T4
June 27, 2009
For the first time in my life, I went to see a movie by myself last night. I had always felt that going to see a movie was a social event and I had always had people come with me. Last night I decided to make it quality alone time since the woman was out with her coworkers and I really enjoyed it. I got to pick a movie without having to consider the woman’s preference. I could have my own drink (we usually share and she doesn’t like coke). I even had no neighbors in the theater because a 20:50 show is considered “late”. I think I’ve found a new pastime when I’m alone.
I went to see the new Terminator movie and while it’s called “Terminator Salvation”, it’s really “Terminator 4″. It was excellent. It was all I had hoped for. After the atrocity that was Terminator 3, I had my doubts about this new movie. I didn’t like T3 because they basically destroyed the premise built up from T1 and T2: that the future was now a dark highway and that humanity was free to decide its fate. In T3 they destroyed that idea and went into a deterministic, “It was meant to be so whatever happens will happen”.
In T4, the much anticipated fights in the future were done well although there weren’t many battles with multiple terminators – you mainly saw one terminator on the screen at any given time. I loved how they incorporated things from the past movies into this one without being overtly obvious. Kyle Reese was introduced well and I was hoping for a bit more character development. There was no main enemy found in each other Terminator movie but I guess the Marcus character was the closest thing. I won’t give up too much about the movie but I thought the story worked well and didn’t come as too big a deviation from the other films’ mood and plots. As expected Christian Bale did a fantastic job as John Connor. He excels in angry man roles. Even the Arnie model, as CG as it looked, worked itself into the movie well but I wish they showed Arnie more.
That’s about all I can think of right now. T4 is going to on my must-see-again list.
Broken
June 24, 2009
On Monday last week I made my way out to Kyoto for a class in the evening. I got there early around 6:00 for this 6:30 class. I headed to a Starbucks near the pharmaceutical company where I will be teaching and ordered a nice tall ice latte. With the heat approaching, there’s nothing like a nice tall late outside.
At around 6:10 I get a call from one of the guys from a company I work for asking where I was and if I was ok or not. Strange, I thought. I responded that I was near the company and that yes, I was, in fact, fine.
“The class started ten minutes ago…”
Oh crap on a stick.
I had somehow forgotten that this class actually starts at 5:50. I have classes that start at 6:30 and somehow I mixed the times up. I had to ditch my just arrived latte and made a mad dash for the company. In the end I was about 20 minutes late. The students were super understanding and really just laughed my apologies away. And I apologized profusely! I also apologized to my company and as expected, everyone was super cool about it.
What really bugged me was that in my nearly eight years in Japan, I had never, not even once, been late to a lesson until that day. As a trainer back in the old Nova days, it was my disliked responsibility to speak with teachers who did turn up late, whether it was an accident or not. I was probably one of the very very very few people who had never been late before there and I thought I could continue my beautiful record at this new place.
Sadly, I can no longer say “I have never been late”. I can only settle for a much less, “I have almost never been late”.
Masters
June 17, 2009
It’s very easy to write on my blog when so much happens in a matter of a few days.
Last week, I received a message from a couple of my kung fu brothers that an Australian tai chi/wing chun teacher visited the school and helped demonstrate some tai chi techniques and training methods to the class. On Saturday, he came again and this time I was there to meet him.
I am so glad I got to meet Sifu Mark Rasmus. He is a very polite and friendly martial arts teacher who was very respectful to all of us and our modest little school. He was also kind enough to be the guest teacher that day and he helped show us a lot of what the inner arts has to offer.
I’ve met a few inner arts teacher including my first teacher, Sifu Lee. With the inner arts training comes this power that’s almost mystical. Once you connect with a great teacher, you will immediately notice the inner power – they are like an immovable wall. Sifu Mark has incredible power – I’ve never experienced that kind of inner strength before. He could easily find my center of gravity with a mere touch and send me flying back if he so wanted to. I was floored – in the metaphorical sense, and luckily not in the literal sense.
I only wish Sifu Steve was in town to meet Sifu Mark – I think these two great masters would get along and there would be some very interesting conversation or debates about martial arts. We the students would benefit greatly from this.
Rain
June 10, 2009
Today welcomes the first rain fall of the rainy season this year. For me, this rain is a big marker: once the rain finishes, the humid summer comes in full blast. So, this makes it one of the last few times until the fall when I can enjoy a cool breeze and not worry about sweating out buckets.
Being a Vancouver boy, rain has always been a constant in my life and in many ways, watching the rain and hearing the rain is a kind of homecoming. As things sometimes are put into place by the invisible hand, my morning class was canceled giving me a chance to sit here alone enjoying a cup of coffee and listening to an old Art Bell show while watching the rain.
While I have a couple of class later on in the day, this moment is, for me, the most energizing and grounding time that I’ll have until I fall asleep tonight.
This is pure bliss.
Stupid webhost!
June 05, 2009
Stupid webhost migrated my website last night. While it was generally painless, I had written a long post yesterday and posted it. Now, I find my post is gone!
Anyway, I’ll recap in very brief bullet points:
- I was sad I didn’t post anything for the month of May
- I am disappointed that I haven’t posted my Philippines pictures and write-up (a very long one to be finished)
- I am going to switch to a new photo gallery system because I don’t really use Flickr
- I wish I had more time to write but I don’t because of work
