Martial Arts Background

I thought I might post a brief couple of things about myself so that anyone who cares can get to know something about me. My two passions in life (apart from family) are martial arts and magic which are a very strange combination. In this post I’ll give a background on my martial arts training and talk about magic in another post…..

When I was in primary school I was like most boys, and would flail my arms and legs around in attempts at Karate type kicks and punches. So at the end of primary school I was enrolled in a term of Karate at a local school. I absolutely hated it. Mostly because the sensei (teacher) would tell me off for not moving fast enough, or not punching strongly enough. Also the guy never smiled and had the personality of one of the wooden boards he would often break. After this experience I swore off Karate and thought about other martial arts in early high school which was when I set myself the goal of getting a black belt. Next I enrolled in Ninjutsu with (as far as I’m concerned) the only remaining 800 year old traditional school. But only stayed with it for year or two because one of the teachers was a complete tool (eg. After whacking me in the shins with a bamboo training weapon he explained that it didn’t hurt cause it was a training weapon. Well the black bruises that soon appeared would suggest that it did). After that I reluctantly agreed to check out a new Karate school that was building an international reputation and found to my surprise that it wasn’t too bad. In fact 5 or 6 years later I achieved my goal of getting a black belt. I even taught at the club for 3 years and achieved my 2^nd Dan grade (One step up from a normal black belt). Towards the end of my Karate career I became a little disillusioned with it and its limitations (no grappling, no weapons, some impractical techniques, focus on physical strength, etc), so I did some Aikido, but only for a few months cause it was an expensive class and the training was a little too stylized. In about 2003 I went back to Ninjutsu (outdated website), but with a different club and haven’t looked back (though I don’t get to training as much as I’d like). I have my brown belt in it currently and if I get my butt into gear should be able to get black belt in that in a year or so.

Pointless advertising

There are a series of ads on tv at the moment about insurance for old people that feature a panel discussion. This is a stupid concept for a number of reasons and it just shits me in general. Firstly they have the spokes person sitting in the middle and on either side of her are a couple of B/C grade celebrities from at least 10 years ago. I believe the idea is that because they are old they might make the insurance company look more credible. The ads run in a series over time which is even weirder cause the ‘celebrities’ seem to change and often only one of them makes a (lame) comment/joke in each ad while the other 3 just sit there (waiting for their paycheck presumably) doing nothing. Whoever suggested to the company that a 30 second ad utilizing a panel discussion format was a good idea, should be smacked upside the head.

Viva la health!

I'm going on a self imposed health regime and I intend to blog about my progress (motivation permitting). The waist around my pants has slowly been getting tighter recently and I'm pretty sure it's not cause my pants are shrinking as my significant other suggests. Since high school I've been training in martial arts and until about 5 or so years ago I also did a good amount of weights training, so I consider myself reasonably fit. However in recent times as the other demands of life have crept up on me I've become a lot less active with even my training suffering as a result. I've eaten whole boxes of chocolate chip cookies, drunk litres of soft drink, devoured whole bars of family sized chocolate and gorged myself on various desserts, and that was just yesterday. Enough is enough, I need to eat more fruit and veg, drink no sugar or diet drinks and most importantly regain my physical activity. I want my washboard stomach back, women to swoon when they see me in the street and men to wonder when they see me, if one of the Greek statues from the museum has come to life and is wondering around the city. I will become healthy again damn it! So who's with me?.............Is that crickets I hear chirping? Did a tumbleweed just roll by?

My avatar

People often ask me what that strange thing I use as my avatar is. Well actually no one has asked me at all, so for my own amusement I will explain. Some years ago I was traveling through South America and came across a certain tribe of Jivaro Indians. I did a few magic tricks for them and they started to view me as some kind of deity figure. After a while they became bored of my astounding antics and I began to hear whispers that one of them was going to ‘head hunt’ me. Thankfully I had one more trick up my sleeve. I borrowed a piece of grass matting from someone and rolled it up into a cylinder shape. Muttering a few words of magic gibberish, I unrolled it and inside a rifle had appeared. Everyone was amazed (as they love guns almost as much as their American neighbours), but asked me to get the hell out of their village as I was no David Copperfield. “Thank goodness for that,” I replied and flew back home. As a parting gift they gave me a shrunken head that is now one of my most treasured possessions. This is the item that appears as my avatar.

Of course I could be lying.

Flying High

I just got back from a work trip up to Sydney. I flew up and back….and man are my arms tired!! Boom-tish! (Actually bad jokes are relevant, so bare with me) It was the first time I’ve been on a plane since coming over here from Scotland as a child. To be honest I wasn’t that excited about the trip, not due to fear of flying, but more over having to drive around Sydney, but I’ll get to that. I flew on Virgin Blue and I learnt a number of things about flying, the main one being that flight attendants shouldn’t make jokes! Here are a couple of examples of their material: “Please make sure your seatbelts are firmly fasten around your necks, sorry, waists.” Or this gem…“When opening the overhead compartments, please be careful that nothing falls out, cause ‘shift happens’. “ I’m sure some of their gags were straight from the ‘Jumbo book of Dad’s Jokes’.

Upon arriving in Sydney I had to drive myself around in a hire car and let me explain why this wasn’t particularly enjoyable for me. 1. Most of the lanes on the roads around the area are about a foot narrower than those I’m used to driving on in Melbourne. 2. NSW drivers are insane, and often try to merge into gaps of 1cm between cars. And 3. the streets were designed by a dyslexic town planner who used a bunch of crooked, twisty pick-up sticks as inspiration for their design.

Also I had and still have a cold and felt crap the entire time. The work side of things was pretty productive, and there were a few amusing anecdotes resulting from that….but who wants to blog about work?

Curses! Beaten by an infant.

I may be fairly well trained in the martial arts, but that didn’t stop me from getting beaten up by my 8.5 month old daughter. It began as any normal baby play session with my wife and I lying on the floor entertaining the little one. Then my wife got the idea of putting her on my chest. So there I was on my back with a baby atop me staring down at my face. Then she pounced, leaning forward she placed her open hand at one of the corners of my mouth. Expecting a pat on the face or just for her to put fingers on my lips I didn’t think to defend myself. How foolish I was, for the next second she clenched her little hand into a fist, scrapping her tiny fingernails across the sensitive skin around the lips. She even drew some blood! Letting out a somewhat girlish yelp I removed my daughter from attack position and leaped back into a fighting stance. Putting on my best ‘bad kung fu movie voice’, I said, “So, you have mastered the Eagles Claw technique! Now let’s see how you handle my Iron Monkey style!”

Seeing where this was going, my wife stepped between my opponent and me and said, “Honey I think it’s time for your brain medicine.”

Leaving the room I swore on my ancestors that I would have my vengeance. No baby gets the better of me. If only I could overcome her Shield of Cuteness technique.

Krispy Kreme Krud

The other day was the grand opening of the first Krispy Kreme donut franchise in the state of Victoria, in the land of Oz. This was first brought to my attention by fellow blogger BEVIS. For some reason the KK people decided to open this store in the middle of nowhere, in a sleepy suburb called Narre Warren. So having the day off myself, I packed the wife and rug rat into the car for the 30-40 minute drive down there. Now let me say that I expected it to be a bit busy on the opening day, so left in the early afternoon hoping that the morning fatty’s would have gorged themselves enough and have rolled home by then (not that I have anything against overweight people). Unfortunately I had greatly underestimated the number of greedy SOB’s out there. So when the store came within sight of our car, I noticed the massive line of traffic in front of us and the huge queue of people lined up (a good hour or two wait at least) snaking around outside the store. Being a crowd hater from way back and after a short discussion with the missus we decided to turn around and drive 20 minutes back in the other direction where we stopped at another shopping centre and enjoyed custard filled donuts at a normal donut shop. Then feeling a little sick, but still hungry we followed that up with some sushi. Hmmmm donuts and sushi, together at last. I said to the wife that we would have to venture out to Krispy Kreme some other time, to which she replied, ‘You really are a fat bastard.’

discarded syringe

So I was walking through the area where I work the other day, and I see a syringe lying on the ground next to one of those trees that they plant in the sidewalk. Well it got me thinking, and I’m really sick and tired of all these diabetic people who just throw their needles away after they’ve had their ‘hit’ of insulin. Who do they think they are, shooting up on a substance they’ve foolishly become dependant on? It’s sad really to think that a diabetic person can get so desperate for the insulin that they sometimes rob people at gun point. And on more than one occasion I’ve been walking down a street and I’m sure I’ve seen one of them gazing longingly at my properly functioning pancreas. I’m sure that with proper counseling these long suffering people can be helped.

Or maybe the syringe belonged to a common junkie…I don’t know I’m not psychic.