Ouch. I'm hurting. I thought I'd try something different this weekend, so I asked a good friend to submit me to a beating. I let him have two go's at it, the second time using a stick. For good measure, he let me have a stick too, to defend myself, but it didn't make much of a difference. To be honest, it's not so much the beating I got that hurts (although my nose hurst a little from when he gave me a good punch straight in the face) but rather the times he'd let me hit him. I hurt in strange places. For some reason my legs hurt a lot, because you need to move around alot and use your legs to push your body forward when you make a punch. Or something like that.
The unarmed combat was actually under the supervision of a Wing Chun teacher. Wing Chun is that martal art style that Bruce Lee made famous. The teacher was some sort of ex-bodyguard and had adapted this style to the situations you'd find on a street. His aim, he said, was to teach you to fight wearing a suit and an overcoat, and possibly even wearing bullet proof west. Sounded pretty hardcore, but I suspect it may just have been an excuse not to teach us how to kick.
The stick fighting was really really fun, and my friend has actually worked as an instructor. Stick fighting uses less force and places more emphasis on defense. The latter makes a lot of sense. While you can take a punch or a kick, you really don't want to allow a stick to hit you. So you train a much more defensive posture.
It was a busy weekend. I didn't just attend my first fighting classes, I had my first real chinese lesson! I've enlisted a personal tutor who will visit me at the office three times a week. We agreed that I've reached an intermediate level, so we will focus our time on chatting rather than working with texts. Also, the fighting has really taken it's toll on my hands, so I can't write using a pen and paper. I'm even finding it difficult to press the space bar writing this! So for a while we'll just be practicing talking and listening skills.
It does appear that I might have the edge on this language. Chinese is actually quite easy, it's just that they've made it more difficult by using those beautiful but stupid chinese sings instead of an alphabet. However, I find it really enjoyable to learn these characters, I enjoy searching for the system behind these signs and can spend hours just exploring new characters. However, this is usually considered the worst and most boring part of the language, so many westerners skip it altogether. I'm coming to this languages enjoying it's most difficult part, so now that I'll start taking classes, hopefully I will be able to pick it up quickly. We'll see
Not only did I start my martial arts training and chinese tuition. I also explored my new shopping addiction a little further. It's mad living in Causeway bay, whenever I go out for a chicken with rice or just out for a little walk, I'm confronted with one of the more hectic shopping areas in the world. All these bargain, shiny products screaming out at me from displays under strong, attention grabbing lights.
I've realized that my approach to shopping has been completely wrong up to now. Having bought some nice jeans and a really italian-looking blue shirt, I realized that I needed white shoes+belt for this set to look it's best. As the jeans+shirt had cost a lot of money, I thought maybe now I'll head off to the bargain market over on Kowloon side. Now, Causeway Bay may be one of the busier shopping districts I know of, but Mong Kok in Kowloon is definately the busiest in the world. It's streets after streets of pulsing crowds, shops, stalls and restaurants. You think it will end at some point, but it just slowly transitions from extremely busy to very busy, and then goes on forever. After browsing the stalls for a while I understood two things:
- Escalation: once you buy an expensive piece of clothing, it requires quite a lot of will power to buy something cheaper to go with it.
- Priorities: you don't go cheap on accessories. You can save money on your clothes, but not on your bag, belt, shoes and sunglasses.
So, I quickly gave up on the busiest district in the world and headed back to the high end brand stuff and got myself a nice belt and some nice lamb skin shoes. Yes, I've overspent, but I'm writing this off as learning-related expense. Wearing an expensive shirt with cheap shoes is NOT the thing to do. While wearing the belt to end all belts with cheap old jeans and a dirty t-shirt could definately work. Now, I just bought an ordinary nice belt in the end and instead spent the money on the lamb skin shoes. I wore the shirt, jeans, white shoes+belt out on Saturday and overall I must say it was a pretty good show. It was a bit too much, but then I knew that beforehand- but sometimes you just really really want to wear all the new things you bought, right.
Speaking of going out, I headed off to Cyber in Kowloon in my new outfit. Partying in Cyber is not really the thing to do if you're a westerner, but I quite enjoy hanging out with the young cantonese hamsters. They listen to some very suspect music, but I quite enjoy it. And going against the trend (usually the cantonese come visit us in our ghetto, rather than the other way around) earns you quite a bit of attention both on the cantonese side and back in the ghetto.
All in all, wow what a busy weekend! I've broken myself financially, but I've learned many things about shopping and about the cantonese clubbing traditions. I've broken myself physically, but learned to keep my body tight and how to throw a good right hand punch. I'm still living in a rat-hole, but I'm learning Chinese. Excellent.
Showing posts with label Physical Arts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Physical Arts. Show all posts
Sunday, March 19, 2006
Monday, February 20, 2006
Frogs, Zen and opulent fans
I need to start carrying a notepad around so that I can write down where I've been. A taxi driver was kind enough to take me to the most amazing frog restaurant in Singapore, but I have no idea how to get back there. I've always been a fan the Sichuan frog dish, which is served on pebbles and with lots and lots of chili. The one I had on sunday was a local singaporean dish and definately pushed that one out first place, it was absolutely scrumptuous. After the meal I asked how much I'd eaten, and it turned out I'd consumed three whole suckers! I'm not sure why that feels so embarrasing.
Another great place I'd like to revisit was some marina in northern Singapore. Phil, my old friend from uni who I randomly bumped into here in Singapore, introduced me to wakeboarding. Unfortunately, at the time I thought I'd managed to loose my camera, so there's no pictorial proof (I've since then located my camera). That's a shame, because I actually managed to get up on the board and even learned the basics of swirving left and right. It was so ZEN, man! The whole secret of wakeboarding can be summarized in two tenets:
1. Don't try
2. Look cool
I mean, how ZEN isn't that. I'm planning to become a professional wakeboarder and then write a book called ZEN and wakeboarding. I've heard the one about zen and motorcycle maintenance sold pretty well, so I think there's a market out there.
But, so... yeah! ZEN. Whenever I tried anything, i would promptly fall into the water. And every time the instructure would drive the boat back to me and tell me: "Don't try". Just relax and look cool. And it was true. For instance, if I wanted to swirve to the right, through the waves made by the boat to get out on the right side of the boat, the secret lay in NOT looking at the difficult waves. Only by looking up into the distance and pretending there were no waves was I able to do it. Same thing with turning back into the wake of the boat. As soon as I looked down at the water and tried to figure out how to deal with the nasty waves, I'd fall right in. But if I pretended I was posing for a fashion shoot, looking out into the distance, even waving to people on the beach and saying: "ciao!" then there was no problem.
Also went to the night safari sunday night. By this time I had found my camera, but in order not to scare the animals, we couldn't use the flash, and so any attempt to take pictures (remember, this was the NIGHT safari) was pretty doomed.
But absolutely worth it. I'm becoming quite a fan of doing these tourist things. I mean, you've got to spend your day doing something, right? Instead of shopping or lazing about in a bookshop or reading the economist on your sofa at home, why not go to the Chinese Gardens? Take a cookery class? Or cycle through Ubin island? Even though I'm usually very very tired when i do these things, due to a rather demanding nightlife, it's kind of cool to spend that tiredness on weird tourist stuff.
My Autralian friend has finally made his blog public, open for all to see. Go check it out! Post lude adverts in his comments section! He's obviously going to get himself fired from his new job, from the sounds of it. great pics from the chinese new year celebrations in Australia. I was in Hong Kong and Singapore during the chinese new year, but somehow I missed it all.
But I do have pictures from Raffle's hotel. I met the same office geek there as last time (the guy in the cheap white, stripey shirt), but he's ok so that's cool. Pia (my german flatmate who you will know from blockbusters such as the German Girl Shrine on Ubin island) has her boyfriend visiting, so of course we had to introduce him, Andi, to the Singapore Sling. Invented in 1910 or maybe it was 1914, this is the source of this most sickly sweetish drink. I think you can tell from the colour it's not really intended for blokes. I'm hiding my beer as i'm taking this photo. And Andi took a loooooooooong time finishing his.
The second photo is of the fans in the ceiling of Long Bar, the bar where we had our slings. I just wanted to introduce you to the high class establishment version of a fan. yeah! opulance, baby, opulance!
Another great place I'd like to revisit was some marina in northern Singapore. Phil, my old friend from uni who I randomly bumped into here in Singapore, introduced me to wakeboarding. Unfortunately, at the time I thought I'd managed to loose my camera, so there's no pictorial proof (I've since then located my camera). That's a shame, because I actually managed to get up on the board and even learned the basics of swirving left and right. It was so ZEN, man! The whole secret of wakeboarding can be summarized in two tenets:
1. Don't try
2. Look cool
I mean, how ZEN isn't that. I'm planning to become a professional wakeboarder and then write a book called ZEN and wakeboarding. I've heard the one about zen and motorcycle maintenance sold pretty well, so I think there's a market out there.
But, so... yeah! ZEN. Whenever I tried anything, i would promptly fall into the water. And every time the instructure would drive the boat back to me and tell me: "Don't try". Just relax and look cool. And it was true. For instance, if I wanted to swirve to the right, through the waves made by the boat to get out on the right side of the boat, the secret lay in NOT looking at the difficult waves. Only by looking up into the distance and pretending there were no waves was I able to do it. Same thing with turning back into the wake of the boat. As soon as I looked down at the water and tried to figure out how to deal with the nasty waves, I'd fall right in. But if I pretended I was posing for a fashion shoot, looking out into the distance, even waving to people on the beach and saying: "ciao!" then there was no problem.
Also went to the night safari sunday night. By this time I had found my camera, but in order not to scare the animals, we couldn't use the flash, and so any attempt to take pictures (remember, this was the NIGHT safari) was pretty doomed.
But absolutely worth it. I'm becoming quite a fan of doing these tourist things. I mean, you've got to spend your day doing something, right? Instead of shopping or lazing about in a bookshop or reading the economist on your sofa at home, why not go to the Chinese Gardens? Take a cookery class? Or cycle through Ubin island? Even though I'm usually very very tired when i do these things, due to a rather demanding nightlife, it's kind of cool to spend that tiredness on weird tourist stuff.
My Autralian friend has finally made his blog public, open for all to see. Go check it out! Post lude adverts in his comments section! He's obviously going to get himself fired from his new job, from the sounds of it. great pics from the chinese new year celebrations in Australia. I was in Hong Kong and Singapore during the chinese new year, but somehow I missed it all.
But I do have pictures from Raffle's hotel. I met the same office geek there as last time (the guy in the cheap white, stripey shirt), but he's ok so that's cool. Pia (my german flatmate who you will know from blockbusters such as the German Girl Shrine on Ubin island) has her boyfriend visiting, so of course we had to introduce him, Andi, to the Singapore Sling. Invented in 1910 or maybe it was 1914, this is the source of this most sickly sweetish drink. I think you can tell from the colour it's not really intended for blokes. I'm hiding my beer as i'm taking this photo. And Andi took a loooooooooong time finishing his.
The second photo is of the fans in the ceiling of Long Bar, the bar where we had our slings. I just wanted to introduce you to the high class establishment version of a fan. yeah! opulance, baby, opulance!
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