Boorish children

This early morning I was riding the train to work in the same coach with a bunch of teens who might not have been more than 16 but really pissed our heads off. They listened to music on their mobile phones so loudly that there was a painful noise in the coach. Just imagine when there is techno and gypsy-wedding-pop howling from two different radios on full volume in a closed coach full of sleepy people, early in the morning. And it was not the first case, whenever I met them on the train they behaved the same, not caring about the other passengers who at the end went nearly crazy.

Anyway, just as usual, now again after a while a middle aged lady went to them and asked them to turn the volume down as it was very annoying. They turned it down but made all sorts of comments. 3 minutes later the noise was on again.
Luckilly it was my stop soon so I thought "I don't have to listen to this hoopla any longer, thank God". They also started to prepare for getting off and started playing around, which meant that they were throwing and pushing each other all around, not letting us, other passangers put on our coats. It was more than enough for everyone.

While I tried to squeze myself out from among them towards the exit, I told them to stop this behaviour. Walking further I heard that they commented it and discussed loudly why everyone is criticising them. Then I turned back and told them on a harsh and loud tone so that the whole coach can hear it, that maybe they should think a bit about others' criticism because probably those have a good reason. Also, they should control themselves a bit more because there are 40 other people in the same coach. And then at last they went silent. But I guess it was rather because of the public humiliation than because they were considering what I said.
It seems that these children can not understand any other language.
And it was just a very slight case. Teenage children nowadays went way too cheeky I think. They hit the teacher in the school, they argue their parents who can not take control over them. Or if they get a bad mark in the school thay send the family's "bulls" onto the teacher in the evening and "convince" her/him to give better marks to the child. Or the other day I saw a little boy (could not have been more than 10 years old) SMOKING! Incredible! What a world?!

I always wonder how we got to this far? How come teenagers nowadays can behave like this, without any respect or minimal attention towards others? When I was a teen, althought I did not belong to any groups, but even those who were the hard core were not this cheeky and had such a behaviour. Were those different times? Was it because we had good teachers? Because we had strict parents? Because they had no problem giving a f...ing huge slap in the face when we made some stupid thing or did not behave well? Or is it just me getting older and more and more conservative and cranky as years go by?

I think a root of this problem is the lack of proper education both at home and in the school.
Parents don't have time to actually educate their child. They bring them up, but don't teach them for life, don't show them good example. Why? Probably because they have no energy for that beside their work, and we have to admit: even majority of the adults have no f...ing clue how to live life correctly. Of course such a person can not upbring and educate a small human being either. Respect for those few exceptions I saw. But these exceptions were all from either Budo or from deeply religious (mainly Buddhist) circles.

Anyway, I am very glad that I don't have children. I think I am not prepared for facing such difficulties yet. Bringing up another person means a very big responsibility and requeries a whole person (or better two :-) ).

It goes on

I've been so busy recently! There are some major changes in the IT unit of my uni so I have a lot of things to do and help with, regarding new IT projects. I hardly have time to have lunch, I have so much work that my fingers almost grew to the keyboard. But at the end I always tear out myself for a while from that mind-killing environment and have a little rest.

I did not manage to chop up all the wood the other weekend. Mom asked me to help her with the big monthly shopping, so I was her slave, struggling with huge shopping bags while going home (she does not have car at the moment). So next weekend I have to finish with the leftover of the wood. The puppy dogs are lovely, 3 of them already have owners, we still need to find somebody for the three others.

I received my certificates from Japan a week ago. I put them away safe, making sure they won't get damaged or dirty, and continue training.

At the moment I train at a friend's dojo. We've been friends for many years and he graciously allowed me to train in his dojo, in fact, he allowed me to practice the way I want to. I really love the environment of his dojo, it is friendly, familiar and modest. Also, both he and his dojo is quite open for new things. The things he teaches and the way he teaches is good as well, so I am very happy that I have such a place to regularly train at.
I gave myself time until next August to make up with the missing things I need to know at least up to Shodan.
Some of the things are still kind of a "big mass" to me, like which kata belongs to which ryu-ha, what is the most important difference between the way a certain kata is done by different ryu-ha. And other semi-theoretical stuff like this. Somehow these things were never taught to me, at least never in a clearly visible system.

I want to see clearly, and also this friend of mine (I.) said he needs to practice more serious stuff too, but since he started teaching he does not have much time to actually train for himself during the trainings. So we agreed to designate an additional afternoon weekly to practice together some of the advanced stuff. I offered him my body as an Uke for the things he needs to practice, he in return helps me to get over and clarify all the kata and techniques systematically up to Shodan. I have my old syllabus, so we can follow that.
Right now I am studying again an SFR manual I got from a good friend in this March. Everything is written there on a systematized way, so it's much easier to see it through than any other note I ever tried to take.

Beside my great need of softer training methods, I also need to practice the "hard stuff", so I keep attending D's seminars next year as well. The things he teaches are really effective and convincing things, and I don't like to fool myself. I think if we want to have a good understanding of taijutsu and want to be able to bring out the most of ourselves, we have to study both the softest and the hardest form and find the balance somewhere in between.
Sometimes people don't understand why I say that I want to practice softly, when sometimes it's clearly visible that "I like it rough". Or the other way around.
Well, people, because I don't like to practice only the soft way, or only the hard way. I want to know both sides.

System upgrade

Due to the fact that recently I've been very busy at my office and Cs. is changing the operating system on the machine at home day by day, I was not able to sit down and write my blog in the past days.
As soon as I will get a little chance to get a constant hold of the keyboard, I'll go on. Patience!
(You might have got used to that with me anyways :-) ) Thanks.

Weekend rush

I am trying hard ot find out how to embed the code of the visitor counter into this new template, but I still could not find it out and it is giving me more and more headache. Since the time I have changed to this new template I have not been able to see how many visitors I had, from where etc. It annoys me a bit when I can not get control over some things :-)

The other day I saw an ad at the uni where I work at, about a public lecture. Its title was "Freemasonry and Radical Traditions in England". It looked like an interesting one and I planned to listen to it but just when I left for the lecture I noticed that my mobile phone was gone. I have been running around all the places in the uni hoping to find it but never found it in the building. It gave me quite a hassle as I had a few hundred phone numbers in it, many of which were unreplacable numbers of some foreign buyus and some importan people. At the end I have run over to the neighbour building where last time I had been to around noon. It turned out that I left my phone there. At least it was not stolen.
But this hassle was just enough for completely missing the lecture, so it was a real bummer. I think it was not without a reason. Probably it was not time for me yet to listen to these things.

Today after work I have met a friend of mine and we went to an Aztec Chocolate Bar to celebrate our birthdays. We have our B-days on the same day, on the 14th, with a month difference. I had some great Spicy Hot Chocolate with Chilly Paprika. It was as thick as honey, so it was a real sin ]:-)

I think I will skip tomorrow morning's training. I am about burning out for this week, dead tired and exhausted. I feel the lack of sleeping from last weekend (but the seminar did worth it ;-) ). However if I think about that tomorrow I will have to go again to chop up about 200 Kg of wood for mom, so that she can fire it in her iron stove - I really need some sleep before I leave. In the past one month I went to her every weekend and chopped wood after training, but tomorrow's will be a bigger amount than usually it is.

Also she said she had "guests" in the garden in the pile of wood: RATS. I have to move over the whole stuff to another part of her garden so that the rats can not move into the flat so easily. Puppy dogs have just been born 2 weeks ago and I have to make sure the rats won't catch them.

So, busy day is to come tomorrow. Sometimes I feel it would be better to live together with mom so that I can take care of her more easily. It is pretty difficult to help her on a daily basis when I have to travel to her for two hours, both directions. In the same time I am quite sure we would not be able to bear with each-other for too long :-))*sigh* but my conscience... She did a lot for me while I was a child and it is time to return it. I wish I could make her life easier... She deserves it.

Hojo-jutsu seminar

Last weekend a few of us visited our fellow buyus in Croatia to attend a Hojo-jutsu seminar.
This is quite a rarely taught part of our art, as far as I noticed. This is the second time I managed to attend a seminar focusing on how to tie up others the way we do with the Easter-ham.
We went by my ex-instructor's car (however I feel quite strange when I say ex-instructor - I still feel very close to him and he will always remain my instructor). Despite my worry over how our "common" journey to Croatia will be, it was quite a pleasant weekend. We had good conversations about human relationships.

Anway, back to the seminar:
After we arrived, changed and entered the dojo I saw a pile of all sorts of ropes with all kinds of nasty-looking endings. A real delicacy for a sneaky girl like me. There were many girls by the way - more than usually are at D's seminars. So the guys were happy this weekend :-)

As a start D talked about the origin of Hojo-jutsu and about some other historical facts. He did not go too deeply into this part as we had a lot of things ahead to do and the time was very limited.

After the theoretical part we were taught how to carry the ropes and how to wrap them, so that they don't hinder in our movements, still we can easily pull them out and use if necessary. Then we started knotting, first just very basic knots, and then basic tie-up methods, applied to hands, ankles, to both hands and ankles, to neck and other parts of the body. Yes, to @ss as well :-).
By the end of the first half of the second day we covered all the most important basic tieing methods. At first I had to concentrate hard on when, how, and from what direction to make the knots, but after a little while I managed to quickly pick up what D. demonstrated and could do the knots fairly easily.
I was especially happy with learning that famous choking tie-up, when you are bent backwards and your feet are tied together, also your wrists, behind your back, and both your tied feet and hands are connected with the rope, which is in addition looped around your neck. So if you try to move your feet and hands, the loop gets pulled more around your neck.

At the end of the second day we had a taste of how to work with the rope during a fight. What D empahized is that we should never try to use the rope, but rather rely on our taijutsu, and be happy if there is an opportunity to control things with the rope. You have to kind of forget about the rope, just move and soon you will realize that the opponent looks like a (nice, smoked-smelling) Easter Ham.

This principle is very much alike to what H. Sensei told us in Japan during a training of knife-fight. He said we should not intentionally use the knife. The stabs and cuts should happen by themselves, arising from the situation. It's hard to describe with words, but it was easy to understand when he demondstrated it. Let the "toy" work by itself.

Anyway, summing up the seminar I have to say it was a real delicacy for me. I really did not know anything about Hojo-jutsu - now at least I know what I need to work on. After returning to Hungary a Hungarian buyu asked me whether or not I would have attended the seminar if I had a very detailed DVD. I said yes, indeed. It's one thing to see the rope on someone, and another to feel them almost cutting your flesh. Then you can really know what you can and can not do or how it can confuse you in a fight when your opponent is "armed" with a rope.

Since all the Hun guys had Hun partners, I had to pick unknown partners (which I like to do at foreign smeinars btw). So during the two days I've been working with 3 guys and a girl, all of them Croatian. It was nice to experience their kindness. The guys I've been working with made some (I guess) funny comments in Croatian whenever I was busy tieing up one of their mates. It seems that they liked it, too :-)

Well, if I think about women and men and ropes and ties... this is really an exciting issue :-D

New wrapping

As you see my blog got a new dress. It seems that Blogger realized at last that they were way behind the other blogger sites with regards to custom design options availability.
Anyway, I changed the look of my blog, and since I found majority of the stuff I was painfully missing until now, I decided to wait a bit with moving the whole stuff to another blogger site. I wanna check out what exactly this one can offer now.

Until then stay tuned, the summary of the Croatian Hojo-jutsu seminar (which was by the way great) and my thoughts about travelling to the Land of The Rising Sun for training will come in a few days, as soon as I will have a litle time to sit down and beat the hell out of the keyboard.

Back from the fog...

I know I disappeared for too long. Life's like this.
I am thinking about moving over to another provider - tho I dunno to which one. I keep looking.

Today I've got the news that a colleague of ours died because of brain-haemorrhage.
It hit me a bit like a surprise, as this guy (52) was one of my greatest admirers at my workplace - I always got some compliments from him, which became more and more annoying lately, but all in all he was a cool person.

Majority of the Hungarian population dies because of cardiovascular diseases, and the reason is somewhere both in the unhealthy nutritional habits and in the lack of doing some sports.

So this death-notice made me think about death again. We can never know when "our time" will come.

This weekend I go to Croatia for Hojo-seminar. By car. Hmm.
I would be more than happy to return to Hungary alive and healthy...

I still owe an email to my Canadian buddy but I could never really make it to putting myself and my thoughts together and write a decent letter. But sometimes I just feel I need to disappeare from the eyes of the public and withdraw into my private sphere, into the deepest solitude of a cave, and to be only with myself.
Eh, rambling again :)

Time to run for training...