Tech Booboo & the Elderly

So apparently while I was setting up all my I Ho Chuan stuff on my Ipad I misplaced or modifed some important links to my blog pages,  I could see previous blogs at my blog site but could not log in and get anything to display on my dashboard.  Fortunately they have help topics on google, apparently others have done this as well, so I got it all worked out.

I am sorry to have missed so much with the I Ho Chuan this last couple of months it has not been a lack of interest or engagement.  It has all been personal stuff that I put off last winter and had piled up into a marathon of packing, donating, hauling away to the dump, painting, repairs, cleaning and yard work that had to be done so we can sell my Mom's house for her. She is not in the best of health and cannot do this for herself any more.  It is truly amazing how much stuff a 75 year old woman can accumulate and  how run down a property can get in 5 years.  On Saturday night / Sunday morning we got back from Sylvan Lake at 1:30 am and it is done!  The house is listed and they start showing it on June 9th (Monday).   This is a huge responsibility off my shoulders and I am very thankful it is done.  

Cookie Marathon

So the cookie baking marathon is on, we are at 96 and we still have about 60 more to go!  Dean & I are bringing a roaster full of his famous ( in the Beckett family) monster cookies for the bake sale.  I am pretty excited about the pandemonium, got about $400 raised for the charities so far and trying for more.  Bringing my escrima sticks so I can get caught up on form reps!  Let's hope the weather stays nice.

Thanks to a fellow team member!

So I have had some help in my stick form from Sifu R Langner, he has been helping me learn this totally cool move from his hook sword form that works awesome for escrima sticks as well.  Two weeks ago we started with a basic which I practiced and now we have added the turns and a cool finish.   I will keep practicing to get it all smooth and flowy.  This has been a real challenge learning a totally new weapon and I have a new appreciation of the difficulty of learning from utube videos and books.  A huge thanks to a team member who took the time to help me out.  This is one of the totally great aspects of the I Ho Chuan team and why I love being part of it.   Thank you Sifu Langer!   Who says and old dog can't learn new tricks :)

Nerd in training

So I am in Calgary doing a third test run on blogging when away from work or home. Tried doing this on my cell phone with no success.  However the iPad works great,  this was easy to do however the copy & paste to the other site might be challenging.  Really the technology is nice but the learning curve can be brutal.  Got the tracking sheet from Sifu Weibe and got it working, its pretty slick!

Fascinating

So it's been scary trying to put together a form for a weapon I know nothing about. I have felt like a fake doing a performance and it eats at my confidence.  So I have been seriously studying the philosophy behind the movements. Did you know that the reason the form is so linear and has such limited foot movements is because originally it was practiced in rice fields.  So in the rows between the rice plants, where it is muddy and slippery, where big foot movements could have you quickly sitting in the mud.  That's fascinating!  And it helps me in designing the form, now I am in a rice field, it makes me aware in a totally different way.  I am really enjoying studying the style and learning the patterns and they have cool names as well.  It's still pretty slow in comparison to what I see on utube but it is coming toghether mentally as well as physically.

Catching up

It has been an insane two weeks with work, my computer crashed (lost all my email stuff) and had to be restored to factory defaults and all the programs downloaded and installed. Then just to keep things fun ... a two day trade show and a three day business course last weekend. I haven't been in the office and I still have all the regular stuff. So the result is I am behind on everything, teaching, form reps, situps, kicks, acts of kindness, blogs ... all of it needs to be caught up on. So I will start catching up with the most important one blogging.

This week I bought an ipad, easiest piece of technology I have setup in a long time. Never used an apple product before and I must admit I am impressed. Linked my email account, so I can stay in the loop with the school and can blog from home easily. Got my evernote which I use for organizing things downloaded and the whole thing works beautifully with my wireless booster from home and its fast. Still got lots to learn but so far awesome, I think I am in love!

Worked on my escrima stick form today and have actually gone backwards and not forwards because I have not been focused on developing it. Yikes! However March is almost over and the rest of the year is not so heavily booked up things will go back to the regular schedule. Now I am focused on catching up, will probably be sore but hey so what. Looking forward to attending classes on Friday & Saturday, have really missed the training and people.

Learning Technique from YouTube

I have been watching escrima, kali and arnis stick forms until my eyes cross trying to decipher strikes, blocks and stances.  Most of the stuff on YouTube is so fast you can hardly see what is going on.   It has been very challenging although Sifu Dennis (who always see the positive side) did point out that it will help me develop my eye for detail.  Well the 'eye' is getting a real workout. So it may not reflect in my stick work yet but my brain is stuffed.