A bad patch only in terms of my martial arts practice, I hasten to add; things generally are OK.

We all have to find the balance somewhere between job, career, etc on the one hand, and martial arts, meditation, etc on the other. In Singapore, the balance for me was firmly on the right hand side of the equation. Since my move to Beijing, it’s swung well over to the other side.

Hopefully, a bit more of a balanced situation is in site, as the future becomes a bit clearer. It was my intention to return to Singapore after my contract ends in July, but I’ve changed my mind. Much as I like Singapore, it makes absolutely no sense career-wise to go back there; there’s just no opportunity there, whereas in Beijing there’s much, much more happening. I’m also pretty happy with the teachers I have here as well, both in martial arts and in Zen meditation.

In my job, this semester has been crazy; I didn’t have any opportunity to prepare before I arrived, and went straight into teaching, so I’ve constantly been playing catch-up. The university want me to stay on, and I like the job, so I think I’ll be here for at least another year…. I’ll be on summer break between mid-July and early September, so I’ll have time to take the Yiquan course, AND to do all my preparation for the next semester… so I’ll have more time for daily practice once I start teaching again.

Speaking of Yiquan, Hannah’s invited me to her class on Thursday, so I’ll meet her teacher.

Oh, you may remember that a few weeks ago I met a young martial arts teacher who’s based at Beijing Language and Culture University; he’s just emailed me to let know that he’s put some videos online. Here’s one; there’s more on YouTube:

1 Comment »

1. 

   Sorry to hear things are bad on the training side of things. Hope they get better soon.

   Comment by eastpaw — May 21, 2008 @ 8:38 pm

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

Leave a comment