A short biography about the founder of my style of martial arts, Gichin Funakoshi.
From the article:
'Whenever the name of Gichin Funakoshi is mentioned, it brings to mind the parable of "A Man of Tao (Do) and a Little Man". As it is told, a student once asked, "What is the difference between a man of Tao and a little man?" The sensei replies, "It is simple. When the little man receives his first dan (degree or rank), he can hardly wait to run home and shout at the top of his voice to tell everyone that he has obtained his first dan. Upon receiving his second dan, he will climb to the rooftops and shout to the people. Upon receiving his third dan, he will jump in his automobile and parade through town blowing the horn, telling one and all about his third dan".
The sensei continues, "When the man of Tao receives his first dan, he will bow his head in gratitude. Upon receiving his second dan, he will bow his head and his shoulders. Upon receiving his third dan, he will bow at the waist and quietly walk alongside the wall so that people will not see him or notice him".
Funakoshi was a man of Tao. He placed no emphasis whatsoever on competitions, record breaking or championships. He placed emphasis on individual self-perfection. He believed in the common decency and respect that one human being owes another. He was the master of masters.'
Thursday, November 10, 2005
Sunday, October 09, 2005
Rachel and PuzzleCrack!
This past weekend Rachel my girl visited for the weekend and we had a great time spending time together. She got to spend some time with my roommates. We went to a couple parks and watched Wings of Desire, a German film about guardian angels. Quite good.
This past week(Monday through Friday), my roommate JT and I participated in a puzzle competition based at the University of Illinois campus.
It was quite fun but very tiring and I get burned out at the end after I finished solving a very hard cryptographic cipher.
We finished the last puzzle 4th, which got us some free pizza, but really that was just because the organizers had extra pizza they wouldn't be able to finish. Yes, we met the people who made the puzzles, and got to talk with them a bit. You see, the last puzzle required us to go to the computer science building and find them, in order to get the final clue from them.
But we spent a very long time on those puzzles all week, and now we must get back to work :-)
This past week(Monday through Friday), my roommate JT and I participated in a puzzle competition based at the University of Illinois campus.
It was quite fun but very tiring and I get burned out at the end after I finished solving a very hard cryptographic cipher.
We finished the last puzzle 4th, which got us some free pizza, but really that was just because the organizers had extra pizza they wouldn't be able to finish. Yes, we met the people who made the puzzles, and got to talk with them a bit. You see, the last puzzle required us to go to the computer science building and find them, in order to get the final clue from them.
But we spent a very long time on those puzzles all week, and now we must get back to work :-)
Monday, September 26, 2005
Other interesting things I've done
Let's see...
Saturdays have been interesting. The Saturday before last I was a scorer for a mud volleyball tournament for an all-girls' dorm. An RA I know in Navs invited JT and I to volunteer, and we were much obliged ;-) There was even a good amount of mud wrestling :-P
This past Saturday I went with some Navs to do "hawking" at the football game. This consists of selling concessions in the stands like at any major sporting event, except that this is non-profit(except for tips ^_^). A portion of the proceeds of whatever we sell go to the Navigators, so it's good work, free admission to the game(UofI lost 61-7) and we make some money for our group. Navs also sponsored free dinner for everyone who went hawking. Twas funness.
Meow.
Saturdays have been interesting. The Saturday before last I was a scorer for a mud volleyball tournament for an all-girls' dorm. An RA I know in Navs invited JT and I to volunteer, and we were much obliged ;-) There was even a good amount of mud wrestling :-P
This past Saturday I went with some Navs to do "hawking" at the football game. This consists of selling concessions in the stands like at any major sporting event, except that this is non-profit(except for tips ^_^). A portion of the proceeds of whatever we sell go to the Navigators, so it's good work, free admission to the game(UofI lost 61-7) and we make some money for our group. Navs also sponsored free dinner for everyone who went hawking. Twas funness.
Meow.
Indianapolis Zoo
The Indianapolis Zoo is cool. Rachel visited Indianapolis with Kathy and Greg last weekend and I decided to make the 2 hour drive to meet them, on very short notice. I even blew off a meeting for a class to go see her :-) Anyway, it wasn't an important meeting, and there was no reason for me specifically to be there.
There was a Polar Bear that did backflips all day cuz it was bored. We ate at the spaghetti factory. All was fun, and this coming weekend Rachel will visit me here in IL :-)
JT(mostly) and I just beat Zork: Grand Inquisitor today. It's an older game that I've kept because it's very entertaining and I could never beat it! But JT used a walkthrough when he got significantly stuck and we got through it in good time :-) Very nice ending and I'm glad I've finally seen it all.
Went to Stratford Park Bible Church this Sunday. The communion service at 9 was quite cool. No pastor or anything, just a lady at the organ and anyone can stand up and tell something God's spoken to them or they can suggest a song that everyone should sing. We also went to the Christian Education class afterwards, which had good interaction and so was interesting.
Good day ^_^ God will save the day, as always!
There was a Polar Bear that did backflips all day cuz it was bored. We ate at the spaghetti factory. All was fun, and this coming weekend Rachel will visit me here in IL :-)
JT(mostly) and I just beat Zork: Grand Inquisitor today. It's an older game that I've kept because it's very entertaining and I could never beat it! But JT used a walkthrough when he got significantly stuck and we got through it in good time :-) Very nice ending and I'm glad I've finally seen it all.
Went to Stratford Park Bible Church this Sunday. The communion service at 9 was quite cool. No pastor or anything, just a lady at the organ and anyone can stand up and tell something God's spoken to them or they can suggest a song that everyone should sing. We also went to the Christian Education class afterwards, which had good interaction and so was interesting.
Good day ^_^ God will save the day, as always!
Monday, September 05, 2005
A Cheese Festival!
For our fun activity on Labor Day, JT and I went to the Arthur, IL Cheese Festival. It was a good time spent with a good friend.
Arthur, IL is home to what seems like about half amish people, and is thus self-titled the home of the Amish. In order to get to downtown Arthur, you have to drive through miles and miles of corn and soybean fields. This made me a bit uncomfortable because I'm so not used to driving through such an expanse of farmland. There are plenty of farms in Maryland, but you couldn't find an area like there is in Central Illinois.
The cheese festival was comprised of a bunch of small tents lining the downtown area of Arthur, and the main source of the cheese was two bakery-type places, specializing in fresh cheese and bread and dessert pastries. They looked verrry good. We walked by all the tents, looking at the mostly-not-cheese vendors. In fact, we should've brought along a couple of girls because they would better appreciate a lot of the decorative arts and crafts/jewelry being sold by most of the people. There were also the standard expensive food vendors. However, there was a "cheese tent" in which a few people were handing out two large slices of excellent cheddar cheese on a sesame seed flatbread.
We chose to eat at a quaint restaurant called The Dutch Oven. I got a fried cod fish sandwich which fried mushrooms, and JT got a tenderloin sandwich with fries. The food was alright, although not overly impressive, just like the restaurant. But the people were friendly, and the prices were right, so it was nice.
We ended up buying some smoked gouda and some muenster(my favorite) after sampling a variety of cheeses available for sale. So we had a novel experience today and we have some good cheese to eat(while it lasts).
>>>I hope I can get all my work done :-P
Arthur, IL is home to what seems like about half amish people, and is thus self-titled the home of the Amish. In order to get to downtown Arthur, you have to drive through miles and miles of corn and soybean fields. This made me a bit uncomfortable because I'm so not used to driving through such an expanse of farmland. There are plenty of farms in Maryland, but you couldn't find an area like there is in Central Illinois.
The cheese festival was comprised of a bunch of small tents lining the downtown area of Arthur, and the main source of the cheese was two bakery-type places, specializing in fresh cheese and bread and dessert pastries. They looked verrry good. We walked by all the tents, looking at the mostly-not-cheese vendors. In fact, we should've brought along a couple of girls because they would better appreciate a lot of the decorative arts and crafts/jewelry being sold by most of the people. There were also the standard expensive food vendors. However, there was a "cheese tent" in which a few people were handing out two large slices of excellent cheddar cheese on a sesame seed flatbread.
We chose to eat at a quaint restaurant called The Dutch Oven. I got a fried cod fish sandwich which fried mushrooms, and JT got a tenderloin sandwich with fries. The food was alright, although not overly impressive, just like the restaurant. But the people were friendly, and the prices were right, so it was nice.
We ended up buying some smoked gouda and some muenster(my favorite) after sampling a variety of cheeses available for sale. So we had a novel experience today and we have some good cheese to eat(while it lasts).
>>>I hope I can get all my work done :-P
Monday, August 29, 2005
Grad School, Year 2
So starts another year of school at University of Illinois. Here are my classes this semester:
Computational Linguistics
Pragmatics
Elementary Japanese 1
Now, I don't know about you, but this is exactly what I want in a grad school semester. The first is a programming class with a linguistics bent(morphology learning is this semester's topic). The second is a philosophical/theoretical linguistics course. The third is a language course. And guess what, they all count toward my major! Amazing. Really. This is what I came to grad school for :-)
Rachel will be heading to Cincinnati on Sept 1st. She is very excited about where she'll be living and starting at a new school, but she is very sad about leaving all of her friends in Maryland.
I'm enjoying living with JT and Chris, my new roommates and good friends from the past year at U of I. We have pretty similar interests, so it's very cool to live with them.
There is a new guy who joined Navs this year(a freshman) who has a blackbelt in Ryu-Kyu Kempo, which is a style I'm interested in studying. It's what the founder of Shotokan studied before he created Shotokan, supposedly. Ryu-Kyu Kempo has a big emphasis on using ki(chi) to win battles and natural range of motion techniques. We will have our first session together tomorrow.
Computational Linguistics
Pragmatics
Elementary Japanese 1
Now, I don't know about you, but this is exactly what I want in a grad school semester. The first is a programming class with a linguistics bent(morphology learning is this semester's topic). The second is a philosophical/theoretical linguistics course. The third is a language course. And guess what, they all count toward my major! Amazing. Really. This is what I came to grad school for :-)
Rachel will be heading to Cincinnati on Sept 1st. She is very excited about where she'll be living and starting at a new school, but she is very sad about leaving all of her friends in Maryland.
I'm enjoying living with JT and Chris, my new roommates and good friends from the past year at U of I. We have pretty similar interests, so it's very cool to live with them.
There is a new guy who joined Navs this year(a freshman) who has a blackbelt in Ryu-Kyu Kempo, which is a style I'm interested in studying. It's what the founder of Shotokan studied before he created Shotokan, supposedly. Ryu-Kyu Kempo has a big emphasis on using ki(chi) to win battles and natural range of motion techniques. We will have our first session together tomorrow.
Friday, August 05, 2005
World Renown For Romance
My favorite album, which has yet been out of print as long as I've known about it, has just been re-released by the indie label it was originally released under :-)
It's called World Renown For Romance by Denison Marrs.
Needless to say, I've bought the album already. You should too. I'll be friends with you. All your worries will disappear. Really. ^_^
An interesting happening at my undergrad school UMD recently. It's safe to say this would never happen at U of Illinois :-P UMD is right outside of Washington, DC, in one of the highest crime counties(Prince George's Count) in the country(especially in terms of car thefts, more than the entire state of Virginia, supposedly).
It's called World Renown For Romance by Denison Marrs.
Needless to say, I've bought the album already. You should too. I'll be friends with you. All your worries will disappear. Really. ^_^
An interesting happening at my undergrad school UMD recently. It's safe to say this would never happen at U of Illinois :-P UMD is right outside of Washington, DC, in one of the highest crime counties(Prince George's Count) in the country(especially in terms of car thefts, more than the entire state of Virginia, supposedly).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
