Fock I'm tired...
Yesterday, I went to uni even though I didn't really have 'work' to do, at least not for Lang Technologies. I went down to the EMU to get a key for house sitting (which starts tomorrow btw) and also to re-shape a block for embedding in Spurr's Resin on monday, so I'll get paid for that hour of work.
I then hung around to help set up Chem Eng for the Sydney Uni Live! which was today. Basically in a nutshell, it is when the uni opens its' doors to thousands of potential students who are in year 11 or 12 to have a look at buildings, facilities, talk to current students, academics and so forth. It is kind of the last ditch effort of marketing to try to convince highschool students that their futures are better off at this academic institution vs other ones. All of the major metropolitan uni's do it on the same day, and you can catch free buses that travel between the uni's and Railway Square downtown.
For our building, there is a ye-old format which has worked quite well normally in the past. Of course, if you always stuck to 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' then no R&D would ever happen, and I would be out of a career, that said, some things are just done in particular ways because that is the best way to do it, right? Well, some people don't seem to understand that. I won't go into particular specifics, but there were some aspects of the planning that fell well short. Organisational skills and capacities of this particular person truly sucked. Then, their notions of how things should be done were completely wrong, and in some ways quite stupid. They were comparing how another event (Science in the City) runs their version of events to ours, and it doesn't really work. Their resources and set up isn't going to be the same, their audience isn't even the same.... Anyway, I wasn't impressed to say the least in terms of setting up stuff to their liking.
By the time most of it was done, it was pretty late and I ended up not going to training, but I did go down to chat with everyone before they buggered off to dinner, and I went home.
Today, I got up early to go to uni to finish setting things up, as there are things that you can't really do the night before for some events. I got in just after 8am, and voila, no-one was there. There was a trickle of people by 8:30 and then things started rolling along. I was supposed to be giving tours from 9-12:30, but I had to go at 11 for Kendo purposes, but I helped out. There weren't visitors yet so I got shuffled to doing balloons which was awesome fun. I think I made about 300 balloons in 2 hours but I had help cos I was filling balloons while some others were tying them to strings etc but it really makes your fingers sore....
The thing I was griping about in terms of organisation and setup went as I thought it would, quite badly. There wasn't as many people interested in it as that person thought it would so the extra tables weren't required, the person running it was standing up and not sitting down, thus making the point of bringing all these chairs completely redundant, and further more, their knowledge of actual chemistry didn't exist since they were an adminstrative person so the actual demonstration failed since what they bought wasn't actually the chemical required. To give a little away, it's a reaction between Borax and PVA glue. Unfortunately, they bought a 'non-toxic borax replacement', which still contains a modified borax compound but it doesn't exactly work properly with PVA, leaving you with goop instead of what you're supposed to.... Good one ~sarcasm~. I think I'll leave it at that.
I had to head off to Kendo because it was a 'internal' competition today, one of which hopefully will be of many in the future. There was supposed to be five people competing since no-one else registered, but two of them were late, so we ran it with only three. A nice little pool. I didn't expect to win since one of my opponents in my personal opinion is generally better than me, while the other I have difficulty getting past their defence normally in jigeiko. I got called a potato by the person who is generally better than me. He's my 'elbow' buddy (our coach is at the fingers, we're at the elbow, our better players are at the wrist in terms of relative skill) from the earlier post I mentioned when I was told I had distance issues and was slow. Anyway, we flipped a coin to see who would play back to back, and I lost, so I had to play both of mine straight up. I played Mr potato first.
We're actually evenly matched in skill I think. I haven't actually trained in almost two weeks realistically except for mental training from watching and thinking. I didn't expect to score points so I focussed on keeping my distance better instead of being too close like I was told about. We played a five minute match, and about two or so minutes into it, we kind of did a aiuchi-men (simultaneous men cut) and I heard Yame (which is Stop/Halt). The coach who was shimpan (referee) had his hand up, and wow, it indicated that I had scored the point. Booyah~! Although I had the first point, I didn't actually think about slacking off, I kept on the pushing attack and I also kept with basic men cuts only. I tried a few kote but not in proper serious fashion, more just to keep mr. potato on his toes in case he did open up. Then we heard the yame again, and well, time up..... which ment... I had won ~! LOL Totally unexpected. I didn't exactly celebrate since I had to go onto my next match.
I actually didn't really know what to do in this match. I had an obvious height advantage, but they had a speed advantage. Straight from the start when hajime (start/begin) was called, they dashed in and landed a quick kote-men both hits clean, so clean infact that I actually whipped around for a quick glance to see if the point had been given. It is a terrible habit most players will have until they are much better players, and I need to get rid of it too since it leaves you clean open for your opponent to wack you again with a scoring cut. Anyway, no point was given and I was a little surprised but played on. Probably about a minute later, I went for a fairly straight forward men cut, it landed, and yame, I got a men ippon. About thirty seconds later we were in a tsubazeria, and I whipped my shinai around and made a hiki-men cut. Their shinai actually came vertical to block, but it wasn't enough and my cut still made it through, and the yame came through. Like, WOW, I won that match too.... with two ippon.... dang!
The last match between Mr potato and the other person was also a full-time affair. Mr potato lost because the other person scored a men cut on them near the end..... Poor Mr potato....
Well, post this little match, we had a debrief. I was told that I had improved a lot, and that now I am actually a bogu player, not a beginner as I could make proper ippon cuts. There is still a lot to practice as always, and to polish, such as my speed, and precision of cuts but I had improved. Wow... praise... LOL Mr potato got told that he was still a beginner (Dawww...) and he has a lot to work on. The other person was actually the best out of us. They were told that, and I agree, but their cuts are quite light, so they need to develop more power to go with that speed, and use more kiai. That too was mentioned to them that more power is required, but that will be a challenge since they are quite small and light compared to most of us. I think they will find a way and next time whoop my butt LOL.
So that was pretty awesome. Then of course we had regular training, where I led warmup, then we did kirikaeshi, uchigomigeiko, kakarigeiko and then mawari-jigeiko (rotation jigeiko). Boy oh boy was I tired by then......
A long drive home, a very late lunch, and then started packing for house sitting....
That was my day. So, tomorrow I'm off house sitting, so I probably won't update until I get back unless I am bored or something.
Have a good week folks.
Yesterday, I went to uni even though I didn't really have 'work' to do, at least not for Lang Technologies. I went down to the EMU to get a key for house sitting (which starts tomorrow btw) and also to re-shape a block for embedding in Spurr's Resin on monday, so I'll get paid for that hour of work.
I then hung around to help set up Chem Eng for the Sydney Uni Live! which was today. Basically in a nutshell, it is when the uni opens its' doors to thousands of potential students who are in year 11 or 12 to have a look at buildings, facilities, talk to current students, academics and so forth. It is kind of the last ditch effort of marketing to try to convince highschool students that their futures are better off at this academic institution vs other ones. All of the major metropolitan uni's do it on the same day, and you can catch free buses that travel between the uni's and Railway Square downtown.
For our building, there is a ye-old format which has worked quite well normally in the past. Of course, if you always stuck to 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' then no R&D would ever happen, and I would be out of a career, that said, some things are just done in particular ways because that is the best way to do it, right? Well, some people don't seem to understand that. I won't go into particular specifics, but there were some aspects of the planning that fell well short. Organisational skills and capacities of this particular person truly sucked. Then, their notions of how things should be done were completely wrong, and in some ways quite stupid. They were comparing how another event (Science in the City) runs their version of events to ours, and it doesn't really work. Their resources and set up isn't going to be the same, their audience isn't even the same.... Anyway, I wasn't impressed to say the least in terms of setting up stuff to their liking.
By the time most of it was done, it was pretty late and I ended up not going to training, but I did go down to chat with everyone before they buggered off to dinner, and I went home.
Today, I got up early to go to uni to finish setting things up, as there are things that you can't really do the night before for some events. I got in just after 8am, and voila, no-one was there. There was a trickle of people by 8:30 and then things started rolling along. I was supposed to be giving tours from 9-12:30, but I had to go at 11 for Kendo purposes, but I helped out. There weren't visitors yet so I got shuffled to doing balloons which was awesome fun. I think I made about 300 balloons in 2 hours but I had help cos I was filling balloons while some others were tying them to strings etc but it really makes your fingers sore....
The thing I was griping about in terms of organisation and setup went as I thought it would, quite badly. There wasn't as many people interested in it as that person thought it would so the extra tables weren't required, the person running it was standing up and not sitting down, thus making the point of bringing all these chairs completely redundant, and further more, their knowledge of actual chemistry didn't exist since they were an adminstrative person so the actual demonstration failed since what they bought wasn't actually the chemical required. To give a little away, it's a reaction between Borax and PVA glue. Unfortunately, they bought a 'non-toxic borax replacement', which still contains a modified borax compound but it doesn't exactly work properly with PVA, leaving you with goop instead of what you're supposed to.... Good one ~sarcasm~. I think I'll leave it at that.
I had to head off to Kendo because it was a 'internal' competition today, one of which hopefully will be of many in the future. There was supposed to be five people competing since no-one else registered, but two of them were late, so we ran it with only three. A nice little pool. I didn't expect to win since one of my opponents in my personal opinion is generally better than me, while the other I have difficulty getting past their defence normally in jigeiko. I got called a potato by the person who is generally better than me. He's my 'elbow' buddy (our coach is at the fingers, we're at the elbow, our better players are at the wrist in terms of relative skill) from the earlier post I mentioned when I was told I had distance issues and was slow. Anyway, we flipped a coin to see who would play back to back, and I lost, so I had to play both of mine straight up. I played Mr potato first.
We're actually evenly matched in skill I think. I haven't actually trained in almost two weeks realistically except for mental training from watching and thinking. I didn't expect to score points so I focussed on keeping my distance better instead of being too close like I was told about. We played a five minute match, and about two or so minutes into it, we kind of did a aiuchi-men (simultaneous men cut) and I heard Yame (which is Stop/Halt). The coach who was shimpan (referee) had his hand up, and wow, it indicated that I had scored the point. Booyah~! Although I had the first point, I didn't actually think about slacking off, I kept on the pushing attack and I also kept with basic men cuts only. I tried a few kote but not in proper serious fashion, more just to keep mr. potato on his toes in case he did open up. Then we heard the yame again, and well, time up..... which ment... I had won ~! LOL Totally unexpected. I didn't exactly celebrate since I had to go onto my next match.
I actually didn't really know what to do in this match. I had an obvious height advantage, but they had a speed advantage. Straight from the start when hajime (start/begin) was called, they dashed in and landed a quick kote-men both hits clean, so clean infact that I actually whipped around for a quick glance to see if the point had been given. It is a terrible habit most players will have until they are much better players, and I need to get rid of it too since it leaves you clean open for your opponent to wack you again with a scoring cut. Anyway, no point was given and I was a little surprised but played on. Probably about a minute later, I went for a fairly straight forward men cut, it landed, and yame, I got a men ippon. About thirty seconds later we were in a tsubazeria, and I whipped my shinai around and made a hiki-men cut. Their shinai actually came vertical to block, but it wasn't enough and my cut still made it through, and the yame came through. Like, WOW, I won that match too.... with two ippon.... dang!
The last match between Mr potato and the other person was also a full-time affair. Mr potato lost because the other person scored a men cut on them near the end..... Poor Mr potato....
Well, post this little match, we had a debrief. I was told that I had improved a lot, and that now I am actually a bogu player, not a beginner as I could make proper ippon cuts. There is still a lot to practice as always, and to polish, such as my speed, and precision of cuts but I had improved. Wow... praise... LOL Mr potato got told that he was still a beginner (Dawww...) and he has a lot to work on. The other person was actually the best out of us. They were told that, and I agree, but their cuts are quite light, so they need to develop more power to go with that speed, and use more kiai. That too was mentioned to them that more power is required, but that will be a challenge since they are quite small and light compared to most of us. I think they will find a way and next time whoop my butt LOL.
So that was pretty awesome. Then of course we had regular training, where I led warmup, then we did kirikaeshi, uchigomigeiko, kakarigeiko and then mawari-jigeiko (rotation jigeiko). Boy oh boy was I tired by then......
A long drive home, a very late lunch, and then started packing for house sitting....
That was my day. So, tomorrow I'm off house sitting, so I probably won't update until I get back unless I am bored or something.
Have a good week folks.
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