I once had a book about a wise Jewish baker who dispensed pearls of wisdom. I can't remember the title of the book, and neither can I find it; it might have been given away. I remember only two things from it: that it said people build walls around themselves, then at some point if they're lucky they realize what they've done to themselves and so spend the rest of their lives tearing down the walls that took most of their lives to build. The second thing was that when people see the true path, they follow it; but those who then notice the former don't see the path - they just follow the coat tails of those before them. Much later, never having seen the truth at all, they belittle the coat tails they had been following, and give up. They might even punish the owners of those coat tails, for leading them on a "wild goose chase."

I guess it's a given that we to an individual do not like to look foolish. But life is awkwardness; as per Robert Fulghum (who is one of my favorite authors by the way), life is lumpy. Let's not deny our basic humanity - we all are insecure, sometimes immature, sometimes selfish, sometimes way out of our depth. If we can just tear down those walls, we'll be so much less lonely. The view will be better.

And for all our sakes, let's all be kind to one another. Especially to those who seem to see something other than coat tails.

Me and Free Culture

I was only recently introduced to the idea of Free Culture. I think there is merit in what the movement is trying to achieve, and as this blog grows the concept is starting to attain greater significance for me. The truth is, I didn't really expect that I would enjoy blogging so much; right now I am updating the blog rather regularly, but at the onset I only wanted to check in a few times every other month, when something really compelling inside me demanded to be written down. I suppose the allure of being able to say whatever comes to me, of being able to expose the connections in my thinking, was really enticing. When one is talking to someone, you can't pepper your conversation with references to media that the other person hasn't experienced yet. With a blog, you can provide links or embed the media right there for people to look and evaluate immediately. A blog to me can show the the path you took to your views, along with the signposts that guided you in that direction.

Blogging in my opinion is an exercise in putting things together much more than it is about recording something or informing people or being a commentator. People say that there is nothing new under the sun, and that all the great things are just imitations or reworkings of what has gone before. In a sense, this is fine; chefs aren't expected to be able to procure and prepare the myriad ingredients they use from scratch; likewise sculptors aren't required to make their own marble or smelt their own steel. Indeed, there is an art movement that is all about mining great insights from mundane pieces that were obviously designed for another purpose entirely. We call this prospecting for gold in the dirt of the world harvesting externalities; an externality in general being anything that is a direct consequence of another's actions and not that of your own. An externality that adds a cost to you could be called a negative externality, while a positive one means an externality that gives a benefit - a definition that makes the latter somewhat indistinguishable from the function of grace, to my mind.

There are those who would say that benefiting from the discarded seeds of the fruits of another man's labor is wrong, but I suppose that is because in large part people don't realize how hard it is to make good come out of the refuse of others. For it to grow, the seed from the core of the fruit that was thrown away still needs to experience the same kind of care and attention that was given to it by he who grew the tree from which the fruit came. But since the one who finds the seed might not know anything about agriculture or the special needs of that breed of plant, leaving aside the fact that the seed might already be rotted, their effort is greater. They may have to try harder, at least until a better way is found. And that better way they may even inevitably have to create themselves.

Making something from scratch, giving birth to something form nowhere, is a process from ignorance to realizing something and then realizing the process by which one can actualize the original realization. Take the wheel, for example; imagine that for millions of years people have been carrying things and moving to different places all their lives. Imagine that at some point quite a few of these people thought that there must be a better way to get things moved from here to there. Thinking that there ought to be a better way isn't the same as knowing there is a better way or knowing what that way even is. As Nicholas Nassim Taleb so eloquently put it in his book on black swans, knowledge is asymmetrical. It's not a linear progression n, if anything it's exponential. It must have been some time before we finally blundered into using logs under flat pieces of wood, and even longer before we thought about outfitting a log with an axle. Think about the odds for that. Someone had to have thought up that one implementation, out of all the others that were dung. He not only had to have reasoned out the design, he also would have had to invent a whole new paradigm to even be able to justify why the design was optimal. Sounds unreasonable, doesn't it?

It's far more likely that the innovation of the wheel was realized through a process of harvesting externalities. At some points there would have been trial-and-error, a playing around of what people knew or observed. At other points someone would have copied someone else, or maybe they would have taken the state of the art for that time and taken the ideas beyond what their originators/keepers could dream. That model is more practical, less resource-intensive, and more reliable; that is, sooner or later humanity would have gotten lucky after leveraging the fascination of a lot more people than just the one supposed "genius."

To me free culture is about two things: one, our ability to create and play around with what's in our heads should not be limited by outside parties; and two, the power of the human race to innovate, what distinguishes us from anything else on Earth, should be given free rein if we want to actually better our existence. Non-scientists can find cures to incurable diseases, don't you know; and rappers can make mix tapes even while shot up and recuperating. K-pop groups can be good for more than the occasional performance. And on it goes. For these reasons, there is opposition among its proponents about the whole intellectual property system, in particular the copyright system.

Following is a group of articles that address the issue, and which has largely informed my thinking:

Cory Doctorow - Just because something has value doesn't mean it has a price

Nina Paley - Credit is Due (The Attribution Song)

Nina Paley - Culture is Anti-Rivalrous

Nina Paley - Addendum: Why do I say Culture is not a Commons?

Now, as I understand it the intellectual property system was created with the intent of fostering innovation. The idea was that society sought to reward the innovator by making the obstacles to profiting from his idea less steep; but obviously no one would benefit if he had a monopoly over the innovation. This is the reason for the copyright/patent being of an arbitrary timeframe, but the system has been abused by others having their copyrights extended way too long, or collecting other people's coyrights/patents. The problem is that after having some of these innovations out in the open for so long, they've crept up into people's collective consciousness. These innovations are part of people's lives now, are fixtures of their existence, and are even part of how they think and see everything. Putting a tax on these things has the unfortunate result of making other forms of innovation harder - innovation is hard enough without having to innovate a way to pay off everybody who might come after you because of a (sometimes non-existent) connection to their work. Instead of attempting something true to their temperament, what happens more often than not is something equivalent to imposed censorship.

One may ask, whether this may be too general. Let's say a novel referenced a character from an established work, something like fan fiction that was later published. Perhaps omitting the character might be feasible if it was just a couple of lines that referenced him, but what if he was central to the plot? What if in the original novel this character was just a bit player? What if this later work was a satire or parody? What if, the very act of "protecting" an idea with copyright rendered it stale and uninspired, good only for a cash cow? Clearly the line for these edge cases needs to be clearer.

Cook Ting was cutting up an ox for Lord Wen-hui. At every touch of his hand, every heave of his shoulder, every move of his feet, every thrust of his knee, zip! zoop! He slithered the knife along with a zing, and all was in perfect rhythm, as though he were performing the dance of the Mulberry Grove or keeping time to the Ching-shou Music.

"Ah, this is marvelous!" said Lord Wen-hui. "Imagine skill reaching such heights!"

Cook Ting laid down his knife and replied, "What I care about is the Way, which goes beyond skill. When I first began cutting up oxen, all I could see was the ox itself. After three years I no longer saw the whole ox. And now I go at it by spirit and don't look with my eyes. Perception and understanding have come to a stop and spirit moves where it wants. I go along with the natural makeup, strike in the big hollows, guide the knife through the big openings, and follow things as they are. So I never touch the smallest ligament or tendon, much less a main joint."

"A good cook changes his knife once a year, because he cuts. A mediocre cook changes his knife once a month, because he hacks. I've had this knife of mine for nineteen years and I've cut up thousands of oxen with it, and yet the blade is as good as though it had just come from the grindstone. There are spaces between the joints, and the blade of the knife has really no thickness. If you insert what has no thickness into such spaces, then there's plenty of room, more than enough for the blade to play about it. That's why after nineteen years the blade of my knife is still as good as when it first came from the grindstone."

A Taste of Korean-inspired Heaven

Summoning Dragons

The Xingyiquan I was taught had twelve Animal forms - these forms are the source of all combat applications under the system, and are in turn elaborations of the Five Fists. I haven't been practicing this lately, and I have not been in contact with the teacher that taught me Xingyi. For those who don't know, it's saddening when this happens, more so perhaps for the teacher; they pin their hopes on their treasure being passed on to the next generation, and the loss of a student means a waste of their time and resources.

In honor of that teacher I had,  I am now going to somehow try to reconstruct what I was taught and somehow attain mastery of the forms I was given. It's not too much of a drain on time, since I can do the forms wherever so long as I am guaranteed to be alone. The Xingyi forms are really very simple and can be performed in any decently-sized space. Also, Xingyiquan is a great gateway martial art in that it focuses a lot on the fundamentals that define all the great kung fu. I'm sure it will be able to benefit me in my current martial art.

The nice thing I've found is that the principles that I've learned under my current style also do apply to Xingyi. This largely informs how I perform the Five Fists now.

The Fist I am concentrating on now is Pi Quan, or the Splitting Fist. As in, Splitting someone's arm at the elbow; your forearm is the axe and it falls down to separate everything that is in the way. One can also use one's hand for this purpose; there are a number of different schools of Xingyi and for each school they have a different take on the movement.

The above video should give one an idea of the use of the Fist form, and the idea of the application is sort of universal even if the outward execution may vary. I hesitate to describe how the movement goes because of two reasons: one is my understanding being woefully incomplete, and second is the movement itself is so simple there's a risk that one will try to patch it with effort in order for it to "feel more powerful." Speaking from bitter experience, Xingyi is that simple, the problem is making everything more natural. I won't be responsible for any slips and broken bones. Not unless we're talking about my future self, here...

The Dragon form of the Twelve Animals has a very clear connection to Pi Quan. The video at the top of the page shows just one interpretation of the form; here's another:

I was told by my former teacher that the movement in this video is what I should be emulating with my performance of Dragon. Since then, I've pored on other resources - two that I recommend would be Xingyimax and Andrea Falk's work with Di Guoyong - and my initial form has changed quite substantially.

Now, I follow the joint angles prescribed by Di Guoyong. Another thing I noticed is that there's a three-step process to generating the power in Dragon form, that also applies to Splitting fist. First, one must push off with the rear leg for the step forward; second, the lead leg must stamp down into the ground, not just step forward. Third, one must drop one's full weight straight down while still pushing forward with the rear leg and pushing back with the front leg.

The stamping down of the lead leg enables a Xingyi player's lead foot to land at an angle that otherwise would slip on the floor. Indeed, Di Guoyong had counseled against this by developing "trampling" energy in the lead foot. I'd always assumed that this meant like the feeling when pawing the ground; now it feels to me like using the lead leg as a stake to "trample" something in front of you. Visualize moving the lead knee back and the rear knee forward, and you've got it.

In a Splitting Fist maneuver the rear leg would try to "chase" the lead leg - that is, maintain the distance between the feet. What's different with the Dragon Pattern is that you drop the body down. For both, the rear  leg must learn to fold under the person's body. To make this easier, imagine the hips falling back as the rear leg takes the step to adjust/the body falls down. In Dragon this hips-falling-back is even more important to ensure that the center of gravity does not rotate with the lead foot as the fulcrum. Furthermore, I feel this makes me more stable when dropping down - the ischeal tuberosity (those pointy things you feel in your butt when you sit up straight) of one hip must fall to meet the corresponding heel; since you'll be moving to balance on the ball of the rear foot and the rear leg will handle most of the weight there's a very real danger that your center of gravity will be unstable, either causing you to fall to the side or causing your center of mass to move forward, putting huge strain on your rear knee.

Refining the movement will take time, but practicing this is very fun. I'm still not sold on how good some of the details in my movement are, and more research will be necessary.

I never really had the urge to play console games like Tekken - not because I don't like fighting games. I actually do love a good fighter, but it's just that I don't want to shell out the money to buy a console in order to get to play. It's just too big an investment for me.

I was sorely tempted though when I learned recently that Tekken had a character named Wang Jinrei who used Xingyiquan as his style. Now,  Xingyiquan is a marvelous kung fu; it's the kind that takes a lifetime to master and old age isn't an impediment to learning. It's characterized by powerful, direct movements; it's simple and practical, but also very beautiful in its own way. Now, along with another game that had a Xingyiquan player, I had two very compelling reasons to buy the hardware. As a martial arts enthusiast, I really wanted to experience the flavor of their style, if only through controlling characters on the screen. I'd master their capabilities, lay waste to all comers, etc, etc. I felt a bit sorry for myself that I didn't have the funds yet, but I knew it was only a matter of time...

Then I realized: I didn't have to buy so much stuff to get to be a Xingyiquan stylist. I actually AM one; I learned the basics in about year, and have been practicing sporadically since. Funny how 3D can make us forget what's important - if I wanted to be Xingyi, all I needed to do was practice more often.

True mastery doesn't lie in the adornments we surround ourselves with. Its worth is not measured in coin, but in time and effort and opportunity. Time being what our lives are made of, mastery then is about giving up your life for something.

Global Frequency is such an amazing concept. I heard about it since Warren Ellis was the author, and I loved his work on Planetary. This was during my graphic novel phase, I'd trawl the shops for interesting titles then check them out on the Internet to see if they were worth buying. What I read about Planetary I loved - who wouldn't want to be an archaeologist of the unknown?

Global Frequency's idea is even better. Why should we entrust our safety to others? Every one of us should have an equal stake in rescuing our species and making better our collective existence. All of us can do something, as we all have our area of influence. In this era of technology and smart mobs, why can't we organize for something greater than stalking celebrities or cyber-bullying?

One would suppose a faithful implementation of Ellis' vision would just invite persecution - but reality unsurprisingly mirrors art in its own way. Two organizations I know are the Topos de Tlatelolco of Mexico and the CyberAngels. These are professional groups who focus getting the bad guy/saving people while still being cooperative with the authorities. There's no politics, no messiah complex here - just doing the good work everywhere.

Free of race or creed, we should do no harm to each other. Then we should help each other. This is a mission that everyone is welcome to join.

Old Regrets

We all have things in our lives that didn't work out. Missed connections, failed aspirations - they define us more clearly than maybe anything else.

I have a lot of regrets. I'm no looker, nor am I skilled or charming or friendly. I'll probably never have a family of my own; I prefer solitude to most forms of socializing. I've been traumatized here and there, mostly by my own blindness and poor choices.

I don't have much in the bank, though I dreamed in greener days of being rich. I buy books and training materials; I spend my time reading and browsing the Web and training martial arts. I'm not a gifted programmer or speaker. I wanted to learn the saxophone but I never had a chance to. Motivation is a huge challenge for me. I've let down countless people, and I've turned my back on so many other things I initially had such enthusiasm for.

It's a blow when you realize how much of a flake you are. My Mind is a Flake, not a Fist.

Not yet a fist, anyway.

I write this because just this week I decided to come back to one of the things I used to enjoy but stopped: Yomi is a game by David Sirlin, whose blog you can check out on the right side of this page. Yomi is a game about valuation and reading; you exploit the tendency of players in choosing specific moves, and you ground this in moment-to-moment evaluation of the game state. It's a very interesting mental exercise and it really helps me reach the state Robert Greene wrote of as "Negative Capability" - being able to function in a situation that has uncertainty without grasping obsessively for a way out of the uncertainty.

The game was completely free in the beta stages last year, but after the payment scheme went into effect I only got around to getting my favorite character this week. It's small, but I want to reverse at least some of the regrets I have. It's a commitment, for me to take back what I gave up.

I want to end up like the lady in the photo above - you can feel how the life behind that face was well-lived, can't you?  
  

On Evil

Does anyone remember X-Files? The Smoking Man was the series' main antagonist; the character was so well-acted but the actor who plays him was never nominated for an Emmy. Fast-forward a decade or so and we see Bryan Cranston winning three times in a row for playing a bad character. I suppose there's less of a stigma now to playing corrupt individuals - in fact, now they are more often celebrated.

Yet since long ago we've been fascinated by villains. They are always the suave, skillful types in our stories. Why? Because a villain who is not skillful does not remain a villain for long, and a villain who is not suave just isn't enjoyable to watch. Villains are capable, they must be capable; because this way, the inevitable triumph of good will be all the more wonderful to behold. Villains always lose, but they still have to make a spectacle of it.

Evil attracts evil, they say. For like attracts like and someone who is more of something will provide strong enough attraction for those with less of that something within them. And so we derive scapegoats from "first principles," all the while joyously ignoring the subtler evil that we unleash on the world. We succumb to the false attribution error, weaving stories where accidental slights become vast conspiracies and we are the chaste hero. Sadly, the real world does not provide us with consistent deconstruction so we can be cured of this stupidity...

Terry Pratchett, in his Discworld series, spoke through one of his characters about the nature of evil. It's something I'll never forget - he said that evil is about treating people like things. It's about seeing them as something other than individuals. Life's a lot more horrible that way.

Self Defense

Marc MacYoung is the real thing. Back in the day I found him after I found Mr. Montaigue. Interestingly, both of them don't like being referred to with honorifics. I suppose it goes with warriors of the same caliber, haha.

I found this interview in Tribal Triangle today. It made me nostalgic of my time trying to be a fighter, and how I used to haunt Marc's NoNonsenseSelfDefense site. I distinctly remember, that the words I read back then didn't quite grab me as they do today. I suppose that means I've grown older, huh?

This is my favorite bit:

A lot of people have a run in and it didn't pan out like their Hollywood Macho fantasies say it 'should' have ended. Instead of jumping up and in a blaze of Killer- Commando-Krav-Touch-Myself- As-I-Watch -"Roadhouse"- Kung -fu- Awesomeness and bitchslapping the offending party, they did the smart thing. In doing whatever that was, the situation ended without violence.  

Here is where the ego goes nuts. They proceed to self-flagellate themselves about what they 'should' have done and how tiny their penises are for not going all Ninja Turtle on the guy. 

This is bullshit. What matters is that the situation didn't go violent. Not only from the standpoint that they didn't get their asses kicked, hospitalized or killed, but if they had they done that blaze of kung fu they would have got arrested for throwing someone a beating. But the beat themselves up for ending the situation without violence. 

Hell, I even get people who claim that they 'froze' when someone got in their faces and they didn't do anything.  Well here's a little reality break, NOT doing anything is what kept you from getting your ass kicked. Three things about that barking, snarling and drooling dude in your face. First, he's not going to react well to your ego-saving comment about his mother. Two, if he didn't think he could kick your ass, he wouldn't be there in the first place. Third, you making a comment about his mother shows he's right that  you aren't ready to rock and roll. 

AMEN!

Facing the Fear

I don't much care for rankings. In the games that I've played that have leaderboards it's so frustrating to see your rank go down because of a loss. When I've reached the point where I'm at a reasonably decent level the anxiety of losing gradually becomes stronger with every game I play. It reaches the point where the game just ceases to be fun.

As it turns out, the fear of failure isn't that uncommon. Loss aversion is a very real tendency. The specter of doing something wrong, of failing, of maligning the pristine whiteness of your canvas with uninspired gobs of paint - it paralyzes us. It stops us from creating, from exploring the possibilities of the form. One thing I've learned, a large part of Mastery hinges on gaining enough familiarity with our field that we aren't intimidated by it anymore.

Take Hitman, for instance. In the beginning it seemed like I'd always trip the guards. Later, when I figured out approximately how wide the vision cones of NPC's were, they ceased to be such annoying challenges. Now I'm confident in doing maneuvers like the following:

Here's the thing about mastery, though - the mountains you think you've climbed, turns out they're actually just plateaus.

T_T

RIP Aaron Swartz

I am taking an online course about programming right now; I needed to install some files in order to do the exercises that come with it. I was doing so by reading the instructions but in the section about testing the installation it missed a step - basically it didn't say I needed to input a command after another command. If I hadn't taken a look at the video demonstration of the installation it would have taken me at least an hour to find out how to progress from that point that I got bogged down.

It's actually very hard to tell people what to do. Leaders get it easy because the people that they command invariably have the expertise and familiarity with the thing they are being commanded to do. A president could most likely get away with commanding his generals to win this piece of real estate by such-and-such time; the generals will have an idea of what to do to make this happen and if it really can't happen they'll be able to give the president feedback on alternative courses of action. But imagine that you are a programmer. What you are commanding has only the ability to perform tasks at lightning speed - it does not have the IQ to tell you that it doesn't have enough resources to perform this thing you're telling it to do. It cannot make an intuitive leap between two steps, which means every command has to be at its most basic. You  are the one who has to break things down, you are the one who has to imagine the situations that the system will encounter and somehow factor them in to commands written in a language that only the computer understands.

Things are easier for programmers nowadays, in that there are frameworks and standards and elaborations that make computer language closer to normal human language, or enables the computer to tell you that you messed up the command that you just typed. I respect the developers who make these things for the coding community; they are somehow able to make the concepts come alive within them and they end up creating such useful, stable, reliable technology. I am nowhere near that level; where I am I can get the structure and flow of an application I'm working on, but the specifics of syntax is where I fail. And I'm still at a pretty good level, for someone having just one year of formal education in software engineering; as recently as 2007 there was a problem with computer science applicants not being able to write code at all.

Aaron Swartz is a developer who is one of the greats I am talking about. His code is still being used today by the whole world, and that is a testament to his skills. That is why I have mixed emotions over what happened to him; on the one side, I feel angry that such a brilliant man was laid low by a law that was passed way back in 1986 by a group of people who could not have foreseen the current state of computer technology - people who are prey to the same problem that befalls programmers, yet who were not trained to figure out loopholes and potential exploits. On the other hand, I can't help but see how meet it is that a programmer should be done in by buggy code.

Black humor aside, America needs to do a lot of debugging to make up for the injustice they've done. I think this video could help start things off:

When a person does not think, "Where shall I put it?" the mind will extend throughout the entire body and move to any place at all. . . . The effort not to stop the mind in just one place - this is discipline. Not stopping the mind is object and essence. Put it nowhere and it will be everywhere. Even in moving the mind outside the body, if it is sent in one direction, it will be lacking in nine others. If the mind is not restricted to just one direction, it will be in all ten.

Takuan Soho (1573 - ?) 

I try to remember this quote, because it is representative of what I should be doing in all my endeavors. We tend to get bogged down in the details of getting something done, to the point that meeting the goal becomes replaced with some other objective - like being clever or elegant, for instance. In the martial arts, it might result in your style losing its martial effectiveness and prioritizing looking good instead. In daily life, it might mean closing ourselves off to other possibilities that might make us better off.

Don't get taken up with any one thing, so you can accomplish many amazing things.

In the video, Ken (the male character) was reduced to just one bar of life - that means any attack could have knocked him out. There were only thirty seconds to the timer at that point, and this was a deciding match for the championship; the move that Chun Li did near the end usually would have sealed the deal - it hits multiple times and the defending player only has less than a split second to decide whether a hit needed to be blocked high or low. Most players would try their best not to get into this situation and would concede that this is pretty much "impossible" to get out of. But the player behind Ken, Daigo Umehara, proceeded to parry all the hits under incredible pressure before going into a combo of his own, stealing the second place title in a miraculous comeback.

My teacher's teacher always answered in response to the question of how to fight multiple opponents in this way: "One at a time." No advice about keeping a concealed weapon, or even anything about special techniques. More and more now I am beginning to take him at his word. :)

Sources:
  Takuan Soho in The Unfettered Mind. Trans. W. S. Wilson. Tokyo, 1986., p 62
  Zaady(?). A Quote by Takuan Soho on body, direction, discipline, effort, justice, and mind.
      Retrieved from http://blog.gaiam.com/quotes/authors/takuan-soho/34770

What Is Seen

I have a habit of listening to a piece of music that I like over and over. For some reason I don't get the dreaded Ear Worm affliction; it's kind of sad since I really would like to have the song be in my head the entire day.

With Youtube music videos, I can spend hours watching the same thing, then starting it over once it's done. Which is why I noticed something with these videos: the first is a video of T-ARA performing their latest single at Music Festival:

Now this next video was taken back in 2010, and notice the camerawork on Hyomin (the redhead above):

What I find interesting is how the camera focuses less on her in the 2010 performance. Whereas with Eunjung, even if the choreography did not place her in the middle of the group, she still gets close-ups. Also, it seems like the cameras focus on the newcomers to the group quite a lot; in the 2010 video there's substantial screentime on Hwayoung while in the Music Festival video Areum gets the same treatment.

The shots don't seem to be planned to that level of detail beforehand, therefore my guess is the cameramen spend their time getting good angles so that when the feed cuts to them they can provide good shots. The question of to whom they will aim the camera lens, though, is up to them. What I see is what they like to see; it's probably the closest we'll ever get to literally seeing something from someone's viewpoint. There's power there, if one cares for it...

We are dependent on our eyes to get information about the world, but what we can see isn't the whole of what the world is. People have secrets, and there are things that just pass over our brains even though we can see them. To wit:

Seeing is all well and good but we shouldn't stop there. My martial arts teacher is giving me this unseen (or is it unnoticed?) component. For example, even though I am going through the movements of the form there should be things that are happening with my mind; there are things I should be imagining at key points and also all throughout.

Fajing

Erle Montaigue once sent me free of charge his DVD about Fajing. Now the exchange rate in my country for  pounds wasn't to sneeze at (today, it's pretty much the same); he gave me quite an expensive gift, out of the goodness of his heart. It turns out that he's been doing that for others, never being secretive about what he knew.

Through the years I've watched the video he gave me and read his books to get that magical skill. You can watch an excerpt of it below:

There's much that I gained from Erle. Sadly, after all those years I only really was able to practice two things from him: standing and punching. I was so fixated on punching back then, to gain the power that made his hand snap so loudly - the sound of one hand clapping, as he put it. I practiced the Taiji snap punch a lot - you do it by turning the palm over. I punched the air a lot, then switched to paper targets and hitting the wall. I once punched the wall so hard my middle knuckle felt like a small piece of it had separated and the shard was stuck just below the skin.

It's funny, thinking about it now, because of how much the journey getting to here from there really hurt. If I'd known what I was doing back then was completely against the principles of internal martial arts (and in fact, could be cancer-causing)... I should have done the standing practice more.

The standing practice I did then was the one in Erle's book - the Embracing a Tree posture, but I knew it as Wuji stance. The book itself recommended I do the practice for at least fifteen minutes, and this I did for a while. The thing was, standing still and keeping the arms up was so much harder than the punching practice. I eventually just went with practicing the punching.

Before I go further, for the benefit of the uninitiated I'm supplying a link to an article from the man himself on the subject of Fajing. I am not going to attempt to explain it because frankly speaking I am not at that level yet - more on this in a bit.

The standing practice, or Zhan zhuang, was instrumental in gaining the fajing power. It is a qigong that builds up health and enables the body to perform the correct movement. Erle emphasized being Sung, a concept that I now take to mean relaxed, yet full of potential. You are loose like a drawn bow, or an avalanche moments before it breaks. There is no unnecessary tension but at any moment you can explode.

Erle's book noted that the movement for his fajing was an explosive waist shake, in some cases causing the waist to turn opposite the movement of the arm or in other cases in the same direction as the arm (to wit, the Single Whip Posture). My mistake was in thinking that I needed to train this waist shake, that I needed to work for the power. As a result I ended up training incorrect movement, completely different from what Erle had intended. That's the trouble with taking things too literally.

With my current practice, I'm coming more and more to the realization that power isn't about exerting effort. It's about properly aligning your body and engaging the correct muscles to move with efficiency. There's a psychological dimension as well; the knots in the muscles are not the only things standing dissolves, the knot in the mind also gets identified and hopefully treated. For example, you produce more force leaning against a wall than when pushing against it. Yet, if you were in a pushing contest with someone often it will be hard to retain the same mind as when leaning against something. The drive is to make something go away, make something not reach you, to push something; without the drive, you're free to move your body in a manner that generates the maximum effect.

Using that power in a split second is one way of thinking about fajing, I think. It's about moving in a natural, spontaneous way that does not sacrifice defence or one's body. It was never a technique.

Many of the teachings I am getting now line up quite well with what Erle said. I now do standing practice two to three times a day, taking at least twenty minutes at a time; hopefully I'll be able to reach an hour soon. It's a bit more difficult as I am required to perform different postures and hold different visualizations, and all this somehow makes the training more tiring even though I'm just standing. For anyone interested, here's a pretty good instructional series I found on the Internet:

http://www.youtube.com/user/StandStillBeFit?feature=watch

My Martial Art

I suppose it's time I talked about my practice.

I found a book in the bargain bin of a bookstore back in college. I was a freshman and I was enjoying the greater freedom that I found then. The book was by Erle Montaigue, it was titled "Ultimate Dim-Mak: How To Fight A Grappler And Win." I still have that book.

Erle Montaigue learned Yang-style Taiji and Baguaquan. He introduced me to the world of internal martial arts. Life got in the way though and I never got the chance to train with him.

In late April of last year, I started studying a style. It isn't Taiji or Bagua - it's my Last Chance Style. I call it that because I consider Erle to be my first opportunity to learn under a master; I lost that opportunity. I had a second chance to learn, this time Xingyiquan, but again I let life get in the way and gave up too early. I've decided that this will be my Last Chance to become a master, to attain meritorious achievement.

The nice thing about studying Last Chance style is that you pay more attention. Your focus doesn't lag as much since you know that a mistake could prove disastrous to your continued tuition. You want to take more detailed notes; you buy the gear and actually practice with the gear rather than let dust gather over them. You're more conscious of getting on your teacher's good side as you want to make sure he withholds nothing from you. You buy books on the style, study videos, think about what you're being taught.

You can easily learn Last Chance style too. We have branches all over the world. It may not be the most consistent style (sometimes it can be eclectic - some teachers emphasize stand-up, others grappling), but membership is easy - just say you are and you are. I guarantee that you'll learn more out of it than any other style, we have a proven teaching method :)

We are going to die

I thought I should share this link. My words won't do it justice, so please check it out.

While I am on the subject of my obsessions, I would like to take the time to talk about a previous one that lasted me well over a decade. They call it cardboard crack.

I got introduced to it in my last year of grade school. I didn't really have the funds to pursue it then, neither did I have the connections for sourcing individual cards. Buying a pack was only for special occasions. The pack would be shared between me and my siblings, at first equally in groups of twenty then later by color.

I remember when I first saw people playing it, they seemed to be having so much fun. I felt sort of left out, and the cards had such unusual pictures. I was the one who prevailed on our parents to buy us the cards, it's funny since we didn't even know about preconstructed decks. We just assumed back then that each box was randomly put together.

My brother got the fundamentals of playing pretty quickly; I floundered quite a bit. I didn't really have a good grasp of building decks - I gravitated toward cramming together creatures and spells that seemed interesting to me and in my colors and adding enough lands to make it a deck. My brother went the creatureless route - focusing on black and red, and getting multiples of cards for more consistent drawing; I invariably would trek to a shop and buy cards that were in my budget, without a plan or a focus to what I wanted to do with them. I remember thinking for every card I bought back then that "This might be it." That this might be the card/pair of cards that would make my "deck." I'd range for shops to find; in high school it seemed like the initial craze for Magic the Gathering was dying down in my area. Back when we bought our first sixty 6th Edition cards most groceries had a small hole-in-the-wall selling; in high school the only shops would be inside malls. I had gotten a more substantial allowance and spent almost all of it on cards and comic books (the latter being a story for another time).

I only ever played at home - playing in school was out of the question as they had very strict policies. I didn't want to lose my "collection," which I kept in a narrow wood box that was originally for keeping teabags. In college, though, the perception of greater freedom caused me to go overboard. We had by then gotten an Internet connection, access to sites with information about the game enthralled me. I'm not proud of my conduct during this period. The game became the focus of my life, to the detriment of my academic work. I was so focused on trying to win, as within the circle I played with I had the biggest loss percentage. I just couldn't seem to get the game. I was dogged by the thought that one more card, one more idea, one more article read would somehow turn everything around.

I finished college, but my grades were disappointing. I found work at a call center; the pay was good, so I could still buy cards. But I had at that point no one to play with.

It felt at the time that I had nothing. Things have gotten better since then, I've gained some things to call my own, even nearly lost them again, but recovered and fought back. I managed to reinvent myself, but the regret is still there. Let's be clear that it wasn't the cards that were at fault; it was my own addictive personality that doomed me. If I had chosen not to play that game all those years ago, I would have found something else to waste myself on. I've distanced myself already; I don't play anymore, though I do occasionally visit my old haunts in the Web - those that are still up, anyway. Every once in a while, I still think - what if I paired this card interaction with this one? What if I bought this or that card? It's a small flash of competitiveness as my brother still plays to this day, just with our cousin - the both of them managed to avoid the pitfall. They play during the New Year, I just retire somewhere to sleep and ride out the fantasizing. I still have a deck, you see - all tricked out in fact, with nice sleeves. It's my final keepsake of that time in my life, the first deck that I had any success with, tweaked quite a bit to satisfy my delusions of Legacy grandeur.

For the interested, here is the list. It's crap, I know.

7 Mountain
6 Forest
4 Wooded Foothills
3 Taiga

4 Kird Ape
4 Basking Rootwalla
4 Wild Mongrel
4 Phantom Centaur
4 Arrogant Wurm

4 Lightning Bolt
4 Faithless Looting
4 Violent Eruption
4 Fireblast

3 Cursed Scroll
1 Umezawa's Jitte

I'd wanted to replace the Kird Ape copies with Goblin Guide, and the Phantom Centaur with Boggart Ram-Gang. Then I thought, this is never going to be Legacy-competitive, so I may as well consider it for what it is: a casual deck. And for a casual deck it's not that bad. I'll leave things at that; I don't want to be pulled back in.

The other Hallyu things I like

God bless the Koreans for giving kimchi to the world. I first got a taste of it when I went to an overnight Baduk camp; the teachers were a Korean couple and the meals were decidedly delicious. I also got to taste bibimbap that time, but it was kimchi that I developed an addiction for - the more fermented and/or spicier, the better. People at home don't really care for it, but they've mostly come around since. I really should start making these on my own, but impatience gets the better of me and I more often than not buy my supply from the local convenience store.

Korean cuisine is amazing - watching Maangchi's videos on Youtube like the one above really made me want to learn how to cook. Unfortunately, my tastes run toward hellfire and I can't get anyone here to sample my cooking on account of them wanting to die with their taste buds still intact...

I usually read Dramabeans for my fix of Korean shows. I much prefer reading about the plot than seeing it, truth be told; and such plots! I was surprised when I watched "49 Days," so long ago - the leads actually died! Every drama does stick to basic tropes, of course. There is always a love interest, a couple of third parties who complicate the burgeoning relationship,  comedic and suspenseful scenes, some action close to the climax; but the stories run the gamut - from vampire attorneys fighting crime to medieval wizards pursuing revenge to vigilantes with father issues to simple families torn by adversity to students dreaming of hitting the big time. And every episode had structure, had a point.

Even the other types of shows had quality. The premises were interesting and the situations the participants found themselves in were funny; it's reality shows done right, frankly speaking. Being so used to Western reality shows where everybody is so mean or shallow, Korean shows are a breath of fresh air.

Why I like K-Pop

To tell you the truth, it kind of crept up on me. What reason would a coffee drinker give when asked how he got hooked on his beverage?

I liked Sistar19's rehearsal video for their single "Ma Boy," I think it started there. It was unusual to me that a performer would release a video of their practice, where one would think that making sure the illusion of effortlessness is preserved would be the priority. From Sistar19 I moved on to liking the main group, Sistar (the naming scheme is also something I like to have occupy my thoughts - Are they sisters? They don't look nineteen...).

Beyond the the members' charm and looks, I find amazing their dedication to their careers. I remember reading an article about the group Rainbow (Are they supposed to be delicate and varied in personality like the colors of a rainbow? Do they only come out after it rains?), that they often have to take public transportation to a performance since they aren't that popular. Then in an opposite situation we have a group like T-ARA that is so busy they only get three hours of sleep daily, and they can't even take bathroom breaks. But popular or no, both of them most likely are the same in that for every number they have to practice choreography numerous times a day, every day, for months. For the same level of effort on one form they would probably be martial arts masters by now.

I picked up on T-ARA after watching Ham Eun-jeong in "Dream High." While MissA's Suzy (Are they A-listers? Help me out here) took time to grow on me, I instantly took a liking to Ms. Eun-jeong. I wanted to find out more about her and, several months of checking Youtube videos and articles later, here we are.

I really like this group. Hyomin is a comedian and Soyeon is very articulate; Jiyeon is adorable, Eun-jeong is accomplished and very talented. Hwayoung, Ahreum, and Dani aren't slouches either. They come across as human to me (Eun-jeong watched "Gakistal"! What an ahjumma...).

Now, I am aware that all this may be a production orchestrated by the executives that employ them. They may not actually be as personable as they make themselves appear. Then again, who is? They are professionals who perform a service, and they do it quite well even in the face of sickness or internal pressures. Regardless of how their career is advancing they work hard because this is what they love. I think within the group Ms. Jeon Boram is the best example of this. I'm sure that others would disagree, but in my opinion she's the heart of the group.

Medical Musings

Read this about how views in medicine can be influenced by the culture practicing the medicine, it's quite interesting. I've also come across this; both articles leave me with the impression that life can be very complicated, especially for those who have to go through conditions that medical practitioners do not fully understand yet.

I had to undergo Extracorporeal Shockwave Lithotripsy last month. It was an hour-long outpatient procedure - if I had gotten kidney stones a decade ago, they would have had to open me up to get at the stones. What a difference a decade makes, doesn't it? 

I was concerned though since when I tried to read more about the treatment I kept getting information that there was a risk for complications. It seems like the current mode medicine takes is to aim to treat your sickness at the cost of causing other conditions to arise that might not be as grave or immediately life-threatening.