it felt a little too fast.

So after waiting another 50 minutes we finally boarded our second flight. Let me tell you the international economy of Singapore is one of the nicest I've flown in. Lots of room, your own entertainment screen, your seat can incline really far back and your headrest can be angled around so you can rest your head against it. Bliss...

Arrival. It's amazing the culture shock right off the bat when you land in Narita. The walk to Customs is along this huge walkway with numerous sections of magic carpet, yet it still took about 15-20 mins of walking. It goes on and on...

Took another 30 minutes in line to get through customs, but went through okay. We then had to take the express train to Tokyo to get to our accommodation. Now we have been traveling for nearly 20 hours at this point, the express train took 50 mins (the information from the operator's webpage said 20 minutes ¬.¬).

Then we had to navigate our way to accommodation, the Kimi Ryokan. By now it is 8:00pm, it's as hot and sweaty as a Devils' testicle, and we were all pretty beat by this stage that I was just longing for a shower and then sleep.

But thanks to the guidance of Billy we made it and then we all just crashed to see what the next day would bring.

Argh!!

Oh Happy Day!!

When I first got my practice jien, the first wet season it went through, a part of the guard warped and separated from the blade. This is because it was made in a very cold, low humidity and it is now in the exact opposite. So Sifu arranged to get it sent back to his friend who made it to get another one fixed.

Fast forward to a year -year and a half later, I finally got it back.

The reason was that get guy fixing it had one of those unexpected massive heart attacks and passed away. So Sifu had to wait until he went over to Alaska to visit before he could really get my sword and the rest of his back and send them back home.

But I have my sword back, just needed to glue the new guard plate back on and let it sit in clamps for a couple of days.

I had been using one of Sifu's swords in the mean time, although I gave that back yesterday. And I have to say that my forms feel really different now. I suppose it's just a matter of getting used to the feel of the sword (the weight, grip etc) again.

So yeah, very happy at the moment to have my sword back. I'll post a pic when I get home ^.^

Currently Reading: The Dwarves by Marcus Heitz

Nearly Didn't Happen

I've been training with Sifu now for around two years.

In that time I have acquired some skills with the Jien (Chinese Straight Sword), including two forms (Liang yi Jien and San Tsai Jien), techniques and some drills (good forearm strength!).

Last night Sifu said as that I was (virtually) the only student who consistently serious about the jien, said that he would start teaching me Kun Wu Jien. He showed me the first 6 or so movements and I have to say I love the feeling and expression of the form already. It's a fairly long form at around 45 movements long. So while it will take a while to learn (and then years to master), it shouldn't take as long as Lian Yi Jien. As that was the first form I learnt and had to learn a great many steps and sword techniques just to be able to perform it.

I've seen a youtube video of Adam Hsu performing Kun Wu Jian and that is just incredible to watch.

Looking forward to the next couple months of sword classes :)

Currently Reading: The Dwarves by Marcus Heitz

Push - Push back

I've just been going through some of my posts (fixing the many, many spelling errors :sweatdrop:) and I came across this post last year.

I use to follow the 100 pushups before I realised how much it was overtraining my arms and stopped. But on a whim I decided to do a quick exhaustion test (ie keep doing push ups until you can't to anymore).

My score? 30. The last one (see link), I managed to complete 28. So in the year and a half I have been seriously focused on kung fu has helped me keep up the strength in my arms and shoulders. Cool.

We don't train push ups because they set muscle strength in a limited range of motion. For practicioners of kung fu, we need to have a greater range of motion. If we did train in push-ups it would be counterproductive.

All Good Things Must End?

It's a bit sad, but my second job is coming to an end today. I'm picking up my last paycheck tonight.

The store just isn't making enough warrant keeping me on for the couple of shifts that I do. While it's a bit unfortunate, I'm not that upset because the job isn't worth that much to me anymore.

When the previous manager was running it, I was making around $300-350 a week extra in my pocket (mind you I did put in a quite a few hours to get paid so well). But with the new manager I was lucky to get $150 a week (the hours got cut right down).

So while the job was very good for me in the sense that it paid for my trips to Japan and New Zealand, I'm not sad to be leaving it. I was starting to looking for another job closer to town anyway.

Now I just need a replacement so that I can keep saving for Europe. I'm thinking of finding some work in a restaurant bar or something like in hospitality the hourly rates are quite good ^.^

Here's to hoping...

- Grover

Nuts

Yeah so it's been a little while again. Time seems to be very slippery of late.

Didn't get the job, but came second in the interviews which isn't too bad I suppose. Makes a pleasant change from the couple of shocking interview performances I've had previously.

But I am currently applying for a Project Officer job with Weed Management that sounds right up my alley. All dealing with stuff that I've had experience in before. I'm just spending a bit of time getting the application as perfect as I can to ensure that I'll get an intervew.

Here's to hoping...

- Grover

GAH!! The wait = Torture

I'm waiting to hear about a job I had an interview for last Thursday. Really hope I get it. Would love to be a permanent AO4.

The chairperson said they hoped to have an decision made by Friday, so hopefully I'll hear tomorrow whether I'll need to go back to Police or not.

Hope not, would be nice to go over to Europe on a 4's salary rather than a 3's.

- Grover.

Movin' Right Along...

Heh, my brother-in-law finally gave me one of his old bikes to cycle to work.

I only live 2kms away from where I work, so it's ideal for me to be able to ride back and forth around town.

In fact I can ride quicker than what it takes me to drive to the carpark then walk to work.

So, I'm not using fuel during the week, I'm also saving at least $12 a week on parking fees (I know that it's not very expensive but that's still $600 a year).

However the greatest thing I should save money on is how much I spend on lunchs and drinks and snacks throughout the day. By eating lunch at home instead of buying lunch so that should save nearly $100 or so a week. Quite shocking when you think about it.

Another benefit is that I can more easily fit in some Baji practice into my day. Whereas before I was struggling to fit it into my day.


I'm able to get it done in around 20-25 minutes, then have a shower,lunch, then head back to work.

It makes for a busy day, but at one filled with lots of positives!! ^.^

- Grover.

Done and done

Finally seen to have mobile gmail working from my phone. Happy days!

Enables me to check my emails without having to turn on a computer.

Oh well enough laying around. I've got to finish a job application.

- Grover.

Japan 2007.

Okay, now that I've got NZ out of the way, I think it's time for me to put in all I can remember about the Japan trip. I do have a diary that I kept for the first two weeks, though the last two will have to be dredged up from my memory...

 

- Grover.

Planning for UK/Europe 2010.

Well I've hardly finished putting up all the entries from New Zealand 2008 and I'm already planning a trip to UK/Europe in 2010.

 

It appears I've been well and truly bitten by the travel bug.

 

I've been careful when taken recreation leave for the last couple of years so that I could build up the maxium credit (I'm actually two days in excess of the maximum). Plus I have Long Service due around the middle March nex year.

 

I have been thinking of what to do with my long service ever since I had accrued 7 years worth pf service in 2007. Nothing definate, but just keeping it in the back of my mind that I'll have three months with which to do something.

 

Then at the start of the year, Mum mentioned that my great Aunt in England is turning 80 and that she and Dad (along with half a dozen other family members), are planning to travel over for it and visit the UK for a month in 2010 and would I be interested in coming along.

 

I said of course immediately yes. Then that got me thinking. If I stay longer and use recreation leave until my long service accural date then I would be able to take my long service as well.

 

So the plan at the moment is as follows.

 

18 Jan 10 - Fly to England

19/01-18/02/10 - Looking at Wales, Ireland, Lakes district, London.

19/02/10 - Wave goodbye to family as they going back home.

20-28/02/10 - Scotland

March - 1st wk of April France and Spain.

2nd - 3 wk of April - France again, Hungary, Chech Rp

4th wk of April - France again.

May - Denmark/Sweden/Norway

June - Netherlands/Belgium/Tour de Mont Blanc

July - Italy-Austria

August - France

September - France/England fly home.

 

It's a bit of a strange itinerary I know, but that's because I might be meeting up with a friend and do Italy-France together.

 

Although it's all subject to change ^.^

 

- Grover

Weathers, they are a changing.

So it's two days away from the official start of the Dry season (what we call our winter), and already there has been a big change towards cooler temperatures.

 

No joke, it's as if someone has flicked a switch to make it cooler, the change has been that sudden.

 

Everyone is now talking about how low the humidity is, and how cool it was last night. It got down to 21°C, with humidity hanging around 50%. This is down from 26-27, and humidity can remain over 70%

 

Although to give this a perspective, we spend most of the year in hot to very hot conditions. With humidity from high to very high. So any time the weather conditions change like this it's very noticeable.

 

So you can understand how we get so excited for the Dry season. It the best time of year and everyone longs for the dry season to arrive. I'll start to see people wearing old, worn jumpers about town soon. You can tell that they have been in storage since last year. They are really out of date fashion too, because people keep them for years because they only get used a couple of months every year. Then get stored again.

 

It's just amusing to see everyone so excited and talking about it. You can tell the seasons in Darwin by the conversations that go around the office.

 

- Grover

 

 

NZ Holiday 2008

Finally found my diary that I kept from when I went to NZ last year.

I'll start posting the day by day entries, then refile them on the day.

Start [Here]

- Grover

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.

Damn Flu.

Sigh.

It's 10 to 1 am, Tuesday morning. And I have just been woken up by because the painkiller that I took before I went to bed have worn off, so woke myself up with a very painful coughing fit. Of all the symptoms you can get with a cold, the one I hate the most is a sore throat.

So now I am just waiting for more painkillers to take effect so I can go back to sleep. Going to doctor's in the morning, the last thing I want is for this to move down to my chest.

But at least the temperature tonight is much cooler than last night, we must of had rain nearby. It actually feels cool (if you can count a minimum of 24 degrees C as being cool).

- Grover.

--
"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." - Douglas Adams

Merry Old England.

In Janurary 2010 one of my great Aunt's is turning 80. It looks like that quite a few of my relations are going to be heading over there to celebrate. My Grandad, an Aunt and Uncle, a Cousin, maybe another Cousin with her children, my Mum. I've been thinking of going as well and making it a UK/Europe trip as well.

Points for:

- Thankyou in person for all the presents that said Aunt sent that I never got around to thank her for.
- There is a LOT of family over there that I have never met.
- Easy to see Europe if I'm already going to England.

Points against:

- Expensive, especially if the dollar remains low against the pound.
- Need to save a lot of money to make trip worth while. Compounded by above.
- Need lots of leave.

Havn't made up my mind but if I do it would mean saving from now until Nov/Dec 2009. No holidays until then either.

One thing that would work out quite well is that I've got Long Service with the NT Government due in March 2010, so I could possibly use that along with my Recreation Leave to make a good go of it.

I might even get a friend who runs a cafe in town to teach me how to be a barrista so I could maybe work every now and then to top up spending money while I'm over there.

I was looking at my leave entitlements and if I get approval to carry everything over to 2010 (instead of having to use 30 rec days by end of 2009), I could go from 01 Jan to somewhere around the middle of August 2010. That's 7.5 months at full pay. Could probably stretch that out to 9 or so months if I took the Long Service leave at half pay. Of course that would be conditional with approval from workplace. But it's a very tempting idea no?
- Grover

Praying Mantis Roaring Tiger

Since Sifu declared his intention to make me a disciple when his teacher comes out to Australia next year, Sifu has started teaching me a style of Mantis. I think a little bit of it is because Sifu Wong is very experienced with a number of Mantis styles and Sifu Wong is almost certianly going to be teaching some mantis stuff during his visit.

I think the style of Mantis that I am learning is Chi Hsing Tang Lang or 7-star Preying Mantis. I only know a couple of movments as Sifu only started teaching me on Tuesday. Sifu said that he chose to teach me this style because he thinks it suits my tempermanent and body style (which is interesting because I am carrying at least 15kg of extra weight from when I was a fit young whipper snapper of 19). I also think he preferres to have people doing different things at any one time.

For example, Tuedays class had people doing Chen style Taiji Quan, Ba Ji and Preying Mantis. Some of us were just starting, some of us have many years of experience with other disciplines. It does seem to give the impression that each persons journey is just that; A individual journey helped by Sifu. About the only drawback it that you get a limited time with Sifu to help you as he goes around the class.

When I compare it to my Tae Kwon Do experience, it seems to make more sense. Looking back on TKD, every student was on the same journey to the same destination. People may have started at different times but on the whole it was the same journey for everybody.

When Sifu was sounding me out about becomming a disciple, he first asked me where I thought I might like to head towards in respect to my martial arts. I think he was considering me but wasn't sure until I responded that I might like to go towards something a little more harder and taking training more seriously (I was/am studying Yang style tai chi at that point). So I think that Sifu has thought about that and looked about what he knows and wants to pass on and said: "Here, this style would be a good place for you to start with." and started teaching me this particular style.

That won't be all that he will teach me. He's not going to say: "No, I will only teach you this style and nothing else". He has said that if a style isn't working for you he will teach me something else that does. He did say that he will probably teach us as much as he can in the one style first before moving on to another.

I'm very fortunate to be studying under someone who has so many styles squirreled under their belt. Then you add weapons to that and I only count myself lucky to have Sifu here in the same Town as I am.

When you consider Sifu is from Alaska it is pretty extraordinary. I'll have to get him to tell me the story of how he and his family came to live in Darwin. I'm sure it's a good one.

- Grover.

Movember: Week 1

Hi All.

This year I am participating in Movember. In which you grow a mo for the month and get sponsorship and then have a party at the end. It's in support of men's cancer and depression, so it's all for a good cause.

If anyone wants to donate towards it, you can go here.

I don't think I'll keep it after the month is up though. It makes me look a lot older than what I am...

Behold the beast that is me:

- Grover

It's a new car!!

After a long period of procrastination (over a year in fact), I finally got my self a new car.

It's a 2007 VW Golf GT.

Metalic Blue
1.4 TSI Engine
6 speed sequential gear box.
5 door

It's very sweet. Great ride. Handles extremely well. It was a demonstration model in the car yard. It's only done 7000 kms, and for that they knocked $8500 off the price.

I've had it for 2 days and I've already done nearly 200kms in the thing.

I like it because it sort of goes under the radar a bit. It's not like the Impreza or a Mini which stand out like dogs balls. But when you look closely the styling makes it look a lot bigger than what it actually is (especially it's very nice rear).

Plus having that TSI engine can make it a lot of fun if you want it to. If not, just put it in drive and treat it like a nomal auto.

I'm very impressed so far with it.

Will post some pics when I'm more organised (ha! I hear you say).

Some good news

Yeah yeah, little happening in the way of updates. As usual.

Shall be remied by this post!

I am back at work and this week has been so hetic with preparing the budget for the year. But that's what this big boy position is all about I suppose.

I kept a journal of my time and virtually made an entry for each day while I was in NZ. I'll gradually post them here, don't hold your breath because 20 odd posts ain't going to happen quickly...

I am still waiting for the position I'm currently sitting in to be advertised so I can apply for it which if I get would be very nice indeed. I like earning a bit more money. Starting to recover from holiday, just need to pay off credit card now...

I sorta slipped off doing the 100 push ups thing, but I did a exhaustion test and managed to put out 30 after 5 weeks of inactivity so things are not so bad. I'll start week three of program next week. There is a site that allows people who are following the program to list their achievements and track how well they are going. It's at:

http://www.pushupslogger.com/

My profile is: ninjagrover. Although nothing will show up until I put an entry of an actual workout, not the exhaustion test. Strange.

Also, changed a shift so my Tuesdays are now free to attend the sword class with my instructor.

Another bit of news regarding my training.

Last night after training, my instructor asked me where I thought I was going with training and where I would like to go. I answered that I thought I would like to study a hard style (mantis).

Kevin thought that was fine, then he asked me with his master coming out to Australia, what I thought about perhaps becomming a deciple to his master's school next. All formal and infront of his master...

ZOMFGBBQ!!!!

Totally stoaked as Kevin wouldn't ask anybody to become one of his diciple. He has a couple of criteria that he uses and apparently he thinks well enough of me to become a desciple.

I'll have to ask what's involved and what would be expected of me as Kevin is quite traditional in this aspect of his martial arts, and this wouldn't be a undertaking to be taken lightly.

Wow.