Seven things

I just noticed that Dave Chesser of Formosa Neijia tagged me… Dave, you’re supposed to tell the people that you tag! Still, now that I know… well, I’ve already written a lot about myself; it took me a while to think of seven things! Anyway, here they are FWIW:

• I attended the same school as Anthony Hopkins, though it was a Comprehensive, not a Grammar School, by the time I got there. I attended classes in the original 17th century building. I later attended another school in a castle that has been continuously occupied since the 12th century. It isn’t Hogwarts, but it does have lots of ghosts. Apparently.
• I was the only person in my year at school to have natural immunity to tuberculosis. That meant I got to laugh as everyone else went off for those painful injections, and I don’t have the usual scars on my upper left arm.
• I know how to do an 360-degree “eskimo roll” in a kayak, with or without a paddle.
• I don’t really believe in having heroes, but if I were to have one, it would probably be Laurens van der Post.
• I used to be a politician. From the outside, I would have appeared to be pretty successful, driven, ideologically committed, and a rising star. From the inside, it was driving me crazy, and I eventually quit to save my sanity.
• Watching The Matrix changed my life. It revived my interest in both martial arts and seeking enlightenment, and made me realize I couldn’t carry on living my life by following other peoples’ idea of what I should be doing.
• I’ve noticed that when I succeed in meditating regularly and can calm my mind, the “cross now” lights at pedestrian crossings always turn green just as I reach them, and I often don’t even have to break my stride.

Well, as I write this, it’s late, and I can’t be bothered to think of seven other people to tag, so the meme stops here.

Questions

Here are some of the people I’ve studied under during the last few years – some of them for periods of months, some for just a few hours.

• Nam Wah Pai (Taijiquan, Singapore)
• Nam Wah Taijigong Association (Taijiquan, Singapore)
• Rennie Chong (Taijiquan, Singapore)
• Madam Ge Chun Yan (Baguazhang, Singapore)
• Master Zhou Yue Wen (Baguazhang, Singapore)
• Alex Kozma (Baguazhang, Singapore)
• Master Liu Jing Ru (Baguazhang, Beijing)
• Zhang Sheng Li (Baguazhang, Beijing)
• Jinghua Wushu Association (Taijiquan, Beijing)

If you could ask them questions, what would you want to know?

Balinese dance and Stardust

A very pleasant day, spent in very pleasant and interesting company, though I talked too much out of nerves… My Drunken Sabre teacher is still unwell, so we had no class, and I went elsewhere…

After brunch in the World Music cafe, which isn’t particularly vegetarian-friendly, we went to the Esplanade to watch a dance piece based on a fusion of Balinese and Indian dance: Atma. I’m not sure how long that link will last, so here’s the blurb:

ATMA (Sanskrit for Soul), a process-driven contemporary dance theatre production, finally makes its debut in Singapore after performing to full-house audiences in Indonesia for the last two years.

Presented by Maya Dance Theatre, in collaboration with Institut Seni Indonesia-Denpasar, a renowned arts institution in Bali, Indonesia, and music composer Alex Dea, ATMA, is the third and final installation to the End of the Beginningseries that was staged as End of the Beginning in Surakarta, Central Java and Bali in 2004 and End of the Beginning – Ravana, at the 27th Bali Arts Festival in 2005.

The End of the Beginning series explored the birth, emergence and existence of Ravana, the villain of the Hindu Epic Ramayana.The third and final installation of the End of the Beginning series, ATMA, breathes a new life into the story of Ravana, by expounding on the cyclical journey of Man’s soul through transformations, defeat, karmic cycles and the ultimate redemption of Ravana’s soul – Moksha (liberation).

ATMA is created as an amalgamation of Asian dance forms (Bharatha Natyam and Baris Dance from Bali), sound, text and trans-cultural elements and is set within strong contemporary dance theatre design. The body of the dancer is considered sacred and infused with the soul of Ravana; the dancers undergo intense use of their physical self through space, time, and movements to execute the dance of ritual to invoke the ATMA of Ravana, Only entangled in a sudden net of demonic forces……

ATMA will be presented at the 5th International Indonesian Arts Festival in Novemenber in Bali, Indonesia.
For more information and pictures featuring our process, please log onto www.mayadancetheatre.org

At first I wasn’t terribly impressed – a little bit too much modern dance-style writhing around on the floor was in evidence, but it rapidly improved, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was over far too quickly. My companion – as they say in the restaurant reviews – also thought it was excellent. We repaired to the cafe downstairs for a review and further chat, and then sadly had to go different ways.

I headed off to Great World City to catch Stardust, which Suw Charman was raving about recently. I have to say, it was a lovely, lovely film: a great fairy tale. Plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, excellent dialogue, and played straight-faced – apart from the ghosts, of course. Very much a Princess Bride for our time, and definitely, very definitely, a great date movie. I wasn’t there on a date. But I wouldn’t mind seeing it again…

Perception

Do you see the woman spinning clockwise or anti-clockwise? I see it one of the two; it seems so obvious to me that I can hardly believe anyone can see it going the other way. Decide for yourself – I’ll say which way I see it in a comment – make up your mind before you read it!

I found this in Mr Wang’s blog; he in turn found it in the Australian Herald Sun – where you can also read about what the direction you chose says about you. I wish they’d said something about the origin of this, and whether it has any scientific validity…

Anyway, leave a comment about this if you want; I really would be interested to hear whether other people really do perceive it differently…

Surfing midnight with the ghosts

Last night was the final night of the Hungry Ghost Festival. The area where I live was aglow with the flare of joss sticks jammed into cracks in the pavement, or in the borders of gardens. Anywhere with some kind of significance had people burning big piles of Hell Money on the street, and in the housing estates the old oil drums had been brought out to act as furnaces.

I  met my friends from Chin Woo, and watched as they burned Hell Money as offerings to the spirits. As I’m not a member, I didn’t take part, but that didn’t stop a certain person from being rude. Well, it didn’t matter, and like I say, the overwhelming majority of Chin Woo people are really cool Quite a few people took photos, and I also took some shots at one fire where only my friends were present. One thing people like to do is to study the pictures to see whether the flames form observable shapes; quite a few seemed to show lions, dragons, and the like, as well as some human shapes. I got one shot  that seemed to show “snakes” (as one friend put it) looping around the bystanders…

Anyway, tonight I’m off to Wales. I was saying to one of my friends last night, it’s a good thing I’m not superstitious… the ghosts were out in force last night, and – let’s face it – today is a pretty ghost-ridden date to be flying. I take off late at night, and arrive in Europe early in the morning, so my flight is going to be close to the date line all the way… surfing midnight with the ghosts, yay!

Couldn’t have put it better myself

The latest from xkcd:

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There’s a storm coming in

Well, come and gone, to be exact, but only in the most literal sense.

Last night – round about 3am – there was a big electrical storm; the most intense I’ve experienced in all my time in Singapore. It seemed to be right overhead. I could feel the claps of thunder down my back; the percussive shock was overwhelming. The lighting flashed purple on my retina even though I had the curtains drawn, my eyes closed, and was facing away from the window towards the wall. The rain battered my windows like an avalanche of white noise. There was nothing to do but wait it out. It felt like a portent.

Shandong girl update

Hehehe, this one’s for Stephan

It occurred to me after practice last week that I hadn’t seen the waitress in my local coffeeshop for a while; this is the Shandong girl I wrote about before.  In fact, I realised she hadn’t been there since Chinese New Year. So, I asked the proprietor what happened to her. “Aiyoh, that one no more here already!” was the reply, followed by a tirade along the lines of “Tha’ one no wan’ work, want easy duty only! Not in my shop lah!”, so I guess the upshot is that she’s been sent packing back to China, or at least somewhere else in Singapore with lighter work and shorter hours. Well, you win some, you lose some.

It’s funny, laugh!

It’s the ultimate showdown…. Thanks to Bobbe Edmonds for directing me to:

Bambi …

versus…

Great Cthulhu.

Not exactly on-topic for this blog, but heck, it made me laugh.