Way of the Warrior

As some of you are aware, I practice a martial art called ‘AMOK’. It is loosely based on the Philippine martial art style called Kali. That is where many of the knife and stick work come from that is the mainstay of AMOK. Calling it a martial art is a slightly misleading though and a better description for it would be ‘combatative formatting’.

To explain the difference is somewhat difficult as the lines are blurred in some regions in the various martial arts that are available. We tried to take what was available in other martial arts, examine and test it under duress, see what holds and what breaks down and then make it part of AMOK. AMOK is thus a combination of the best of many martial arts, suitably altered to form part of the style and make it its own.

AMOK is also a lifestyle. It is easy to pick up and learn, and you may even find yourself with a new sense of ability after just one lesson. The sense of ability wouldn’t be false as well. AMOK tends to be an eye-opener for most of the people attending it for the first time. It is easy and quick to learn, effective from the beginning, yet still extremely difficult to master. To master it takes an immense amount of training, persistence and dedication. It is a painful art to participate in with frequent injuries winnowing the ranks on a regular basis. It is learning how to deal with this pain and how this affects your technique under pressure that makes AMOK unique since you are encouraged to train with as severe injuries as are possible without becoming stupid.

Training with heavy bruising (having a wooden knife jammed into your ribs can make you intensely aware of this) for instance puts your body’s reactions into perspective. Instinctively you will react to spare the injured area from further punishment, but the price for this is usually that your technique and principles start breaking down. In a full-on confrontation, this could be fatal if you are on the receiving end. This punishing training regime will teach you how to deal with the pain and keep yourself alive. Training in this way will also teach you how your opponent will react in a similar situation and you can compensate for that then.

This seems to be both a boon and a bane in the system of training. We get countless calls of people that say that AMOK is exactly what they have been looking for all along. They attend their first class, where you basically get beaten up since there is no ‘introductory’ class as such. You train with the rest at their level. It is surprising how quick you actually learn then, but it is an extremely painful and uncomfortable process where the concepts of combat you had can sometimes be severely tested and for the most part, usually broken. Thus it happens that most newcomers only last one lesson and never return. Commercialization is possible, but that would entail a reduction of the severity of the training regime which would very possibly create a false sense of ability in the trainees. And then there is the distinct possibility that bullies will be introduced into the system as well, giving them a lethal set of abilities if applied correctly. As it stands, people with that character flaw get worked out quickly. The problem with most bullies is, they have a lot of ego and they can’t really stand pain, no matter how much they like to inflict it. Ego influences training in a very negative way which I am not going to discuss here. Lets just say that one of the rules of training is that ego gets left at the door. All in all, it boils down to the concept of: Train hard, fight easy.

As mentioned previously, it is thus a lifestyle that requires and cultivates a very different outlook on life and the people that surround you. It requires sacrifice and endurance, but it has its rewards too. Among the trainees, it cultivates a brotherhood that is nearly as strong as being related by blood. Partly this is because you have fought each other and have a mutual respect for the capabilities of the person, but also because he has bled with you. Do not make the mistake of likening it to a gang though. Bad character traits are not tolerated at all.

How all of this impacts me personally has become a very difficult distinction to make. I am part what I used to be and part what I have become through the training imparted to me. I have an extremely aggressive personality, but it has been tempered by training and the realization of the capabilities imparted by that training. As I write this I can think of multiple occasions where I have referred to the aggressive use of my training, which in part is wrong. Threatening with my abilities is wrong, even mock-threatening in the playful environment it occurs. Another thing that has been bothering me lately is the active part that my aggressive personality cultivated for use in combat has started to play in this. I find this unacceptable.

It seems like that training, endurance and study isn’t enough to define you as a warrior. There is quite a bit more to it. Thus it means more study, but more importantly self-study. As it stands, it seems like I am my worst enemy and my largest threat.

Aut vincere aut mori - Either conquer or die

Biking Woes

As some of you might know, during June of this year I bought myself a bike. After some serious deliberation and some serious fights (my dad was horribly against the idea) I got my way and bought myself a Buell Lightning CityX.

Initially I was quite terrified of the whole biking idea, since I had a rather unfortunate experience from biking during my childhood. Falling off a big-ass scrambler repeatedly can cause that type of thing. Unfortunately the traffic on a daily basis was becoming extremely unbearable as well as influencing my daily life. After sitting in the traffic for 90 minutes you are hardly in a mood to do anything except shooting someone. So I did the only thing I thought would solve the problem. I went for some riding classes and bought a bike.

During my riding classes I was pretty nervous, but since it was only a 125cc scrambler, it did help to offset my nervousness somewhat. I was done with my riding classes when I got my bike, which, to say the least, was significantly bigger. Getting on a 1000cc V-Twin that had a reputation for the amount of torque available and the ease that it popped wheelies, even unwanted ones, was very much akin to getting on a wild horse. You have no idea how its going to react.

That evening I got home successfully and started to relax just a little bit. Still I had this nagging thing about falling every time I got on the bike, never quite relaxing. That Sunday after I got the bike, I had a lesson with my instructor where he was going to just ride with me and tell me the ins and outs of city riding. Then the inevitable happened. It happened simply because I kept on telling myself that it is going to happen. About 10 minutes into the lesson I managed to drop the bike. She had less than 100km on the clock and I felt like a royal twit. Anyway, my instructor got the bike back up on her wheels and we inspected the damage. That was minimal, unlike my the damage to my dignity, pride and person. After gathering my nerves we got back on the bikes and proceeded to complete the rest of the lesson. Ironically, that first fall made all the difference. I started gaining confidence quite quickly after that, not dreading the fall as badly as before and soon I started to relax in the saddle and enjoy the ride.

Pretty much a few weeks after that, you needed no reason to get me into the saddle to go somewhere. As it is still today. I love riding and my only regret is that I never started earlier.

Now for the things that have started to irritate me lately. Mostly because it is interfering with the joy of riding. About 3 weeks ago, I came off the bike for a second time. It wasn't voluntary. On the Thursday just before the Rhino rally I was traveling home at about 18:30 the evening. Traffic was reasonable, everything moving along at about 30km/h. About halfway home, I saw a white Tazz jumping in between lanes. This guy was trying to get to the front of the congestion, one car at a time. Now as anybody who has traveled extensively in traffic in Johannesburg will tell you, this is not getting you anywhere any quicker. Not even by seconds. Just due to the fact that sometimes the middle lane moves a bit quicker. Then the fast lane moves a bit quicker. You get the point. The best of it though was the part where he was switching lanes... He had this single-motion-thing going for him where he would initiate the lane change and put on his indicators as he is merging with the other lane. Not what indicators are there for. Also, the distance in front of the other cars is there for safe braking, not to jump in between cars. I was careful as I approached the vehicle, but apparently not careful enough. As I was about to pass the idiot (I was about a third into his car with the front wheel, fully in the middle lane, not lane splitting even), he pulled his party trick. I managed, according to the BMW driver behind me, a very impressive endo before getting my front wheel knocked from under me. All of this fortunately happened at low speed, so the damage was minimal and I could walk away from the accident with a blue toe and a bruise on my hip. Minimal damage to the bike still amounts to R5000 worth of damages according to the quote from Harley. And I am paying since this fuck-head lives in Thembisa, was driving his sister's car and has no insurance. Now I could have pursued this legally, but that would in all probability cost me more in legal fees and I would still not have gained anything, much less the money for the repairs.

Now, he stopped next to the road after he knocked me off. I was quite hot under the collar when I parked my bike behind him. His excuse? He didn't see me. Holy Mary and Josef. I had effectively been riding behind this cunt for the better part of 5 minutes observing his actions. How in fucks name could he not have seen me!!? Unless it was the obvious, the answer I also gave him in no uncertain terms. Yes, you fuckhead, you didn't see me. You never fucking looked!! Enough of that before I have a coronary.

Last week, Wednesday, a friend of mine was coming to stay over. She was visiting from Bloemfontein and I hadn't seen her in a while. I went to fetch her from her aunt's place in Johannesburg, with the car. On our way back, just after William Nicol, I was traveling in the fast lane doing about 130km/h. It was already lightly congested, closing in on afternoon traffic at 16:00. I observed a car closing at about 150km/h in the fast lane since the traffic had opened up slightly behind me. At the same moment I observed a bike coming along a way behind her. Probably doing about 160km/h. Illegal speed, but not dangerous in the current circumstance. Traffic was quite open behind me. I check in front of me to see if there was any break in traffic coming up and considering to get out of the way of the car coming on behind me. Traffic was pretty much not going anywhere more rapidly than the speed I was moving at. In front of me there was basically just a safe braking distance. Apparently the driver of the vehicle behind me decided that that would be enough to fit her vehicle in. To get just in front of me. There was no going anywhere else after that. I managed a glance in the rear view mirror. The bike was already passing her in the middle lane preparing to lane split. She never even glanced. Just a loud thump and the only excuse is that she didn't see him. For fucks sake... He wasn't even behind her. She hit him with the front left fender of her car. Fortunately this was one lucky fellow. He slid through 2 lanes of traffic, coming to rest at the side of the road. The only injuries, a broken collar bone and some road rash. The road rash only because he wasn't wearing protective pants or shoes. I stayed at the scene of the accident till the paramedics took him away. I was so pissed off I could kill.

The final straw of course came the next evening. A friend of mine moved to a different house and I went to check the place out in Queenswood. It was cloudy, but I did not think that it would rain. While I was at his place, it unfortunately did. Not really badly, just enough to really wet the roads. On my way home on the road in front of Unitas hospital, there is an intersection with 2 lanes turning right after a long straight. As I approached the intersection, there was a car slightly in front of me. The robot was green and I was braking, getting ready to turn. Because there were two lanes, under normal circumstance if the road wasn't wet, I would have under-braked the car and exited the intersection before it did. Thank God for wet roads that evening. Because the bitch of a driver, yes, once a gain a female, decides to make a u-turn. A u-turn from the fucking left lane in a double intersection... Had I under-braked, I wouldn't be sitting here writing this. The best of it all is as she turns, she looks at me and stares at me like what the fuck am I going on about. As if I was doing something wrong by being in the lane that I was in and she continues on her merry way. I was fucking dumbfounded.

In my six months of riding the bike I have found that female drivers are about the stupidest fucking things alive. Of all my really close shaves, it was mainly female drivers. This goes not just for biking but cycling as well. Good lord, I have nearly been knocked down several times while on my bicycle as well. Not to say that some male drivers are any better, some of them are bloody spiteful. In the case of spiteful, I have sort-of adopted a habit to take a mirror with me. If you purposely endanger my life, I will damage your property. I mean, if you just drive normally, I'd pass you without incident and we can both be on our merry way. If you feel somehow aggrieved by the fact that I am on a bike and getting somewhere quicker than you, sell your fucking BMW and buy a bike. Simple as that.

One of my pet-peeves are of course 4x4s. Not all of them, but most. My opinion is that you need to take a special course on driving such a large vehicle. Most of the idiots driving the things do not have a fucking clue as to the size of their vehicles. So they have no idea of their position in a lane at any time as well. Then you get the ones that try to use their vehicles as fucking battering rams.

Taxis for the most part aren't too bad on the bike. Because of the stupid way they drive, they are reasonably aware of what is going on around them and I have had only one or two incidents involving a taxi. In one incident I took a mirror and rode off. It was a close call and I was rather aggravated after a bad day at work, so save me the reprimands about how he could have shot me, etc. I had a similar incident in the car some time back when one fucker took my left mirror off. Payback is a bitch.

I love my bike and love biking in general. No car can compare to the freedom involved in riding a bike. You either love it or hate it. If it just wasn't for some of the drivers on the roads...

[/rant]

Musical Moods

Everybody listens to music at one point or another during the day. That made me wonder about the impact that music has on one’s moods and I started to pay a bit more attention. Does the music alter your mood, or do you choose the music you want to listen to based on your current mood? Perhaps it is a bit of both.

I’m Bi-polar. (If you don’t know what this is, Google it.) It is both a boon and a bane to live with. In regard of music, it can make music quite enjoyable, because of the euphoric states involved in Bi-polar; it can really make the music “come alive” as such. The complete opposite is also possible where the music can cause a nice depressive episode. Not that this has happened since I started the medication as such, but thinking back I can identify certain scenarios where the music I was listening to could have been the cause of the mood swing towards the depressive state.

Now, I am only starting to discover and learning to live with this “disease” that I supposedly suffer from. Sure, I have had it all my life. Quantifying it does change the context quite a bit unfortunately. Initially I was a little taken aback when mention was made of the possibility. (Thanks mate, you know who you are.) It was shocking to think that you might be mentally “ill” as such. I’m not so sure that I “suffer” from this “illness” at all now. Yes, I have an issue with regulating my moods and I feel things in the extremes only, unless I consciously spend energy to regulate the emotional output. That is something that can get a bit tiring sometimes and I do fail at it quite often and then I am ruled by my emotions at that point. Most people find that very overwhelming and hard to deal with. Sorry guys, I don’t do it on purpose…

It all sounds pretty bad, but think of it out of this perspective. I “feel” everything a bit more intensely than someone without my imbalance. Now what if I could use my newfound knowledge of the possible effect music has on my moods as a way to regulate the state of my current mood… Now that I think would be worth it.

Door... House... Smash...

Well, I have finally decided to start my own blog. Well, this will do in any case, that is till I can find something better or create my own. Time being the all-consuming factor in the last case.

This blog will be mostly about my day-to-day experiences in life, and perhaps a discussion every once in a while, but I'll try to update on a regular basis. Here be monsters, so you were warned. Those include bad spelling, bad grammar and bad humor. Others might include foul language, bitch-and-moan sessions and probably a lot more. If you don't want to know about it, don't read it.