June 2009

Well, that’s it. The ’09 Black Belt Grading is over and all seven students passed.

Congrats to Marnie and Miranda (not shown), Gretta, Jeff, Simon, Andrew, and Jane. They ended the day sporting brand new stiff black belts, a huge grin and I’m sure a sense of relief that it’s all over.
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The guys have passed their second hurdle; the technical grading. It ran for 4 1/2 hours last night finishing at about 12:30 this morning. It was also nice to see a grading where there was a good mix of gruelling, almost dying, intensity and focus on the technical.

There were times when the guys were about to pass out from exhaustion and times when all could enjoy a joke. I don’t think anyone missed the jumping-spinning kicks. Perhaps they, and the complexes, will appear on Sunday at the graduation.
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My wife and I have been getting into the new Doctor Who series books recently (just have a look at my library). Unlike novels from the previous Doctor Who series’ these are not just novelisations of the existing episodes; these take the Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant characters (most with Rose, Martha or Donna) and create new stories. Wev’e got 21 of them on the shelf at the moment and due to go get some more soon.
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Congrats to Andrew, Gretta, Jane, Jeff and Simon on passing through the first part of their Black Belt grading; the sparring. As usual it was a fairly intense night with some shadow sparring, a few rounds of sparring drills, a round (or two) of light sparring, five (I think) rounds of full-on jui kumite, and one round of sparring cum grappling (standing to ground).
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I’ve just had my annual salary review and have been done over yet again. Yay! It wasn’t as painful as in previous years as my current boss tells it like it is, rather than wheeling out the barrow of the well worn “HR-provided” lines for managers to their staff, which is the approach my old boss used to take. I appreciate his honesty, not “putting lipstick on the pig” as he often says.
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