2013-05-18 21:45:00
"I don't think you understand what this thing is for." he said, gesturing with his shinai.
It didn't hurt as much as Zicarlo-sempai's stab to the stomach, but it stung a bit anyway. Only a little though and I'm putting aside the emotional aspect, to analyze the technical message behind it. Instead of sulking, it makes me want to train three or four times each week! Were I not a family man, I'd sign up with Museido right away for more practice.
But let's backpaddle a bit to the beginning.
Today's class in Amstelveen was great, with a big turnup and an all-star cast. Our usual crew was expanded with a few high placed teachers and students from Museido and Fumetsu. A chance for us all to learn something new!
Class followed the usual structure: kata, warming up, kihon, jigeiko. To prepare for my upcoming ikkyu exam I practiced kata with Zicarlo and Hans, learning the fifth kata along the way. I'm actually pretty happy with how that went, though there wasn't much tension between us. That's something to work on.
Kihon practice went alright, though I let myself coast through it too much. I often let my body run on autopilot instead of paying attention and being fully aware of what's going on. That's not right. And yes, my chisai techniques are still awful. Given my lack of stamina I'm happy to say I did not take the short break that was offered between kihon and jigeiko, but instead jumped into a little shinsa practice with Zicarlo. "Every week a little stronger" as I keep telling myself in mokuso.
Seeing how the chance rarely occurs, I lined up with Mark Herbold-sensei for my second jigeiko. I first met him a few weeks ago at the CT where he impressed me with his teaching style and personality. After Tsuyuguchi-sensei's admonishment ("You should hit!") I'd picked up my pacing considerably, so I tried my best with Mark. In my mind I was not backing down and I was giving it multiple shots in a row. Compared to a few weeks ago I thought I was doing better. Maybe I was, meaning that I was pretty darn bad a few weeks ago ;)
After class I went to pay my respects and to get some feedback from Mark. You already know how he opened: "I don't think you understand what this thing is for." he said, gesturing with his shinai. Direct. No sugar coating. But definitely not the only thing he said, because he took quite some time to explain.
That was the big take-away from today: be ready to jump and kill from the get-go, don't start building your energy after you've already engaged your opponent.
It was a sobering experience, which is something I need from time to time to remind me that I really am a rank beginner. But I'm going to use it to motivate myself. And yes, I'm still going to take the exam next week, simply to get an appraisal of my current level. It'll be a learning experience, however it turns out.
kilala.nl tags: kendo, sports,
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2013-05-17 21:48:00
Trading card games are on my mind these days. I'm still poking around Shadow Era and I'm playing the old Magic:tG Shandalar PC game. So when the lovely boys at Penny Arcade wrote an enthousiastic comic about upcoming game HEX I just had to take a look.
HEX is an MMO-TCG crossover, meaning that it's not just a trading card game like MtG or SEra but it also involves a massively multiplayer environment. It's not just you playing solo games against other players or against the computer, there's cooperation! The game has already been in development for two years and now they're running a Kickstarter project to garner interest and to gather a large group of people for the open Beta.
After reading their site a little bit I was confused about some of the gameplay features they're putting in. But watching the gameplay video made it all clear. It's a great looking game, with a whole bunch of cool features which are only possible because it is a digital game. I'm enthused and I signed up for the lowest tier of the Kickstarter, which comes with a few nice perks.
Pictured on the left is one of the eight races from the game, the Shin'hare. I'll definitely be playing them with one of my decks. They're a bunch of evil, militaristic, samurai-like killer bunnies :)
Having played EVE Online for a short while, I'm especially looking forward to the MMO aspects. You wouldn't believe it, but I've actually already found a guild that I'm joining: they're casuals like myself and their goal is friendliness and to be helpful. They don't feel they need to excel at tournaments or raids, they just want to be a bunch of friends helping each other out. Ladies and gentlemen: the Filthy Savages. ( ^_^)
With many thanks to forum member C-Drive (who's joined the guild) for the wonderful logo and banner design :)
The last time I played an MMO I got too caught up too quickly. C&C:TA pulled at me day and night, mostly because it needed constant interaction to ensure that units and resources would be built. I quit very quickly because of that. HEX doesn't pose this problem at all, which I'm happy about.
Looking very much forward to the Beta opening in September!
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2013-05-17 21:35:00
I've been playing Shadow Era on and off for the past year, both digitally on OS X and the iPad and at the dinner table with friends. It's a nice TCG, which is well-balanced and which is still fresh with a budding community. I've got a complete playset in the digital game and a big wad of cardboard ready to play with my mates. I'm really not that good, but I do enjoy the game tremendously.
The same went for my past TCG love, Magic: the Gathering. I used to play a bit, never got any good and had a lot of fun. Which is why I was very happy when a forum acquaintance pointed out that Slightly Magic have set up a version of the original Microprose "Shandalar" (1997) which can be used on Windows XP. Wonderful! The original version wouldn't work well on modern PCs as they're too fast, so this modded version is a godsend. Here are the instructions and download links.
It took me a little while last night, but it's running wonderfully in my WinXP virtual machine on Mac OS X. Lovely! It's still a pretty great game and it stems from the high point of my Magic heyday.
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2013-05-17 06:24:00
In many aspects our girl is showing that she's a growing kid. Not two weeks ago I looked at her eating dinner and thought to myself "That's not a toddler anymore, that's a little girl".
She's eating dinner with knife and fork now, not just a fork or a spoon anymore. Sure, she'll still wave that thing around or hold it like a pen, but she's also using it the way she should. Cutting meat or potatoes, putting some sauce on her food. A while ago we even let her make her own sandwhich for lunch; we should do that more often!
Two weeks ago she achieved her first diploma in swimming class. In my day we used to have the A, B and C diploma's for profficiency, but in Dana's case it's Kikker (frog) 1 through 7 I believe. Number 4 will be equivalent to what I know as A, meaning that you're capable of swimming by yourself and that you're completely safe in the water. For now, Kikker 1 means that she can paddle along with a surfboard and with "wings" on, that's she's making good "frogs legs", that she's swum with some clothes on and that she's not affraid to jump into the water by herself. Awesome!
Finally, she's still enjoying gym class and last week she walked the beam 100% by herself for the first time. She was so proud! And so are we by the way. She really wanted to show me during class, so she ran out and came to get me from where I was reading. She got up on that beam, spread her arms for balance and put her feet down in precise steps. That was great to see :)
Sleeping is going pretty well these days! We're still doing the sticker posters and she's still enjoying that. She goes to sleep without much hassle, though she sometimes wakes up way too early in the mornings. In general she's doing fine though.
We bought a clock for her bedroom on Queen's Day, to get her up to speed on telling time. For now, we're posting a sketch of the time that she's allowed to get out of her room. During the week and on Saturday the drawing on her closet will read 0715 and on Sunday it'll change to 0800. During last week's holiday it was 0830. She's been a champ with that and it really is like clockwork when she gets up to wake us. A few times now I've heard her open her door at the precise time, to pitter-patter to our bedroom to inform us that "mommy, the clocks match!".
Yeps, she's growing up :)
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2013-05-08 08:38:00
Yesterday's training has two big take-aways for me.
Throughout class I had been paying attention to all my weak points: only use my left hand, relax in kamae after kakegoe, don't have my left heel too high, proper timing of strikes and fumikomi, practice my chisai men strikes in the right way and keep on pushing through the exhaustion. I was feeling pretty good about myself! I managed to get through five of the six rounds of jigeiko too :)
Then comes the time to do jigeiko with Tsuyuguchi-sensei. He attacks me a few times, I attack him a few times but I leave plenty of openings unused. Then we get into tsubazeriai and he looks me in the eye smiling and says:
"You should hit."
I keep on making glancing blows against him and I often fail to grasp an opening he makes for me. Again in tsubazeria he smiles and repeats: "You should hit. You should hit." And he's right. Obviously. :)
kilala.nl tags: kendo, sports,
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2013-05-06 08:19:00
Change of plans! A few weeks ago I had a chat with Marli, who'd asked me if I still wanted to take my ikkyu exam by the end of May. Originally I'd take the test in winter because of our wedding anniversary, but since we're taking a few days of fun midweek she wanted me to go anyway. Yay :)
I'm feeling pretty confident about taking the ikkyu exam, insofar that I -know- most of the things I need to demonstrate. Most of the things I can actually do well, but I am not certain that my fighting skills are at the level that's needed. The most important weak point is my hunger/bloodlust: as Donatella-sensei remarked months ago I attack a general direction, not a specific target.
Saturday's class was great and started off with a nice surprise: our friend Sebastian, who departed for Germany a few months after I started kendo, came to visit for some jigeiko! In the absence of Ton-sensei and Hillen, Kris-fukushou led class with kihon and jigeiko. Many things were said and done, some important pointers being:
For me personally, Kris had two important points of feedback:
As my mantra for mokuso goes these days: "every week a little stronger"... Despite getting more and more tired, I fought myself through jigeiko.
kilala.nl tags: kendo, sports,
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2013-05-01 16:31:00
We promised, didn't we? She can ride a bike by herself now and we can go on bike rides with the three of us. We did so yesterday!
So there we go! The old bike was sold for €50 (trade-in value) and a new one bought for €209, with a €20 helmet thrown in for good measure. We're happy and Dana's happy. Huzzah for the white/pink "Hello Kitty!" bike. She rode it home and couldn't wait to go for another ride.
kilala.nl tags: baby, awesome,
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2013-05-01 16:28:00
I got an SMS from Marli at the office, telling me to check out our Photostream.
Dana had drawn daddy doing kendo <3
Well, she got the basic requirements! :) The blue uniform, the helmet, the sword... It's all there.
kilala.nl tags: kendo, baby, awesome,
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All content, with exception of "borrowed" blogpost images, or unless otherwise indicated, is copyright of Thomas Sluyter. The character Kilala the cat-demon is copyright of Rumiko Takahashi and used here without permission.