A Newbie's Intro

[Dronak]

What the heck, it's an old thread, but it's my thread, so I'll dig it up if I want.

Just a little update to let you all know, whoever remembers me and/or is interested, that I finally finished my PhD. I passed the defense back in August, but had to do some revisions. My advisor approved them today, so I submitted it and all the other paperwork (and money) and that's it. It looks like the electronic submission process is causing some minor problems, but hopefully it'll all be fine. Now I just need to find a job. *sigh*

On the MA side of things, a small group of us who are still here in the area are practicing together once or twice a week. It's only about 5 or 6 people, but without our teacher here and many students having graduated and moved on, I guess it's no surprise that the group is small. Basically we just practice forms we all know together, but we may start teaching each other some of the forms that not all of us learned. Our teacher did e-mail us about a month ago to tell us about his placings in a tournament (he did well and using a form or few that he taught us, too) and to say that he might be able to send us some video later on. We haven't gotten any yet, but it will certainly be interesting to see what he sends us, if he does. So I guess we'll keep on practicing and doing what we can while we're here. I've got plenty of stuff I can practice on my own if I need/want to and most importantly to me, I learned tai chi which is what I really joined the club for. I need to make more of an effort to keep up with that, but that's usually what I practice, more so than the kung fu.

 

[7starmantis]

Gongradulations!! Wow, you must feel good about getting that finished.

Thats good that your still training, many people have leraned that way, my sifu did for quite a while when he was young. His sifu would send them video, or have on eof them visit and learn it and take it back and train on it for a while.

Good to hear from you again.

7sm

 

[Dronak]

Yeah, I'm digging up my old thread again to provide a bit of an update for anyone who's still interested. We've still got about 5 or 6 people from our club around here who want to practice. There's even a new person interested who happened to see a few of us practicing last semester and wanted to know more. We're not actively recruiting people or anything though because our teacher isn't here anymore; we just want to keep practicing what we learned. We've scheduled three practices a week, people come to whatever ones they can, and it's mainly the same as before. We try to do all the forms we all know together as a group and then we'll help out some of the newer people with their forms and such. We've also decided to teach each other a form (or more?) for two main reasons. One, so that we all have some more forms in common to practice as an entire group. Two, so that at least one other person will know every form you know so you'll always have at least one partner to practice each form with. The other guys are teaching me the Seven Star Knife (broadsword) form since I'm the only one who doesn't know it yet. Maybe later I can learn Second Ambush Fist and I think I'd be pretty satisfied with that for the kung fu side of things. Oh, a while back some of the people in our club videotaped themselves performing all of the forms we had learned and got that onto a DVD. I think they said it's missing the advanced forms taught in special sessions and maybe one or two others, but essentially this is the video record of what we've been taught over the years. One of guys in the club is making copies for us so that we can all have it for reference. I'm looking forward to getting it. It should be a useful addition to my own written notes. I asked if I could get a copy on CD instead of DVD because I can't read the DVD right now. If there was too much info and it would take too many CDs, I said it would be OK to leave it on a DVD. I don't know exactly what was on there though, so we'll see how it turned out soon enough. No word from our teacher about the videos he said he could send back in like Novemeber. Oh well.

So I guess that's about it. We're still trying to practice what we know and it's been going OK so far. But it is kind of tough without a teacher and without the same large group we had before.

 

[Darksoul]

Dronak,

-Its nice to see that after all this time, you and others are still practicing. As new as I am to kung-fu, I cannot imagine practicing without a teacher. Hopefully, your Sifu will get back to you again. If not, might I suggest maybe trying out other styles? I know you like what you're working with now, and thats cool, though it seems at some point, you'll be ready to move on. Without your original teacher, what are your options? Just curious if you've given any though to your future training. Glad you update this thread every now and then. Its nice to read about a person's evolution through martial arts. Thanks.


A---)

 

[Dronak]

Yes, it would be nice if our teacher could come back to the US to teach us again, but I don't really know if he wants to or is able to right now. Actually, if he was able to send us some videos done in a kind of instructional format, we could continue learning that way. It's not the same as having him here in person, but it could work. Still, we do have plenty of material to practice and get better at doing because he moved so quickly while he was here. I've got six barehand forms, the tan tui routines (nine of the ten), one weapon form, and the Yang style tai chi long form. IIRC, all but two tan tui routines and one high level barehand form were taught in two years. And most of the long-time club members have more than that because they went to some special classes I chose not to attend. So there is plenty for us to work on, especially if we start teaching each other forms and adding to our totals.

I haven't really thought much about what to do later on. As long as I'm still in this area and there are people from the club around who want to practice with, I'll probably keep doing what I'm doing now. If that breaks up or I move or something, I can still practice on my own, but honestly, I'll probably slip back to only really working on tai chi and doing just enough with the basic kung fu forms to avoid completely forgetting them. I have written notes on everything I learned, so going back and reproducing the forms using them and my memory usually isn't too difficult.

I don't know if I'd be able to find someone else who teaches this same style of kung fu to continue doing exactly this. I could try some other similar style or even switch to something completely different. For example, since this seems to be primarily striking, doing something that's more based on grappling and ground fighting would be a useful way to help round out my knowledge of different fighting styles and ranges. (I'm sure some would argue that I should find those things in the style I'm already in, but let's not do that discussion.) Another possibility is that I search around to find a good tai chi teacher and work primarily on that. I could stay with the Yang style that I've started or start going into other styles. Given that my main interest in starting this was tai chi anyway, this may be the most likely option.

I've been posting new updates here because this is where others were asking about how things were going. But I did have two other threads that have more details about the training I was doing at the time I wrote them. I searched them out and in case anyone here hasn't seen them or wants a refresher, you can check them out here: Newbie Part 2 -- Weapons and My Story and Training, Part 3. Part 2 only covers the few months of the first summer when we did weapons. Part 3 covers most of the second school year of training. This thread originally covered the first school year, but is now continuing with more recent stuff, after my break to complete my PhD and getting back into it now, this school year.

 

[Darksoul]

-Very cool, very cool. As long as you keep up with something, it really doesn't matter does it? You still have a lot of material to cover, and, more importanly, people to practice with. I look at the mountain of material that is praying mantis and think, the top is not my goal, just as far as I can learn. We have many weapons form, though I know there is only a few weapons I'm actually interested in learning. Knowing myself as I do, haha, I'm content with learing basics and enough of the style to be comfortable with. Like knowing 10 techniques really well, as opposed to 30 techs so-so. I thinking about looking into some Tai Chi as well.


A---)

 

[Dronak]

Since it's been a while, I thought I'd give a little update for anyone who may be interested. Things are still going about the same as earlier this year -- about 4 people from the group show up for practices pretty regularly. We actually have a new member, too, a woman who saw a few of us practicing back in December and was interested in learning more. We're not actively recruiting for people since we have no teacher, but since she was interested, we've started teaching her some of the basic forms and such.

As for me, one of my classmates and I switched forms -- we taught each other one we knew that the other didn't. I learned Second Ambush Fist from him and he learned First Ambush Fist from me. This helped us both get a new form, it gets someone else in the group who knows First Ambush (I was the only one), and it helps me fill out the lower end of the form list, too. Another classmate was showing me the Seven Star Knife broadsword form, but we only got part of the way through it. The guy showing me had some bad luck with injuries and wasn't able to practice for a month or so. He's back now though, so perhaps we'll resume doing this form. I have a copy of a VHS tape that has this on it and the Fourth Cha Fist form, so I have another reference for it that I could use if necessary.

This weekend, I just got a copy of the DVD our class made that contains video of members performing the forms we were taught. This will be a great reference and reminder. Unfortunately, I can't view it -- my computer doesn't have a DVD drive and my DVD player won't read these computer-type DVDs. I could copy the stuff to CDs from my parents' computer the next time I went there, but asked a housemate if he could do it for me. He was kind enough to agree. It'll be a while before he gets them all done which is fine; I asked him if he could do it one of these days when he had some spare time. It should be interesting to see what they've got on there because I don't know the exact contents. I'll try to let you know if you're interested.

 

[arnisador]

Do you only practice forms solo in the group, or also do partner exercises?

 

[Dronak]

Just solo forms. I don't think there are enough people who know partner exercises. I think those were mostly taught in the special classes the teacher had on weekends and not everyone went to those.

 

[Dronak]

My housemate finished making CDs from the DVD for me. For the most part, the DVD contains what I expected it to, though not quite as well organized/formatted as I had hoped. There are videos of club members performing most of the forms we learned. It would be kind of hard to learn from the demos since the guys went through all the forms without really pausing like we do in practice, but that's OK. It'll be a nice reminder of what I have learned should I forget a little bit here or there. Our one day special class for learning Fourth Cha Fist is on there, too. That takes up a lot of space. The contents of our club web site is there and so are some extra videos that I found on http://www.jiayo.com/ after web searching for info on style names I'd never heard of before.

I've got a technical question, if anyone can help me out. For some reason I don't know, when the guys videotaped themselves, sometimes they got separate audio and video files. So there are mpg and mp3 pairs of files that should be joined to make one file. I have no idea of how to do that though. I web searched, but couldn't really find anything. I do remember that the guys said they were having trouble merging the separate audio and video files together and I guess in the end they gave up. Does anyone know how I could get them combined? I can live without it, but it would be nice to have them merged, particularly for the Fourth Cha Fist seminar which was instruction rather than just demonstration. Thanks.

 

[7starmantis]

I've got a technical question, if anyone can help me out. For some reason I don't know, when the guys videotaped themselves, sometimes they got separate audio and video files. So there are mpg and mp3 pairs of files that should be joined to make one file. I have no idea of how to do that though. I web searched, but couldn't really find anything. I do remember that the guys said they were having trouble merging the separate audio and video files together and I guess in the end they gave up. Does anyone know how I could get them combined? I can live without it, but it would be nice to have them merged, particularly for the Fourth Cha Fist seminar which was instruction rather than just demonstration. Thanks.

Thats a good question for the Computer Room Forum

7sm

 

[Dronak]

Yeah, I thought about posting it there, but that forum looked rather empty. That's why I mentioned it here. I guess it can't hurt to try though, thanks.

 

[arnisador]

I bet you'll see some computerphiles pop up if you post there.

 

[Dronak]

Yes, I got some replies pretty quickly. I guess people do keep an eye on the forum, but if there's no questions being asked, they don't have anything to post about. I haven't been able to do what I wanted to yet, but maybe I will. Someone also said this split is normal for writing to DVDs, so maybe when I can actually play the DVD it'll work fine without needing to combine things myself. I'll see eventually.

Side note about training -- it looks like we're going to make this week the last one for the semester. Finals will be coming up in a few weeks and people will need to study for them. I think we're going to try to pick up again in June with whoever is still around and interested in practicing.

 

[arnisador]

We've got two more weeks after this one before finals! I'm dying here.

 

[Dronak]

I don't actually have much to say on the MA side of things right now. Our group decided to stop practicing once the school semester finished and take a few weeks off. I think we're going to try to pick up again for the summer within a few weeks.

The bigger news is on the personal side -- I finally got a job. I should have noted in here that I completed my PhD. I did the defense in August, but missed summer deadlines and had revisions to do, so I ended up with a December graduation. I've been looking for a job since fall 2003, about a year before I planned to finish. It's taken until just now for me to get a job. Part of that could be because I didn't want to continue doing heavy research, but I wasn't getting offers on research post-docs and fellowships when I applied for them anyway. I think I was very lucky to get this job and at just the right time, before I was practically out of money in my checking account.

The company e-mailed me after finding my resume/CV on line. It was for a software engineer position working mainly in the earth sciences and they thought I'd be a good match. I replied and explained that I did have the sort of experience they wanted, but often in different areas since I did astronomy work. They phoned and we talked for a little while, then set up and in-person interview for the following week. I went to that and everything seemed to go well. It sounded like they were still interested which was good. When I sent an e-mail thank you follow-up, I got a reply that said they'd be checking references and as long as it went well, which they expected it to, I'd have an official offer by early the next week. I e-mailed my references to let them know the check was coming and tell them that this was a good opportunity for me, doing computer work in the science field. I then waited and a few days later, I had the offer letter. I quickly accepted, of course. The whole thing took about 2 weeks, it was very fast.

I'm going to be working on the Science Software Reuse project, something designed to find and make available all sorts of programs and components that people can reuse in making and designing their own software rather than having to write everything from scratch. I think that initially we have to search out what's already available, see if anyone has a similar, suitable repository, stuff like that. Assuming we don't find something in existence that meets the needs, we'll have to go about designing something that will. The job is based at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, just a few miles down the road from me, which is very convenient. I'm not employed directly by Goddard, but by another company (Innovim) who's been contracted by Goddard to do work for them. Filling in time sheets every day with notes about what I did is kind of a pain and things in general seem a lot more structured than school was, but what can you do?

It's an entry level position, so they'll help train me where I need it, and full-time. The benefits are pretty comprehensive, it seems, and those can start after 2 months. The salary is pretty good, too, at least for me now. I'm getting somewhat more than double my grad student salary which was paying for 20 hours a week. So it's not like I'm making a fortune, but considering I was living off that grad student salary for many years, doubling it is a significant increase. I'll be able to use all that extra money for saving, fun spending, and paying off undergrad student loans. I've had to cut back so much the past 9 months that I've been unemployed (my advisor couldn't fund me for the fall semester) that I'm really looking forward to having money again. The one little drawback is that I won't see my first pay check for a month because they process the pay before the last; effectively, they always owe me one pay this way. I'll probably have to take some money out of savings to make sure I'll have enough to survive until I start getting paid (I'm getting almost dangerously low now), but that's OK because I know I'll be able to replace it in the near future. Once I start getting paid, I'll be able to go to more ballroom dances again, renew subscriptions I let lapse (or was about to), buy some stuff I've been wanting to get, etc. A new computer is definitely on my list because mine is becoming more of a pain as time goes by, but will have to wait for a few months until I make sure my checking account has enough money that I can pay off the charge within a couple months. I did already buy myself a new PDA though.

I guess that's about it for now. Last week was my first week and things seem to be going well enough. I've got a bunch of background reading to do in order to understand the project, what's been done, and what they want to do. I'll also need to read up a bit on the computer specific side of things so that by the time we expect to do a lot of computer work, I'll be more caught up on it. Oh, the last point that shows how lucky I was with this -- in some general conversation at lunch on Monday, my boss noted that they actually found my resume by accident. They were looking for someone to do instrument calibrations or something like that and I guess my data calibration was enough to get me into their search results. I suppose they looked over my background and experience and decided that I'd be good for this other job, passed it along, then all the stuff I already noted took place. I guess this is how things were meant to turn out then.

 

[arnisador]

Hmm, probably not what you were expecting to do after grad. school, then? But after 9 months of unemployment it must sound good. I'm glad to hear that you've found something acceptable.

I'm a numerical analyst and I enjoy this kind of work! I'm going to spend the coming year on computational biology during a sabbatical at Sandia National Labs. I hope your new job works out well for you.

Any hope of continuing the martial arts--possibly at a new school?

 

[Dronak]

Well, I had gotten tired of doing research, so I didn't really want to do that again immediately. I was looking for teaching and tutoring jobs or anything else that wouldn't involve heavy research like I was doing. Computing work was always an option, but it can be hard to get a straight computer job without a straight computer background. This job is good because while it will be heavier on the computer stuff than I'm used to, the work is in earth and space science, so my science background will still be useful. Actually, that seemed to be a good draw for them -- with NASA's relatively recent merger of earth and space sciences, they're going to have to expand from the former that they know into the latter where they don't have much experience. With my astronomy background, I should be able to help them as they start shifting into the space science area. No, I guess it's not exactly what I planned on, but it does seem like a good opportunity to use my academic training, learning more about computing work while still staying connected with the sciences. It sounds good and I love learning, so this should be good work. Plus my boss said that there should be opportunities to get funding for research, if something good turns up that seems worth doing. So I may be able to get back into research work later on if I feel like it. Right now though I have to focus on learning what I need to in order to do this job.

Continuing with MA in another school is certainly possible, yes, if I decide I have the time for it later on. I'd have to look around and see what schools are in the area and what they teach. Tai chi has been my main interest, so I might try to find some good schools teaching that, any family, and consider them. But right now I think I'll stick with what I have been doing, at least until I get settled into this new job.