Health is a treasure

Again, going AWOL and neglecting this blog, but this time, it’s more due to my busy days in the office rather than my laziness :-p Because of a new and very troublesome project, I couldn’t train regularly for these past three weeks. I have only been training in the dojo three times plus a couple of times at home. Not only lack of training, but irregular eating pattern and also the exhausting project almost brought me down. Yesterday I dragged myself to the dojo although the day before I only slept for 3 hours before I went for presentation in the morning and attending some meetings in the afternoon before I rushly left to have my dinner at 7:30pm, went back to my house to get my gears and straightaway went to the dojo. Lost concentration, poor performance, lack of stamina and almost faint during training.

Felt really lucky to be able to finished the whole session and promised myself that if I can’t attend my training, I will always spend at least 30 minutes to do my own training at home. I have lost so much for the past three weeks because of my negligence. And that’s not the only loss I had. Due to less training, irregular eating and lack of sleep, my body condition also dropped and I almost got myself into trouble before the project even finished. Now I know why the older generations always value their health and take care of their own health was always an important thing for them. With regular training, I didn’t really have any major health problem, so I didn’t really take care of my own health due to the inherent benefit of training to my own health. But the last three weeks taught me an important lesson:

1.Training regularly IS A MUST. No reason not to train myself at home!!!

2.Health is a treasure, without health, we can’t do all those fun activities we always love to do.

3.To fall sick is to waste all those training days. With just one day of sickness, we need to rebuild our stamina and condition again. This requires time and wasting our training days to rebuild instead of advancing. IT IS TOTALLY INACCEPTABLE!!!

Hopefully the burdensome project can finish soon and I can return to my good old training days!

Apakah SBY Masih Dapat Dipercaya?

Please allow me to revert to Bahasa Indonesia posting since I believe it will benefit my fellow countrymen better. Presiden SBY, yang biasanya sangat jarang sekali mengambil keputusan dengan cepat walaupun masalahnya dapat dibilang mendesak karena harus mempertimbangkan segala hal, baru2 ini dengan sangat mengejutkan mengambil keputusan yang dapat dibilang keluar dengan cepat. Akan tetapi sayangnya keputusan tersebut membuat saya kecewa. Banyak blog2 lain yg juga mengungkapkan kekecewaannya karena dalih menyelamatkan perusahaan “swasta nasional” dapat dikatakan mencurigakan. Selama ini masyarakat cukup bisa bersabar dan percaya akan ketulusan hatinya walaupun banyak keputusan2 dan kebijakan2 dirinya selalu dipenuhi keraguan dan terkesan lambat. Akan tetapi keputusannya untuk menyelamatkan Bakrie dari kebangkrutan kedua benar2 sesuatu yg patut disesali. Coba baca dua artikel Jakarta Post dan Wimar Witoelar berikut ini. Saat ini saya merasa sepertinya pilihan dan optimisme saya dalam pemilu nanti semakin memudar, tidak ada partai yg cukup menarik hati, dan lebih parahnya, pilihan calon presiden yg ada pun menghilang satu lagi dengan kebijakan terakhir SBY ini. Alas, semoga ada alternatif lain yg bisa membuat saya kembali optimis bahwa Indonesia bisa menjadi lebih baik lagi.

Karate Rants – Part Two

When karate was brought over to mainland Japan from Okinawa, changes were bound to happened. It’s becoming more rigid, systematized, militarized, spiritual side was added and it is becoming less martial in order for it to be available for larger masses. Not all the changes are bad, although this is also subjective. Some people said the changes from karate-jutsu to karate-do is good because not only physical training, but spiritual training is also very important for the practitioner. But other people consider this to be bad, because it diminished its martial applications. Karate also becoming systematized and militarized. This is also a double-edge sword.

Systematized means proper syllabus for the masses, ranking system and karate uniform were introduced and organizations are formed to be able to organize the growing structure. The ugly sides of this are the politics and power struggle in the organization, resulting in splinter groups, bad bloods and animosities. Okinawan masters used to learn from various masters, but nowadays this practice is frowned by the majority. Loyalty to the organization is valued very highly. Loyalty is good, but blind loyalty is bad. Furthermore, our instructor(s) can’t be good at everything. Learning from other people and masters are a good way to develop our karate. Ranking system provides a way to measure growth of the practitioner, but money corrupts, how many dojo offer grades for money? Syllabus is good for a more systematic training, but individuality becoming almost extinct nowadays.

Before karate introduced to Japan, most practitioners only know mostly 5 kata. Nowadays, people aren’t satisfied with 10, 20 or 30. Not many people can understand too many kata, although there are exceptions, such as Mabuni Sensei of Shito-ryu. Old masters taught certain kata to certain people with characteristics that match the kata itself. First they learn basic kata such as sanchin and naihanchi. This can be as long as five years or as short as two or three years. Once their basic was consider good, gradually they’re being introduced to the more advanced kata. It can take at least a year before they learn another kata. There’s just too many things to learn in one kata, and they studied the martial values of the kata, not the nice poses and the sequences only. To even do a proper shuri ashi, the posture, the body mechanics and in-depth understanding of how body moves are needed. It’s not just a simple stepping that can be learned in one day. It takes years to perfect. That’s the difference nowadays. In some dojo, the students are required to know the sequence in one session. Then after the student remembers the sequence perfectly with a good looking basic techniques, flashy poses and nice sound effects, they’re considered to have mastered the kata and proceed to do another kata. No movement concepts were mastered. The way kata taught was different. They need to master the first few sequences first, with all the proper techniques, body mechanics, movements and the concepts and ideas behind the sequences, then they proceed to the next sequences one after another. One sequence can take months. This is also true if you’re practicing chinese martial arts, and fortunately for them, many of them are still doing this. Once someone properly “know” the kata, he should have enough arsenal to defend himself/herself. If he/she managed to master 3 or 4 kata, he will become a very able martial artist. Nowadays studying one kata for one year is considered too long. The fault is not only on the instructors, but also the students, they got bored and always hungry for new kata, although they haven’t even “know” it. It’s a sad state actually. I have even seen someone taught a kata in a more militarized way. If the one being taught unable to remember the sequence, he/she will be asked to repeat the kata again. This is not a kata that he/she has learnt for a few months, but it is a new kata for him/her. To remember one sequence in one day is good enough. To be able to do the sequence properly in one or two months is a feat. That’s why it’s perfectly normal to work on a kata for years.

Real Life Grading

I was graded last Sunday. The grading itself wasn’t that difficult, I was actually very familiar with the syllabus, and I have been training regularly, in fact, I didn’t really care about grading nowadays, I only care about training and learning more from it. But this grading seems different, it is coincided with one of the most difficult phase in my life, and because of that the grading becomes several folds more difficult. But I managed to pass through it…

Now I have to prepare myself for the real life grading, real life test of my perseverance, my determination, and my will. The toilet bowl in me is already full of shit(pardon the language), in fact, it’s almost over the edge. Sometimes I envy animal which doesn’t need to live a life full of mannerism and keeps their composure. Their life is not full of pretense. The only thing important to them is how to survive, but for us human, it’s different. Hopefully I can pass this important test, and the toilet bowl will be emptied again, and be ready to receive all the shits again hopefully tomorrow’s training can knock some sense to me again… For anyone who read this, sorry for this gloomy entry! I just need to throw this one out a little bit.

Lo! Cometh the Flood!!

New governor, new year, same old flooding. Although I am now living in Singapore, working to get a living, but I was born in Jakarta, raised in Jakarta and experienced flooding in Jakarta. The condition has changed from bad to worse. Before 2001, the big flood only say hello every 5 years, but after that, it gradually worsen. The interval changed to three years, two years, one year and now almost every more-than-four-hours-heavy-rain!!! What has the new governor do? All those “Jakarta Untuk Semua”(Jakarta for all) has really been fulfilled in a negative way, and where is he now? I haven’t see or hear him in the news at all. At least his predecessor, still showed his face although he never admit his mistake in handling the flood issue, but instead pointing to heaven which he blame for all the misery of Jakartans. It’s not only flooding, but also the corrupted busway project has becoming a joke, bad services, late arrivals, always full when it arrives. What about traffic? Well, he come out with an idea to shift the working schedule of the civil servants earlier to 6am if I’m not wrong, and he recommend non-civil servants to reschedule their office hour to start from 9am. This kind of ideas, along with 3-in-1 rule is a stupid ideas that are not looking into the problem itself, but instead avoiding the problem. It’s not solving anything but making it worse. Well, the list is still long, but we can only open our arms widely to welcome the flood, although with a long frustrated sighing…