Has the journey changed me?

Looking back at the last six months (especially the last ~4) that has passed by since I have returned from Japan, I have to admit that things escalated pretty much both in my job and also in my training.

In my job I keep receiving compliments and already three units are fighting for me at the university. It has not been like that before.

Have I changed after returning from Japan? Do my colleagues see this? I do not know what may be the answer. Although I have been working there for 9 years, I have received the requests of joining other units only in the past 4 months. Also, I keep receiving more and more demanding tasks as requests, connected to certain projects, and these tasks require throughout organizational skills and higher sense of responsibility.
Yesterday the other IT unit asked me to help them as a project assistant during the greatest project that is running now.
My current boss of course did not approve it - he brought up all kinds of reasons as explanation, but I think that the real reason may be that he is afraid of loosing me.
I am the most stable person at our department and if I left, the whole unit would crash after a few days (no joke and not being a bighead - it is a fact considering the present circumstances).
So I talked to the project manager girl and said I was sorry that this cooperation did not work out, but she said the battle is not over yet... I am wondering what they are planning...

In training...

I have been chatting a bit to a friend of mine this afternoon on Skype and I told him that I am actually grateful to fate for that things have happened the way they happened.
Since I shifted to another dojo, I managed to recognise some ancient bad habits and mistakes of mine which prevented me from developing my Taijutsu.
I managed to fix some of those mistakes also, which I knew about, and which I was struggling with for years, but have not been able to fix.
I thought I was simply hopeless because of the failures and because of all the critics that I used to receive from my former instructor, but now I think I was wrong.
My approach was wrong. Now that I practice on a different way I could fix these shortcomings, it seems.

Also, I noticed that I am learning much quicker, with more efficiency.
Probably it is because of the thought that I am "on my own" and instead of expecting an instructor to teach me everything that I need to know, it all depends on me now how much I develop my knowledge and skills or how much I let it degenerate and fade away.
It is me who has to work hard for it and it is not a second party pouring eveything in my head.
Yes, I know I should have looked at training this way even without this misery, but now that I am really on my own, only now can I see how true it is that everybody is practising for themselves.
I cannot help, I have always learnt the hard way :-)

There is no doubt that my ass got kicked in Japan and with this help I think I managed to get out of a deep pit that I have been trapped in since a few years ago.

A great thanks to the "responsible persons"!

Moderate party

The Lunar New Year on Sunday has passed in a moderate style. We had a lot of guests, both members of the community and complete strangers who have learnt about the event from flyers.
However we started a with about 45 minutes delay, because the technician who was responsible for setting up the sound and stuff left, who knows why. He was an employee of the venue so we could not do anything about it.

After the starting ceremony it was my turn to read the tales, but just after the first few sentences the mic which I used died. I decided to get rid of the dead mic, so I stood up, like in the theatre on the stage and smoothly changed the style of the performance and my speach, mixing it with some humour. Finally it turned out that it was even better this way, the audience enjoyed it. Again (like a few weeks ago) people came to me afterwards asking if I was an actress, "because -they said- the way I speak in front of audience is so cultivated" :-) hehe. At least now I feel that it did worth studying at the drama school for almost 4 years :-)

Anyway, after the performance there were some teachings about the tales and then came the food/drink section. We had a lot of offered and blessed food and drink - so in order to not belie myself, I chose a bottle of semi-sweet wine :-))

After the food/drink there was a lottery under my supervision, but the fact that I had the wine before it added a special athmosphere to the whole thing. At least from my perspective :-) Probably no wonder I managed to make the visitors laugh sometimes, which actually was my intention anyway. Then came some open discussions about the traditional Mongolian medicine, and also a presentation of slides of our 2002 journey to Tibet and Nepal. We left at 8 because we wanted to get back to home by 9.
I had a bath, collapsed into my bed dead-tired, and fell asleep immediately, after the hard day. Probably it also had something to do with the wine ;-) yum

Tibetan Lunar New Year

This weekend is pretty busy again of course.

Yesterday we had the annual council meeting of our Buddhist Church where I also work as a responsible for external affairs.
Yesterday we had a lenghty discussion about all sorts of questions regarding the past, present and the future of the Church. In the same time I was also asked to prepare again that incredible amount of Tibetan-Hungarian style cookie that is usually consumed during the Lunar New Year. So I was kind of tearing about between the kitchen and the huge room of the house where the meeting was held.

We organized a big get together upon the event of the Tibetan Lunar New Year. The gathering is taking place today in the Butokugan (the new huge asian martial arts sport venue that I wrote about some posts before).
There will be a short newyear-starting ceremony, then I will have to read two folk tales that I chose prior to the whole thing and the Lama will teach about those. This part of the event will already be very light and entertaining, and after the tales a folk ensemble will play all kinds of old-stylish folkmusic. There will be food, drink, ect. Alltogether we expect a few hundred people today.

However I am a bit sorry that the event fell on this date.
After my trip to Belgium for Thomas' seminar was cancelled I wrote to him, and he graciously invited me to be his guest for this weekend for a seminar with Sheila. I thought "WOW", as meeting Sheila has also been on my wish-list since quite a while.
It was an awsome offer and opportunity so I got all turned on when I got his invitation. I tried to excuse myself from the Council meeting and from today's happenings in the Butokugan, but I could not. I should have been back to Hungary by Saturday afternoon which was impossible to make, so unfortunately I had to turn down the invitation. *Sigh*

Anyway, I hope that at least the New Year party will be a good one.
It is a very big sacrifice from me so I hope that the party today will compensate me a tiny bit for missing this rare opportunity to train with Thomas and Sheila.

Drumbeat

Probably I should do something in order to slow down the pace of how things are happening in my life. I feel like riding a loose skateboard - a several significant things are going on simultaneously and things are happening very fast.

Yamato

I have been to a performance of taiko drummers last Saturday. They are the Yamato group and have been on a tour. During their European tour they made like 4-5 performances last weekend in Budapest and one or two in Debrecen. I really loved their performance - the whole building was shaking when they played, and they brought up very intensive and powerful feelings in me. They completely blew the audience away. The title of their performance this year was "Shin-On", which means something like "Heartbeat". Although they play in a relatively modern style, still if you happen to be able to listen to them, don't miss the opportunity. This is their website.

New position thingie

The other IT unit at my uni called me a few days ago and asked if I could make myself free for a little while to talk about the new position that they're probably going to offer to me. So I met them yesterday and we talked. It seems that by the end of April or May they will see if the position, which is currently filled by someone, will have to be taken away from that person, and in that case they will offer it to me. First in part time and if everything goes well we can switch to full time from September.

Also they told that the position at the moment is not a project manager position, but rather a kind of coordinator and assistant position to the current project managers (there are two). Which is a bit different to what I initially expeced, but the work itself is not bad and there is still chance to develop on a long run.

However the money issue worries me just a tiny bit - I tried to ask carefully whazzup with the money but they avoided answering so I did not push it anymore - we can get back to it in May.

One thing is sure: I will take the position only if it will worth the change - only if I will get more than I do get now.
I was planning to go abroad for work after all, to make money for buying a flat, and I have put this plan on stand-by because the possibility of getting a better paying position was brought up. If however it will not pay well enough for me which worths the stay in Hungary, I will not take it but I go abroad. We will see in May

Being the supporting pillar

Until then I heaps of works to do here, recently things speeded up at the uni. We centralize the Electronic Theses Database collection, and also it seems that testing Moodle, the e-learning service for the whole uni is left to me. So now I am busy with writing FAQ's, tutorials, while in the same time teaching the new colleague how to prepare for classes, how to build up a computer course, and beside all these tutoring students until the new colleague can take over everything that was done by the previous instructor.

AND beside all these my boss is having his climax period I think - he keeps picking at me for all kinds of odds and ends, while the whole department's operation is practically based on me alone. It is not a wise thing for him to do this to his most reliable and stable colleague at such times.

Anyway, it is really time for me to get out of here - I feel that beside this job's not being a challlenge anymore, it is not healthy either to stay somewhere for such a long time.

Good luck or bad luck?

I've been thinking a lot about Friday's happenings because I really wanted to go for that seminar. But I will never know why things had to happen the way they did.
Was it a fortunate or unfortunate event? Who knows that?

There is a Chinese story about the same question:

"Once upon a time there was an old poor man who had an old horse which he worked with on the fields. Once the horse somehow broke loose and and disappeared among the hills. The poor man's neighbours expressed their regret over what happened, but the old man said only this:
- Good luck or bad luck? Who can tell that?
After a week the horse returned with a whole stud of wild horses. Now the neighbours expressed their joy over the old man's good luck, but the old man said again:
- Good luck or bad luck? Who can tell that?
When a few days later his son tried to supple one of the wild horses, he fell off and broke his leg.
Of course the neighbours were whining about what a bad luck he had, but the old man said again:
- Good luck or bad luck? Who can tell that?
After a few weeks the army marched in the village and enlisted all the healthy young men. When they saw the old man's son with his broken leg, they dropped him from the list.
Was it a good luck or a bad luck? Who can tell that?..."

Why things happened the way they did on Friday and how things could have otherwise happened? - This question can never be answered - as the above tale teaches. Life will bring the answer when it ends - probably :)

P.s.: Since we did not go to Brussels, Cs. went to the monthly meeting of the Buddhist Community, where he was offered a place in in a group going for a top secret trip to Mongolia in 4 months :-) Good luck or bad luck? :-) Who knows...

No journey

At last I did not make it to Brussels.

Believe or not, I decided to cancel it in the very last minute, literally speaking already after boarding, with my belt fastened in the seat.

After we finished boarding we have been waiting for getting ready to take off when a complete blackout came. Everything stopped, the engines too. It was quite surprising - I've been flying more or less frequently but it never happened before to any aircrafts of any of the air companies that I flew.
I thought "hmm, okay, one occasion is still not the end of the world", but of course I became nervous, however trying to keep myself cool. Then an engineer came up on board and was consulting the pilot. They restarted the machine in a few minutes and everything seemed to be just fine. Then 3 minutes later everything stopped again. The two stewards came out of the cockpit and I managed to catch the wondering clueless glimps that they exchanged. Already then I had some very very bad feelings about the whole thing and by the second blackout it became very strong.
It was more than just fear - I was absolutely sure that if I stayed in the aircraft and took off with it, something very bad would have happened to me.
I felt it once in my life before, when I was around 18 and helped a stranger to find his way, but I escaped because I felt something very bad. Later it turned out that he wanted to knife me.
Anyway, back to the aircraft. I told Cs. that we need to get off the plane before it's too late and he was just smiling and tried to convince me that everything would be fine. After however the second rebooting he agreed - later he told me he has never seen me like this before so he thought maybe now he should listen to me. The money that we paid for the ticket was not too much anyway as it was a discount flight, so we said "fuck the money". So I went to the steward and asked him what was going on. "There was nothing special" he said "just that the system required a restart, you know, like in case of computers". Bummer. He told it to the wrong person. I said, "okay, then we would like to get off". He asked if we were sure and I said "definitely". So they asked for a bus and took us back to the airport.
Before getting off I did not look back at the other passengers but I am sure we made a few of them thinking a bit. But we tried to keep everything as calm as possible.

Anyway as soon as we got out of the building of the airport I started calming down and summarized the whole thing. What I felt definitely was more than just my basic fear of flying, it was a well founded something that I felt.
I was very sorry for poor Cs. that I screwed up his weekend holiday, in the same time he was absolutely understanding and he said he had no problems with it because he saw that there was really something wrong. He also said that while I was talking to the steward, there was one more blackout but I already did not recognize that one, I might have been so much "revved". He also said that while we have been boarding, he saw that the cockpit's floor was full of fallen apart papers and noone took the effort to collect them. It's not a big deal but it speaks for the negligence of the crew.

Anyway, after getting home, we checked the website of the airport and were quite surprised to see that the plane still have not taken off, and it was already 1 hour after the expected take-off time. We kept checking the site continuously and the delay became longer and longer each time we checked. At last it took off with almost 4 hours of delay - probably they have been fixing the problem for so long or waiting for another aircraft to arrive and take the passengers. So there was really something wrong with it. In the same time if they would have offered another aircraft to go with that, that would have been absolutely okay with me. But I knew that our current aircraft completely sucked for some unknown reason.
In addition it turned out that 2 hours after we left the airport, the main terminal was closed because of bomb-scare. They serached through everyone, even the pilots.

Actually in the past 3 weeks various minor problems came up which you would most probably call "bad luck", but there were many of these. And in the last 24 hours prior to departure I got a a few news of and about death as well.

Thinking back now I think I may have been simply silly and afraid to much - but it's also true that this was the second time in my life when I felt and knew that something very bad would happen. However I will never know what would have happened if I stayed on-board.

I am just very sorry that I could not attend Thomas' seminar this time, so probably I will have to go and visit him sometime next year.
This year I need to go to Japan once more - and I have no major problem with flying there again - and I also want to take Cs. to Egypt. We agreed before anyway to go there this year if we can make it financially, as it'll be our 10th anniversary just when I will be in Japan.
I also want to compensate him for this misery - I know he has been preparing for this trip to Brussels very much - he has not been out of Hungary since 2002. He is a great person indeed.

That frightful flying

Tomorrow we leave for Brussels.
Again as always, I am already scared of it, even now my feet are full of adrenalin.
The more I fly the more I am afraid of it. Silly, isn't it?
Can anyone recommend me anything about how to get rid of this paralyzing fear? I am getting tired of it lately but I cannot get over it. One thing that can help a bit is that S. had to take a long flight as well these days flying to Canada, so if he could make it with no problems, hopefully I will be okay, too...(?)

And there is one more huge journey ahead of me in August - to Japan again...
If I survive this one tomorrow and the way back Sunday night...

If not, take care of yourselves and live a happy life :-)

Tip-(no)-toe-ing

Yesterday RI and me visited DJH's dojo again - we decided to visit them once a month.
The training was good but the guys were *very* violent. I mean they could not control themselves.
We did different techniques against a grab and punch combination.

As far as I noticed - and RI shares the same opinion - both this and last months training was rather SFR-style than KKSR. Way too SFR style. Probably D did not have the opportunity yet to put together what KKSR is like or which techniques are in there. Anyway, it is not my business.

So we did various improvisations, and at the end of the training we sat down in a huge circle, one person had to enter the center and do an improvised technique against everyone, one by one. I had to start it first, and luckilly went through quite smoothly on all the guys, despite the fact that I could not load my right foot, as RI stepped on it (thanks again! ;-) )and it had hurt badly. One or two guys managed to put me down on the ground but the rest was quite okay.
When the others did some techniques against each other and also when I was the uke for most of them, they got nervous (you can simply see it on the opponent), flustered and started applying an incredible amount of muscle power combined with speed. Of course they could never control the uke and they often ended up with sloppily beating the crap out of the other.

Two of the guys were especially crazy with me and RI (and with the others too). One of them smashed me into the ground unbelieveably hard.
The only one occasion when I exeprienced such a cruel impact into the ground, was when I lived back in my hometown and the local Sport Association wanted to hire a guy to hold a self defense course and they asked us to help testing him. The guy was an instructor of a S.W.A.T.-like unit at the military and was *very good* in unarmed combat. He had beaten us up like hell, but at least I could stand the mud without a word.
Anyway, yesterday my luck was that my torso is very muscular (yes guys, under the padding :-) ) and that it was tatami and not concrete. The other guy hit my head with his fist with totally no controll. It was my fault too because my distance and direction sucked and I did not protect my head well enough but even then he should have paid attention to his uke and not delivering a punch with full power to the other person's skull. Even now my head hurts when I touch it with my fingertips.
Poor RI was kicked *really hard* on the nuts, they did not stop the kick in time. Two people did this to him, one after the another, so he was quite upset at the end. Even today at training he has been grumbling a bit about it - but he was totally right.

So all in all, these guys could be way better if they would not try winning over the other with any possible method but would rather concentrate on feeling the movement. There will always be a stronger opponent or a better fighter than them. Not to mention what if they grow old and be 60-70-80 years old men? They won't be able to use the same amount of power that they do now. But then it will be too late to realize that.

Anyway, thanks to RI I got home at a fairly good time, he gave me a lift with his car. I really appreciated it since after the end of the training I could already hardly stand on my right foot, it did hurt so much. By the time I got home it became all purple and swollen. Today everything took longer, the daily routine, going to work, walk in the uni, not to mention how crap I was during tonight's training, not being able to put weight on my right foot. I think the small toe is broken.

Need I tell how happy I am now? A few days before the Brussels seminar I break my small toe... I did not think it affects my taijutsu this much. Anyway, still better than a broken knee :-)

Love

As you can see I added a pic to the right coloumn.

I decided to add new images to my blog, depending on what mood I am in and also observing various special days.

The next one which is due very soon is Valentine's Day on the 14th of February.
It is said to be the lovers' day, so I decided to add a picture which expresses what I think love between a man and a woman is really about, and how I live it.
In my perception it is not just plain sexuality, not even the ordinary feeling of love, but something of a higher order which's most intensive physical appearance is the sexual interaction. When the two halves need to become one whole, thus attaining the perfect balance. When two souls - which possess the same qualities but are the polar opposites of one-another - can perfectly complement the other and the mind "arrives home". This may be a manifestation of absolute Love, I think.

Have you already found your pair?

Busy home-fairy

This weekend I was a real slacker. I have not had the chance to relax this much since about a few weeks ago.
Besides cooking some yummy bio-lunch for myself and after making some reform-style pancake stuffed with vanilla puding, I have thrown myself down to watch my favorit series on TV - Stargate and Eureka.
I also did a litle sewing - I had to change the patch on my gi and had to change the velcro. I had a hole, too, on my gi pants which needed some sewing work. I also wanted to sew my tabi, but I found out that I have to buy some black linen fabric for that so I gave that one up.
I called the hairdresser this morning and managed to make an appointment with her for the next week. My hair is growing fast but luckilly its end has not been breaking that much since I changed to this new shampoo and conditioner :) (oh my, it sounds like a cheap TV ad :-P )

Now there is one more thing left for today, I need to jump on the reader which we use in the "occult" course :-P
When somebody notices my reader and asks what kind of notes are they, I simply say: "occult practice" :-P I am too lazy to tell the whole title plus I like to see the reaction on their face :-D hehe.
I really like to dumbfound people, especially when they fool themselves with things which they don't want to face for some reason.
Of course I do it only when I see that they intentionally or half-intentionally do so in order to preserve their own feeling of convenience and comfort.
I am evil, aren't I? ]:-D

Meetings' week

This past week went by with meetings. I had several meetings where I work at and this coming week will be no different. I will meet the IT unit and discuss that project manager position that they mentioned. Also the summer uni wants to take me over in full time so it seems that I may even get out of the situation with good cards. I just have to be very careful, not to get into a situation where I "fall in between the two chairs".

Also I had two meetings with some buyu from Hungary. One was with one of the dojo leaders in Budapest, and he wanted to meet because he wanted to "ask me for help". Basicaly his question was if I could recommend him a reliable instructor whom it is worth checking out and learning from. I was a bit surprised at the question because I was sure he already found his instructor and has been following that. It seems that he still needs something that this one can not entirely provide.
Anyhow, I told him that I am not sure that whom I recommend will really be suitable for him. Anyway, we agreed that I will let him know as soon as I find someone whom I think is really good and he has no preconceptions about, and is not at the other end of the globe.
However to tell the truth I seriously think that the purpose of this meeting was rather a kind of "cheek-visit", to keep in touch with a fellow buyu. Mere diplomacy, I could say. Anyway, I have no problem with that as long as it helps the cooperation between each-other.

The other meeting on Friday was with another buyu, a beginner from my former dojo, who since summer moved to another city. He however returns to Budpest time to time so at the meeting he asked me if I could spend some extra time on teaching him. Finally we agreed to meet on one of the islands in Budapest when the weather is getting better and his schedule is getting finalized.
It gives me about 1 more month probably.
I also felt some strange attitude in this guy. We met in a pizzeria and he was too courteous. You know, shirt, necktie, very embarrassed during the whole dinner, looking way too deep into my eyes, offering his arm while going to the train station. Although I like when men are curteous with me, but I am not really into this kind of behaviour because it was based on nothing from his side, and the last thing I want with him is an affair or anything like that. So I felt that he kind of intruded into my private sphere. He was not a pushy type but I am pretty sure that he wants more than just me teaching him BBT. So I have to be careful - I step back for a while and see how he survives.

So, this week was all crazy again.
Next week will be exciting, I can't wait to attend Thomas' seminar. I still don't know if the Iranian guy comes with me or not, he still does not have the visa. I feel that he won't make it this time. But he still has 4 days to make it, so it'll turn out a day before the departure the latest.