When I was down with gastric flu last week and expelling gunk liberally from both ends at once, she stayed with me and took good care of me. When my brother caught the same bug, she ended up taking care of him too, waking up every 2-4 hours throughout the night for some five days on end to feed us our meds. Hell, even my Chinese physician said to me she's a helluva catch, and that was before I'd told him about her recent Florence Nightingale adventures.
Now, if I could only clone her, I could probably start a roaring trade in just-about-perfect girlfriends. Anyone out there know any enterprising mad scientists?
A Japanese man walks into a Chinese restaurant and takes a seat. The waiter bustles over and wipes down the table with enthusiasm. The latter asks, "客官，您要吃些什么？" (Translation: "What would you like to have, sir?")
The Japanese customer, having limited Mandarin at his command, struggles to make himself understood. "Ichigo daifuku," he tells the perplexed waiter. "Ichigo daifuku."
After some head-scratching, understanding dawns on the waiter's face, and he departs to prepare the order. He does not return for a goodly length of time, however, and the customer begins to frown in impatience.
Finally, just as the Japanese man is about to leave in frustration, the waiter returns with a dog, a doctor, and a bone.
***
Bad cross-linguistic puns aside, the girlfriend recently made another batch of ichigo daifuku. In her first attempt, she replaced the traditional anko with Nutella, and the confection turned out absolutely delicious. This round, she experimented with chocolate fudge, which I think is even better. Too bad the strawberries this time aren't as good as those the previous.
In case anyone's interested, here's how ichigo daifuku is made, courtesy of Cooking With Dog:
Be warned that the moulding of the mochi takes quite a bit of work though.
Though I was pretty sure my injuries from my recent sparring matches were not serious, I saw my Chinese physician anyway. The masterful Dr Chong took but a glance and confirmed that I had only minor external injuries. Pulled and bruised muscles, mostly. He pinched three acupoints on my shoulder and side - rather painfully, I might add - and my back immediately felt 70% better. The bruise on my ribs he didn't even bother treating beyond slapping a medicated plaster on it. So, looks like I'll be back in training in no time at all.
***** has read my blog post and viewed the videos, and he was "less than impressed" with our performance. Gotta love British understatement, haha! He's set us a long list of questions to answer to help us analyse how we managed to muck up so bad. Time to do some homework.
Greg and I did some full contact sparring with Macan Pasrah Silat and Ashihara Karate guys (and gals!) last Thursday. It was a very good experience in many ways. Here's a clip of highlights put up by the organiser, Zul.
Greg fought only this one time, because the fight ended with his Karate opponent nailing him in the nuts with a power kick. :p It was clearly an accident, and the other guy was very, very apologetic afterwards.
As you can see, Greg walked in floaty and got cut down with leg kicks very quickly. The second one got him in the back of the knee and swept him down cleanly. Once he got up though, he was much more clear-headed albeit still floaty. He went in to connect with the opponent through his centreline and thereby keep him off-balance and ineffective. Interestingly, he found it very hard to do so with a waijia guy, as he wouldn't move in one piece in response to a peng force. (I was later to find out the same thing in my matches.) Still, by moving in continuously, he could maintain control of his opponent's structure to an extent and keep him from doing anything effectual (though we must be aware it could have been just unfamiliarity with the tactic on the opponent's part).
The accident happened around the time the video was cut off. Greg was once again connected to the Karate man and moving in, but he couldn't attack either because he had not yet practised any body level attack he could launch from that position and with that connection! Oops. It was against the rules to hit anywhere other than the protected torso, and he was left wondering what to do next. As his connecting arm relaxed a bit, the opponent threw a front kick which unfortunately went straight into the groin. And that was that.
When the Karate guy came over to apologise later on, Greg told him what we both felt: it was his own fault for not guarding his groin better. A proper santi stance protects the groin area very well, but it's obvious in the video that he wasn't in such a stance when connecting. No surprise since we learnt connection in a high Wu Taiji bow stance, which was the very stance he used automatically. I'll betcha ***** wouldn't get kicked in the groin so easily though. Gotta ask him what had gone wrong here.
My first fight was almost as awful as my sparring matches with Alex the other week. The very first thing I did on the mat was walk right into a powerful roundhouse kick aimed at my lowest floating ribs. I was literally doubled over from the impact, and it took me a moment to figure out why I was suddenly so much shorter than my opponent, haha! It took me almost half a minute to regain my breath; in a real fight, that's game over, man. The rest of the fight was mostly me getting pummelled by the other guy as well. No other heavy hit landed, but I got swept off my feet many times.
At 0:57 and 1:41, I was taken down with a sweep and a trip respectively. The sweep was pretty clean, though my opponent's lack of follow-through meant I only went to my knees. Still, against a groundfighter, that would be a terrible position to be in. The trip was much better. Though I rolled with him and ended up on top with a fist aimed at his face, I would again have been in trouble if he had been a groundfighter.
At 1:13, my opponent delivered an illegal punch to my mouth. He was sorry, but to me, that was entirely my mistake for not guarding well. Sure, the rules say you can't clock someone in the jaw, but if you often fight with that in mind, you'll develop a bad habit of leaving your face open - one I might already have.
At 1:20, I tried to relax my arms, which were much too stiff from fingers to shoulders. That didn't do me much good, to be honest, and I was equally rigid through the rest of the bout.
At 1:34, I backed away from a side kick, a big defensive no-no that I unfortunately kept committing throughout my fights that night. Always move around or into a kick, or a chain kicker would have a field day chasing you down.
The one time I tried to throw a kick at my opponent's chest (2:40), he caught my foot and neatly sent me tumbling. Very bad kick, meet very practised leg-catcher.
In this fight, I was floaty (because of nerves and the body padding), blind (because my myopia's a thousand degrees and because I was mentally unfocussed), and slow (because I haven't been training to fight for several years now and just because I suck), and I generally acted more like a punching bag than a sparring partner. My stepping was spectacularly atrocious. My feet stepped high rather than skimmed the floor, and my centre kept rising and falling as I moved. At one point, I even managed to somehow fall onto the other guy's leg, bruising up my back so badly that I've been out of action for a few days. Wonderful.
Fight two was with a girl. That's always a tricky situation because if you lose to a girl you look pathetic, but if you beat her up you look just as bad. I decided to play defence and only hit occasionally. When I did attack, I did not press the attack too hard.
But this was a great fight for me because it allowed me to refocus myself. Before I started, Percy grabbed my shoulders and pressed me into the ground. I was immediately much, much more rooted, and in fact could feel my qi spiralling into the ground and coming back up at me. He then touched my temples and pulled me up, adding upright structure to my root. I didn't want to lose that feeling, so I spent the whole fight just focussing on being song and rooting/being integrated. I still lost half of it the moment I stepped in the ring, but I was definitely much more neijia than in the first match. My second opponent hit pretty hard, to be honest, so it was lucky for me I was much looser now.
The fight went well enough, with all her sweeps not only failing to budge me but also felling her instead. No hits of consequence landed on me, though I did ignore several hits that were too light to do damage and let them land harmlessly on my torso. Had completely forgotten we were supposed to be point fighting. :p I'm sure those were considered points for her.
The first kick she threw (0:04) I received on my rear hand and completely voided, as is obvious in the video. It must have looked like a solid hit to the body from the referee's perspective though, which is understandable. I spent a moment explaining what had happened but then decided it wasn't important.
At 0:19, she threw a series of kicks at me which I could see and therefore block easily. I then returned a weak punch to her torso. However, blocking kicks from a stationary position is silly. I should've charged in as she was kicking and hit her with an elbow or shoulder. Still, she was a girl, and I had decided to be defensive. At 0:40, I successfully defended against another combo from her and unintentionally pressured her off the mat. I had enough presence of mind to pull back my return salvo before I had fully launched it, but looked pretty darned awkward doing that. :p
At 0:24, she tried to sweep me but I managed to keep both feet on the ground. At 1:42, as I moved in to pressure her, she attacked with a retreating sequence which I managed to deflect. She ended with another sweep attempt that did not work.
I did occasionally try practising what ***** had taught us in Taiji, moving in to stick to her with some success. The match finally ended when she went on her back and was too tired to get up. Can't blame her since I was just stubbornly remaining in Immovable Tree mode throughout the fight, inadvertently causing her to expend lots of energy running around me trying to take me down.
Interestingly, despite retaining my visual handicap, I could clearly see all the attacks launched at me in this second fight (and later in the third as well). I was unable to see anything in the first match; my vision there was just a blur of colour. This strongly suggests that lack of mental focus and not myopia was the chief cause of my first round blindness.
My last fight was against another guy and it went ok too, at least from a "real fight" perspective. Again, all I did was root and wait. I wanted to dart in with an elbow strike counter (pizhang variation) several times, but my lack of practice meant that I felt too clumsy and slow to make an impression and ended up not actually doing it. So I stood there and he threw right roundhouse kicks and I ate them all up with my left elbow. Which was really quite dumb since I should have been moving in to intercept the kicks instead. Anyway, soak up hits with my elbow I did, and I was quite surprised he was able to take so much punishment to his shin.
At 0:31, my opponent tried to sweep my front leg and got scolded by his coach for attacking wrongly. Perhaps because it was not a good sweep to begin with, I could feel it and instinctively transfer my root entirely into the other leg, leaving the attacked leg empty. But I still ended up in a stupidly awkward position that he should have taken advantage of. A similar situation happened at 1:08, and this time I at least responded quickly enough with a root-shift and a weak peng to avoid going sideways. Still no counter from me though. My defence at 1:37 against another sweep was rather blah.
At 1:16, I got swept to my knees again. :( Sure, I ended up with my fist cocked at his face (from watching the vid, I think I might have accidentally hit him too), but it's not good that I went down at all. At least I managed to keep both my feet at 2:22, but I think he must have been tired by then and not sweeping as well. Or maybe I had gotten more used to that particular attack.
At 1:40, I attempted to throw a series of bengquan but ended up clumsily imitating a Karate white belt. And then I thought I would be smart and try that stupid ah beng stomp kick to the chest again and got thrown cleanly once more. I must say his timing on that catch was as excellent as my kick was bad.
At 2:20, 2:35, I again attempted to bengquan my opponent, but again my body could not remember how to do the move. As Greg's noted, I was all arm, and my arms completely lacked the torquing and whipping characteristics of bengquan.
All in all, as in the second fight, I maintained structure to a degree and was largely safe against both sweeps and strong hits. I was still unable to effectively attack or counter-attack though, and none of my hits was at all Xingyi-like. Finally, Zul, his coach who was also the event's organiser and referee, warned me that if I remained so passive in a real tournament I would get disqualified. I then started attacking, but the other guy was so tired by then that he could not even put up a guard or move out of the way. The match ended soon after that.
Thoughts
I was surprised how hard my opponents could hit, but I shouldn't have been as these were people used to full-contact fighting. Come to think of it, it was incredibly stupid-arrogant for me to walk into someone else's place and fight with their well-conditioned athletes having trained fighting drills only twice in total in the last few years. I'm in my thirties and rather out of shape, and I've not done physical conditioning (punching bags or receiving medicine balls or whatever) for almost a decade. ***** had cautioned me to toughen up my body before going full-contact with anyone, and I had blithely ignored that advice completely, trusting to mystical qi powers to protect me.
On the other hand, I did come away from three encounters with People Who Wanted To Hurt Me with nothing more serious than a black spot on my lower lip courtesy of my first opponent, mild rib bruising from the first match (nothing compared to what I've had before), and a slightly achy left elbow from blocking all those kicks. Oh, and a painful back injury from accidentally falling on someone's leg. :p
Ah, but while I had taken no real damage from my opponents, I had done no real damage to them either. I had assumed from past experience that they would keenly feel even a light bengquan or hupu through the padding, but as it turned out, I couldn't perform either one to save my life. I've well and truly lost my old Xingyi, which saddens and frightens me a bit. But I guess it's a necessary sacrifice if I am to develop higher level neijia skill. There was a bad moment the other day during which I had contemplated - very seriously, if only for a fleeting instant - giving up my current training journey and returning to the old fighting structure and style that I had once loved. But that would go against the wisdom of Zhuang Laoshi, *****, and Guo Shifu. It would be extreme foolishness.
However, we really should have at least done sparring drills taken from our old style before going in for this series of fights (we presently don't know enough Ma Bagua or Taiji to even try to use them in a match). It was clear from our matches that all our opponents (including the girl) had better speed, timing, coordination, and reflexes than we did. We only seem to be good as sandbags right now. Guo Shifu saw short vids of Greg and me sparring the other week and was thoroughly disgusted. He said he didn't see any semblance of neijiaquan in there at all. Ouch. But unfortunately true. I can only imagine what he would say if he saw these clips as well. :/
I'm thinking that it would be very useful for us to meet with all these guys again and practise together every now and then. If possible, I'd like us to practise our stuff on them doing their stuff and vice versa. Moves that work one way on a Taiji guy seem to work another way on a Karate or Silat guy, so such cross-style training would be very, very helpful. It would also help us avoid bullshitting ourselves into thinking we're all that when it's all just auto-suggestion. If and when we can send someone from an external style flying with a light touch, we'll know we've really got it. And they would get to hone their skills on people who move and react very differently than their dojo mates, which I'm sure would be useful to them as well.
Speaking of the other guys, the 8 fights involving neither Greg nor me can be found here, thanks to the Karate group. May I recommend bouts 5, 8, and 9? It seems all the fighters needed a round or two to warm up, so they performed much better in the later matches. If I had to pick a favourite fighter, I would choose the Karate guy in the blue top. His judgement and control were impressive.
It is readily apparent from these fights that the Karate and Silat guys all had better timing, conditioning, and reflexes than we two did. Also, they all clearly had gone in with a game plan in mind, and each had a few well-drilled counters and combinations in their repertoire. Greg and I, in contrast, had started trying to figure out what to do only as our opponents launched their assaults. I think, for us, Michael's words pretty much sum the whole thing up:
You guys didn't train any sparring before the bouts! Goodness. Like going for exams without studying.
Someone just put up one of our old Xingyi training vids onto Youtube. This was, what? 2005? 2006? A long, long time ago anyway. Look how thin we were then! Good times, good times.
I can now see lots of problems with our form in this vid. Among other things, our upper and lower bodies didn't always coordinate well and we weren't rooted enough. We were rather well-practised though, and moves like these flowed easily and automatically from us in free sparring.
Zhuang Laoshi gets Greg with a Bengquan after tying his arms up
Not the case now. Greg and I sparred with two new friends yesterday and found our footwork, mindset, distancing, and reflexes a huge mess. We hadn't realised just how much our fighting skills had deteriorated in the last three years, but it shouldn't have been a surprise to us. What should we have expected from 2.5 years of inactivity followed by 5 months of foundation work in arts which use very different fighting paradigms? We don't even generate power the same way we used to.
In my earliest Xingyi training, we focussed on relaxing the entire body, tensing the sinews (not muscles!) suddenly and momentarily at the point of contact. When we progressed some, we learnt to instead torque specific sinew groups and expand specific joints, causing power to ripple from the feet to the hands. Towards the end of our 5 years of Xingyi, Zhuang Laoshi was telling us to stop all tensing of anything so as to move toward a higher level of fajin, but we left training before we could make any real headway there.
Two and some years later, we started first on our Taiji and then our Bagua journeys, and we found that both schools advocated the "soft touch" type of fajin that Zhuang Laoshi was leading us towards at the end. So here we are trying to convert our old harder spiralling-whipping jin into something simultaneously powerful as a speeding truck, and soft and light as air. What we currently have instead is powerful as a puff of air and subtle as a moving truck. :p
I was approached thrice by beggars today, the first two times by old ladies with tissue paper to sell and the last by a young man with a scripted bowing, scraping please-give-me-70-cents routine.
Two or three years ago, I would have responded warmly and given more than was asked for. All three times today, I declined to help. Each time, I did it because I thought it was the right thing to do, because I should not be encouraging begging. But is that really the right thing to do? Have I just been hardened by all the deceit I've encountered out there?
-----
While writing this post, I was approached by a third old lady with tissue paper. I gave her $2 and invited her to sit down for dinner with me to see how I would feel about it afterwards. Certainly, my simple conscience feels better now. I've at best done a good thing and at worst been suckered of just $2. But I'm plagued still by a nagging sense that I may have made a mistake - the exact same discomfort I'd felt after the first three encounters.
What would you do, reader, and why would you do it? Which course of action is the morally superior one?
The Indy Mogul guys have made an mp3 of the songs available here. If you feel like singing along too, I've transcribed the lyrics below. Have fun torturing your family and friends!
---
In one of my earliest blog posts, I had groused about how the economic divide was widening. Last night, MM Lee Kuan Yew not only admitted knowledge of the expanding gulf (though his explanation for it was different from mine) but also stated that it is an inevitable consequence of global capitalism. This probably means that the government's stance is to not waste resources trying to fix something that can't be fixed then. In other words, they really aren't going to do anything about this.
So, should we rant and rave, froth at the mouth, and wave signs of protest outside governmental institutions? Well, actually, no. Reading my post again now, it's clear to me that I had in fuzzy-headed fashion been blaming the government for not doing something to redress the problem. But the question here is: what can the government do about it?
Should we go communist and wipe out all classes? History has shown us that we aren't ready for such a social system: we're too selfish and resources are too limited. Should we institute a minimum wage system? Sounds nice, but then our people are going to lose even more jobs to cheaper foreign labour. Should the cost of living be pressed down? Definitely yes, but how is that supposed to be accomplished? If anyone out there has a workable plan, please do speak up. Maybe we should rob the rich to feed the poor (i.e., implement an unemployment or low income dole) - but anyone with half a brain would recognise the myriad of problems with that notion. So, what can the government do? If anyone says, "Pay the ministers less so everyone can be wealthy and happy", I'm going to punch you in the stupid face. That does not begin to solve the problem. At all.
Let's just stop and think for a second: why do we blame the government for socioeconomic inequality? Because they're the government, and they're supposed to keep us warm and safe and happy. Just like how your father and mother were supposed to keep you warm and safe and happy when you were a baby in diapers. Basically, it's a puerile instinct parallel to the dependence of the infant on the parent that we have failed to grow out of. There's a problem we can't solve, but dad and mum are infallible, so if we just cry long and hard enough, they will fix it for us.
At some point in our lives, we learn that dad and mum aren't infallible. They cannot fix anything and everything. We have to learn to solve a lot of our problems for ourselves. At that point, many of us feel the floor fall away beneath us. Suddenly, we are not so safe anymore, not so loved by the whole world. It is when fear first really chomps down on our ankles and refuses to let go. But most of us eventually kinda get over the whole sense of betrayal and unfairness and learn to stand on our own.
Would it not be sensible then for us to also stop expecting the government to be a parent that should be perfect, stop crying foul and throwing tantrums, stop expecting to wake up one day with all our problems solved for us, and instead take responsibility and start to fend for ourselves?
1: an attitude of doubt or a disposition to incredulity either in general or toward a particular object 2 a: the doctrine that true knowledge or knowledge in a particular area is uncertain b: the method of suspended judgment, systematic doubt, or criticism characteristic of skeptics 3: doubt concerning basic religious principles (as immortality, providence, and revelation)
That unfortunately doesn't help us understand what a sceptic is, for someone whose cognitive mode is exemplified by "suspended judgment, systematic doubt, or criticism" could be an agnostic, a scientist, or a cynic. Even the dictionaries often fail us when we seek the most precise of definitions.
However, Peter Suber makes clear here (great resource; read it!) that original scepticism was simply an attitude of inquiry. A sceptic was a person who understood that he did not yet know about things and was asking questions to try and remedy that situation.
Skeptics said instead, "I personally do not know at the moment but I am trying to find out."
Compare this position with the following:
I know. (Faith.)
I do not know, and it is unknowable. (Academic scepticism.)
I do not know, but I know that is untrue. (Faith in negation disguised as scepticism. In other words, cynicism.)
Positions 1 and 2 are easy enough to understand. Position 3 is the tricky one, and it is the one most often adopted by sorta-smart, sorta-educated individuals who boast of being sceptics. For instance, someone - let's call him Adrin - may say, "Science has not managed to find evidence of telepathy, so telepathy must be false." Is that truly a sceptical position or a cynical one? Is the speaker claiming knowledge or lack of it?
Classical Sceptics of course don't believe they can never find the truth. That position is called Academic Scepticism (#2). Adrin is clearly not an Academic Sceptic, since he claims to know the truth - that telepathy does not exist. However, could he be a Classical Sceptic who has arrived already at a factual conclusion? The answer here is also "no", for he has not collected enough evidence to confirm the blanket statement he has made*.
*Scientists understand that even findings published in scientific papers are not necessarily right, but the typical person - including many science degree holders - fails to appreciate the distinction between absolute proof and mere evidence.
In fact, he is a cynic. He disbelieves in something that someone else believes in. Though he might have evidence to support his disbelief, this evidence is invalid or at least non-confirmatory. In other words, his disbelief is dogmatism. He is just a cynic and no different from the people he accuses of blind faith. He might happen to be right and telepathy might be a sham, but he's still just a cynic. Hey, you have 50/50 odds of being right when you declare without knowledge that something either exists or doesn't, ya know. Make enough declarations and your chances of being right at least once will darn near hit the roof. (50% for one declaration, 75% for two, 87.5% for three, and so on.)
At this point, I must admit that I am not a sceptic. I do believe in some things just because they were told to me, or because I have seen some evidence for them, or because they intuitively seem true, or because it is easier to believe in them than not to. But then again, is anyone truly a sceptic? Do you believe that you are real? Yes? Why, then, you are a dogmatist. Do you believe the Earth is round? Do you believe the floor beneath you remains there when you leave the room? Do you believe you are still you when you are asleep and unable to observe yourself? Yes? Hello, fellow dogmatist.
The dogmatist asserts that something is true. He makes judgments he is willing to stand by. The skeptic suspends her judgment; she waits until she is sure, which may be never. Suspension of judgment (in Greek, epoche), not doubt and not denial, is the skeptic's characteristic activity.
Of course, this does not mean a person cannot be a part-time sceptic. For instance, I may not be sceptical about the world being roundish, but I'm quite sceptical about the martial arts I practise. I recognise that I do not know, I ask questions all the time, I test assumptions, and I'm willing to accept most things in neijia practice only provisionally. When I feel an "electric current" run powerfully up my spine during zhanzhuang, I accept it to be qi, but I'm aware it may just be my imagination or something else and am open to stronger alternative interpretations.
If one is going to lay claim to a sceptical position, then, one needs to be clear on what one questions and what one accepts completely if one is unwilling to sound like an idiot or a fraud. Sadly, too many people are better served by the following description on the Martial Development blog:
Overzealous amateurs, posing as skeptics and debunkers, rail against any demonstration or discussion of kungfu that exceeds their own ability and experience.
When engaging in discourse with a stranger, I typically begin with the assumption that they are mentally competent and honest. Though probably naive, that assumption is a condition necessary for a meaningful discussion: if someone is either stupid or dishonest, what sort of rational conversation could you have with them? It is therefore always a rude shock to me when I realise at some point in the debate that the other person is either incapable of comprehending the simplest ideas and logical flows being presented or is seeking to "win" the argument by creating and tearing down strawmen (e.g., Hans Liu in this thread or Anon 2:50 commenting here). It is testimony to my immaturity that my emotional reaction at that point is usually ire. How dare this person be so stupid? How dare this person be so underhanded? Sometimes, I manage to stop myself from ridiculing the offender publicly.
Unfortunately for me, 50% of the world is dumber than average (sorry, bad statistical joke that is possibly non-factual, depending on the current specific intelligence distribution of the people around the 50th percentile). Besides that, most people don't care about nuances and specifics, value expedience over exact truth, are unaware of their own incompetence, and/or are unable or unwilling to admit to having made a mistake.
Do you think those guys would get it if I sent them this?
I think that extending literacy to the general population was a bad idea*. Too many people have no ideas of value to contribute to the world, and all they end up adding is obfuscation of the good sounds. The very worst are the ones who are smart and educated enough to sound convincing to the dumb majority but who are not smart and educated enough to actually make real sense. These are the people who mislead others and cause problems through constantly thinking and acting like they are right when they are not. They are so sure of their own positions that they do not question themselves. And even if they do on a rare whim question themselves, they are fatally unable to detect errors in their own judgments.
But, you know, the trick is this: how am I to know that I'm not one of them?
* Oh, don't get your panties in a twist. You know I don't mean it.
