Goju-Ryu Karate

Short club vid made by Sensei Chris

Cannabis Commercial

hehehe ah not seen this for years, always makes me laugh tho. Just trying out uploading vids and linking them to web pages for sensei.

Sensei Bakkies 27th Oct 07

Sensei Bakkies 27th Oct 07, originally uploaded by ianmibbo.

or "The importance of being there".

In the car on the way back from sensei bakkies seminar last saturday evening sensei chris made it known that he wanted articles for the club website and maybe even a blog entry covering saturdays seminar. I must admit I was a bit stumped for what to write at first. My initial gut reaction is, cool, I managed to learn and some continuous bunkai that I had always thought very cool, but that betrays the depth of the experience. In order of declining time, I've practised hapkido, taekwondo, gojuryu, aikido, aiado, taijutsu and a smattering of other arts and in that time I've been very lucky to meet some exceptional teachers. That said... I've seldom seen anything in a seminar that I've not seen at some point written down in a book somewhere, on a dvd or video, on the internet or via some other medium.

What does that mean? I have a friend who works in e-learning who recently blogged (sadly now missing) about the "Importance of being there". Her other half is a lecturer in philosophy, and the general thrust of the argument was "So what if people record the lectures and give it to people who weren't there", they are giving up something by not being present, the detailed content is not always the most important thing.

Sensei bakkies said, and I quote (but without the accent or rugby world cup jokes), "I'm a very lazy person, if there were any short cuts in karate, I would have taken them by now". I wonder if these two messages don't point to the same fundamental idea: you aren't going to be told any mystical truths by turning up to meet someone claiming more experience than you, *But* what you are going to be, if you're really lucky, is inspired to keep looking for your own answers, to keep sweating (There was a lot of that) and keep trying with real heart, not just go through the motions, because at the end of the day, you have seen that there is some pay-off for all the hard work, that although there are no short cuts, over time the process does effect a change, and that although it's difficult to see the inch-pebbles in day to day life, they do add up to milestones eventually

I thoroughly enjoyed my exhausting day in london with sensei bakkies, and afterwards I enjoyed the two bottles of beer and pizza all the more for knowing how hard the day was. Yeap, I learned some technical details I wasn't very good at or diddn't know before, but above all else I was inspired to try harder every time. All told, what would I have done with my saturday otherwise? No comparison!

Incidentally, I'm inspired every time I go training, but thats another story </grovel> ;)

George Dillman on National Geographics

Dillman on national geographic

Anyone for books?

Hey all :) I've just ordered a copy of The Bubishi (and some other book amazon recommended) and it made me think about the mass of training books I have.. so here's a link to my library thing catalog training tag, I'll add all my training related books. If anyone wants to borrow anything, just shout up!

Cheers,
e.

Cute youtube vid

Neato vid pointed out by Glenn, Ah you have to feel for the guy when sensei nails him with that punch :)

Grading - Sept 4th 07 - Everyone

Grading - Sept 4th 07 - Everyone, originally uploaded by ianmibbo.

Heres a link to the actual photo until I can figure out how to make the flickr slideshow work on the right hand bar. I'm such a n00b.

Grading Photos

Yay: Photos of a very tired, but happy looking bunch

We knew them back when.....

Finally a link to the <-Picture This-> page! Tracks sound great, Go for it fellas! And make sure the next gig isn't on a training night!

Norton Dojo Blog

Last night Sensei suggested I look up the Iain Abernethy web site, as it's pretty good and well aligned with the Norton-Dojo ethos (For want of a better word). I duly did as instructed ;) but then got to thinking that there should be an easier way to share this kind of info. I know Sensei likes to keep the club website up to date, but it tends to have well thought out, well reasoned and written articles. Lets face it, not attributes commonly associated with the internet ;). So, I figured I'd do a couple of things just to make it easier to share less, um, structured content :)

First off, I've created a global del.icio.us (The social bookmarking site) tag called norton-dojo. If you're a delicious user, anything you tag as "norton-dojo" will appear on this page. The last five items tagged will also appear on the left hand side of this blog window (It's not quite real time, but links should appear after a day at the most).

Secondly, there's this blog. If you have a blogger.com account, shout me and I'll add you as someone able to post here. Alternatively, it's possible to email blog entries just using a standard mail client, so again, shout up and I'll add your email address to the list of addresses allowed to submit posts.