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| Paper Tantos |
These colourful objects are not candy bars.
They are The Star newspaper pages bundled together in rolls. Each bundle is made up of 24 sheets of papers rolled and binded together by cellophane tapes. I intend to use them as tantos for Aikido weapons training in INTi when the new session starts next Monday.
Individually paper may be a soft material but when bundled together they can be turned into a hard object.
Measuring 4cm in diameter and 30cm long they fit snugly into a human's hand. Although not as hard as wood nevertheless they are stiff, strong and quit unbendable. After testing them on myself I found such improvised weapons just right for weapons training.
Best of all they are non-lethal, easy to make from newspaper pages and inexpensive. After training the students can keep these paper tantos in the store room without worrying about theft. I doubt if anyone would be interested enough to want to steal these paper objects. Even if they are stolen it is quiet easy and inexpensive to make new ones.
Hope to see the members turn up in full force on Monday for the aikido workshop. Try to persuade the interns to try out the art. And do note the new training time from 7.00pm to 8.30pm. Please come in at 6.30pm to lay out the mats so that the class can start at 7.00pm sharp.
This used to be a small opening in the cement screed on the driveway slab outside the main gate. It started life as a 12 cm dia hole. Then after two weeks the 12 cm dia. hole gradually turned into a big gaping hole measuring 25 cm x 25cm. It is definitely getting too big to ignore.
Working with the wife we patched up the hole using a paint scraper with a small quantity of cement paste mix that we procured from a friendly Indonesian worker who was mixing cement sand paste in a nearby house that is under renovation. We asked only for a small quantity but received more than our request. After patching up the hole we then leveled the side of the driveway slab with the excess cement paste .
Taman Bukit Jalil public park.
Visited this public park for the first time with my wife. Never imagine such a beautiful and scenic public park can exist so close to the city centre.
It has lots of shady trees, undulating jogging, paths, bridges, ponds, pavilions, playground equipment, par course stations, foot reflexology stations, well maintained landscaping and concrete steps built into steep slopes. Beside the greenery, there is also a colony of monkeys to entertain the visitor with their antics.
Saw lots of visitors of diverse types, from senior citizens to youths and school children. All of them went there for one purpose, that is to exercise their bodies.
Showed the wife how to use the parcouse equipment to do simple exercises like push ups, leg stretching, sit ups, etc. Despite her stiff limbs and uncoordinated movements she managed to work out some sweat on the equipment. We also tried our hands on the playground equipment eg seesaws, swings and climbed up and down the slide stations.
Encountered a big concrete staircase constructed on a steep slope. I had to guide my wife on the climb up the staircase step by step and asked her to hold on the hand rails as she has weak knees. Despite the strain my wife managed to ascend to the top of the flight of stairs without stopping.
Both of us enjoyed the walk and the exercises very much. Definitely will make this park our favorite place for our morning exercises and walks.
First day of retirement.
My wife dragged me to Aeon member day sale because she said I am "free" all day long.
Now I am busy all over again. Instead of working for a company I'm now working for the wife, with no salary.
Last day of work in the office.
After 40 years of working as an employee in various capacities with many companies in the building industry it's time to call it a day.
Thank you to the management and staff of Zaidun-Leeng, not forgetting the farewell gift of an assortment of 5 shirts and chocolates.
I'm not crazy, but it's just that I have retired from work but not from life. My post retirement plan is to make the rest of my life the best of my life.
Feeling the strain with sore shoulders, aching back and muscular cramps in the right leg from carrying two bags of books.
After weighing the stuff with a bathroom scale found out to my surprise that I had been lugging around the combined weight of 15 kg of books on my shoulders.
Tomorrow have to endure the final round of carrying all the heavy stuffs from the office to my house. However I expect that tomorrow's payload should be much lighter than today's
In the meeting room I was trying very hard to conceal my drowsiness by dozing off with my eyes open.
That is why I dislike attending meetings that drags on for more than 1-1/2 hours, especially at meetings where I am just a passive listener.
Folded a family of four paper tsuru or Japanese cranes. I folded the paper cranes for leisure but in 1955 a desperate young girl did that with the belief that it could cure her of her illness.
Sadako Sasaki, a Second World War Hiroshima atomic bomb victim, believed that if she folded 1000 paper cranes she would be cured of radiation sickness from the atomic bomb. However she managed to fold only 644 paper cranes before she succumbed to her radiation illness and died on the morning of October 25 1955. The picture on the right is a stature in memory of Sadako Sasaki erected in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park depicting her holding a golden crane.
Peace to all beings
Attended a TTC meeting at Low Sensei's Puchong Dojo to review the MAA Aikido grading syllabus.
The syllabus was first drafted in 2000 and since then it has stayed the same through the years. As MAA has been given permission by Hombu Dojo to conduct Dan grading locally up to 4th Dan level starting from 2013, the TTC committee feels that it is timely to review the 13 year old syllabus.
The outcome of the meeting was the removal of many of the repetitive techiques in the 2nd and 1st kyu grading syllabus. The committee felt that lower kyu techniques eg 5th and 4th kyu techniques need not be repeated in the higher level tests. Because of so many repetitive techniques in the current syllabus, the grading for 2nd and 1st kyu candidates can take more than 1 hour to complete. The committee felt that there is scope for shortening the grading time at the same time maintaining the essence of our aikido training. On the other hand with the removal of the lower grade techniques the committee felt that more advanced techniques could be introduced to enhance the higher grade tests.
The committee also deliberated on the 1st to 4th Dan grading syllabus.
Naturally being the person who was responsible for compiling the original syllabus in 2000, I was asked to compile and publish the new syllabus. Just submitted the first draft of the new syllabus for peer review.
Wesak Day Celebration.
First time attended the Wesak day open house celebration in Taman Puncak Jalil where my family is now residing.
Found out that this particular Buddhist organisation is the local chapter of Fo Guang Shan, the international Chinese Buddhist Mahayana monastic order founded by Venerable Master Hsing Yun and originated in Taiwan.
I and my wife went there because I wanted to check out the place after seeing a few roadside banners publicizing the Wesak Day open house celebration and it is so near my house. Actually I am not partial to any Buddhist tradition whether Theravada, Mahayana or Vajrayana as the core Dhamma teachings are the same.
Happy Wesak Day. May all beings be well, happy and free of sufferings.
Low Sensei's yudansha class.
Two months of inactivity has made my mind and body rather sluggish and lethargic.
Before I stepped into Low Sensei's H&E dojo I was wondering if this oldie could hold his own against the vigor of youth of the young yudanshas. Ten minutes into the 2-1/2 hour training I realised that I was worrying for nothing.
The aftermath... a tired body drenched with sweat but mind and body completely invigorated
Seri Petaling morning market. Saw a big crowd of housewife type shoppers gathered around a vendor who was hawking some kind of manual juicer. Curious, I joined the crowd to find out what the fuss was all about.
The male vendor, speaking in mandarin was demonstrating how to use a small plastic hand-held juicer to extract juices from all kinds of cut fruits eg apples, oranges, pineapples, lemon and limes. He said the juicer called Shimono Universal Juice Press is a Japanese made product and can be bought from the upmarket department stores at RM49.00, but in the open market he was promoting a limited stock of them for only RM20.00 a unit.
Even my wife who is normally quite a discerning buyer was impressed with the demo. It is easy to use as it doesn't need strength to operate the machine, but just a screwing motion of the hand will do. Best of all it doesn't require electricity to operate, easy to clean practically and maintenance-free being made up of only three plastic components. My wife agreed that it was a useful product to have in the house and we paid the vendor RM20.00 for the machine.
More shoppers joined the crowd as we were leaving the stand. Looking at the demand I was quite certain that he would be able to sell off all his stocks by noon.
I
am using Excel to draw up a wedding dinner guest list. Even with its cut and paste features it is quite an enormous task to arrange the seating arrangement of the guests in the desired configurations. It is hard to imagine how much more difficult and time consuming if done manually using pencil and eraser.
It is in times like this that you appreciate the advantage of modern technology.
Two more weeks to retirement. Not particularly looking forward to retirement because I don't have a retirement plan.
However I don't see myself sitting around the house doing nothing other than watching TV shows. Told my colleagues that my retirement plan is to teach Aikido full time and that is what I am going to do.
This year bough my new motor insurance policy from Amgeneral Insurance Bhd. Bought the policy from the Seri Petaling Am Bank branch.
Since moving to the new house in Puncak Jalil last year I found it extremely inconvenient to travel to my old insurance company located about 20km away in Kajang to renew the annual insurance policy.
