Shaolinquan

Wow, Nike made a wushu shoe. It actually seems pretty cool :p. Check it out:

http://www.monashwushu.com/home/forum/wushu/nike-wushu-shoes/1

Intense.

If you're feeling up for a challenge, here's a soul-crushing exercise for you:



So, essentially that equation and this one:



constutute out current model of the universe. No problem!

Philosophy

"Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed."

-Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

We'll see about that :).

Whoah.

Disclaimer: If violence makes you squeamish I suggest you don't watch this video.

This is pretty nuts; talk about over-reacting. In medieval Japan this might have been the way you dealt with disrespect during a match but it's not such a good idea in the modern world. You'd expect better at a martial arts tournament. I have to admire the refs technique though.



Aha, found a longer version, so you can see more of the match. Can see why the ref snaps, but clearly beating the guy down was not the best course of action to take. I think it's in Mexico, though I have no evidence of that.

Haha

I've just been reading various things about martial arts on the web, it's quite ridiculous how much crap I have to sift through to find meaningful stuff. Half of it is a bunch of con-artists trying to sell "The secrets of the Shaolin temple" or some crap like that, another half is money-hungry dojos aiming for mass-membership and probably not actually being any good, with all kinds of people with hyper-active imaginations and theories about mystical powers and ancient secrets filling in lots of gaps. I blame the Americans for a lot of it, although admittedly it can't all be their fault. After all, the 'Society of Right and Harmonious Fists' thought their awesome gong fu would protect them from bullets, though it didn't work out so well for them during the Boxer Rebellion.
On one random site I did however find one piece of wisdom in the form of a quote. I have no idea who the person it is attributed to is or whether they actually said it, but I like the quote:

"Karate-do aims to build character, improve human behavior, and cultivate modesty; it does not, however, guarantee it."
-Konishi Yasuhiro

The quest for truth is long and difficult.

The Far East

So, thinking of things to do once I finish this undergrad uni crap, one of the possibilities I'm liking at the moment is to go to China and teach English for 12 months or so. They really, really want English teachers so you can get pretty sweet deals if you have a degree. Stuff like they pay for your flight, accommodation, teach you Mandarin, give you 'how to teach English' training, and take you on free trips to various places. And a salary of course. Sounds pretty sweet. It'd be easiest to get a job in Beijing and it might be most convenient for the other crap I'd like to do, though I would like to spend time in regional China. Maybe the tours would cover that, though China is a big place.
My other goal for being there would of course to become awesome at wushu, or at least better. I figure if I want to spend time mangling my body into the superior form required for good wushu fitness then I should do it ASAP because it just gets harder and more painful the older I get. Spending time in Japan learning Karate is something I want to do too, but I can probably get away with putting that off more than I can get away with putting wushu off. Besides which the wushu training would undoubtedly help with karate, just from the flexibility training if nothing else, while the inverse is not as true.
Then there is the whole going to Europe thing. That would also be awesome, but the downsides are that I have no idea how I'd pay for it and that I might regret the time not spent achieving something. Oh yeah, or I could just go do a PhD straight away, but I'm thinking I won't do that, even if I get a crap score for honours and risk losing it. Fuck it, I'll find something else to do if they don't let me do one later. There is too much to do to not go do cool stuff like this. I can learn more about the mysteries of the universe later. Besides, the mysterious of the mind and body are quite interesting as well and I would be learning about them in China.

Gotta get through this semester of research craziness before I can go anywhere anyway, nuts. Hopefully it won't be too horrible.

Also, are there snowfields near Beijing? Being able to snowboard in China would be a mega plus.

Lol, besides, I need to learn Chinese for the day they inevitably conquer the world. "I for one welcome our Chinese overlords!"

I leave you with this video of wushu awesomeness:



Also this one because it is pretty funny. It took me a moment to catch on to what the heck was going on :p.



Ok, one last thing. This is my latest SPORE creature. Tell me what you think it looks like. Fudgeman, no answering! J, looking at you in particular for this one :p. Unless I just suck too much and it isn't very recognisable. Hopefully I can improve it one I have more creature parts.




...Ok one more thing! Just saw this in the comments section of a shit video on youtube, it was copy/pasted many times :p. I found it hilarious. I post it here for you that you may find it useful for group spam-flaming:

┏━━━━━━━┓　
┏┫　　｜　｜　　┣┓ 　 ┏┓　
┗┫━━　┃　━━┣┛　　┣┫　copy/paste if
　┃　━━━━━　┃　┏┳┫┣┳┓this fag wasted
　┗━━┳━┳━━┛　┃　　　　┃ your time!
━━━━┃　┃　　　　┗━┳┳━┛

I love acsii art.

And for old times sake: