'Ello All,
Been about 6 months since the last blog and stuffs been happening so I figured I'd write another one.... That and I should be working.
Work Life
Anyone who's spoken to me in the past few months will have heard me swearing about the state of the Scottish job market. The main reason for this is that I REALLY want to move to Scotland so as to allow me to spend more time with my good lady. Long distance has been good by all accounts, but it was only ever gonna make sense for a finite amount of time. Actually getting work up there has proved embarassingly hard to date... Not seen a single job in my actual area so have been looking at project support roles without any success. The next phase is going to have to be hitting the agencies in person, might even get a hair cut for it! Gonna keep plugging away at it, but looks like Reading will have to endure me for a while yet.
OU Life
I passed my first year! :D Quite well by all accounts, my final essay let me down a little bit. The comments I got were "I wanted to give this a higher mark than I did both for the quality of the thinking and the writing. However I don't believe you fully answered the question..." Blast. That said I was still comfortably in 2:1 territory when it all shook out, so overall a bit of a win. I start my next module (hard(-ish)core politics) next week. I may end up taking on a Philiosophy module in Feb as well which will leave me doubled up for 4 months. Not sure about the wisdom of this given how much I've got on in general, the thing is all the Politics modules start in October and all the philiosophy ones in Feb. Basically this means I'll either need to double up at some point or have an excessive break between modules, final decision date is the 16/12/09. At this point I'm buggered if I know the best plan!
Kinetic Life
I believe I'd just started out with Aikido last time I blogged. Yesterday I passed my first grading to become a fully fledged white belt. :D It was a long old grading day which involved 7 hours of training/grading. I went first and surprisingly only got 5 errors out of a possible 20... I love the comments I got back, stuff like "Needs to be rounder when receiving technique". Aiming to get me next belt around March time, there's quite a bit to learn and an awful lot of pain to get there. As a group we've been told that off the back of the grading we'll all be spending a lot of time on Yonkyo. That would be an attack to the nerve clusters in the forearm, which makes your arm feel like its on fire... About fire and such, its been a good year for the spinning. My poi skills have developed really well this year, I'm moving around freely and have gained a base level of skill spinning behind the back and with my arms at full extension. My aim for next year is to get some fully qualified "mad shit" going and to get gigs. The new prop for the year has been most enjoyable, its called a rope dart. Basically a 14ft rope with a massive poi head on the end of it. I can tie myself up with it and kick, whip and wrap it all over the show.
Well that's me at the minute, a shameless hippy who's attitude problem is still very much intact.
Take it easy all.
C
Comments
Cool blogupdate, sir. Although you fail to mention what is wrong with your knees!
Also, really liked the way you split everything up.
Cheers! And oh yeah... Me knees are just a bit sore after yesterdays epic training session. Pretty much every technique you receive in Aiki involves being driven into the floor and pinned so you get an impact on the knees going down and getting up. Given that I am quite tall a lot of the the doing involves sinking down. The first 4 hours or so weren't so bad but then I really started to feel it!
About a million years ago when I dabbled with Taekwondo, I remember doing different stretches for different types of training session. If we were doing free sparring, it'd be a bit more cardo vascular as well as stretches. Are there any special knee stretches?
There's a couple that we do... To be fair its mostly indicative of poor technique in parts and my bandy legs don't help. Its improved out of sight since I started, time spent training is a big factor in the minor issues I'm having today. After the normal 2-3 hours I'm fine. Worst case I'll get some supports to help avoid the over extension.