Fire Walk

I just got home from an incredible evening!

Gem, SBN Jon and I just took part in a Fire Walk for charity. The evening began at around 6:30pm when the group of around 30 of us did some meditation and started hyping ourselves up. Then we went and watched the lighting of the fire outside before returning to have a few practices and continue psyching ourselves up for the actual walk.

The three of us got ourselves close to the front of the queue so that our buzz didn't have time to subside. I was fourth, then Gem, then SBN.

It was exhilarating! My adrenalin was so high I barely even felt the heat. It wasn't until about an hour later that I started to notice my feet feeling a bit sore. As I type this I have a few small red marks on my right foot, but my left is absolutely fine. Gem received a few more and I think SBN got off completely unscathed!

I am SO proud of us all! We have literally walked on fire! After that, we can do anything!





If anyone reading this would like to donate to the Norwich Basket Brigade and help make someone's Xmas better, please visit this link HERE. There is more info about the great work they do on that page.

Many thanks.





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Blue Stripe

I passed my recent Kuk Sool grading and last night, received the blue stripe on my Yellow Belt.

We've already learned all of our Yellow belt form - Cho Geup Hyung, and the first set of techniques - Sohn Mohk Soo. So now we have three months to practice and refine those as well as learning another set - Eue Bohk Soo.

I am really looking forward to being a 'Blue Belt by Christmas'! :D





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Tricks down the beach

Just finished my first trick session down the beach with a couple of guys from Kuk Sool.

It took a while for me to build up the courage to just throw myself, but once I did I was well away. We started with forward somersaults. Which I think I picked up relatively quickly, then moved on to assisted backwards somersaults, which are quite a bit harder.

After tiring myself out, stretching my abdominals more than they have ever been stretched and getting a LOT of sand in my eyes, it was time to head home for a nice hot bath!

I've always wanted to be able to flip and somersault and perform tricks like this and now I am actually well on my way to accomplishing a life long dream! Of course, I am still a way off yet, though.





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Back to Wolves

I spent the last week or so in Wolverhampton to work at head office. I needed to familiarise myself with a new technique of processing the graphics for our games. It results in a very cool looking style reminiscent of the old analogue games.

I picked it up pretty quickly and the game was very close to being playable before I left yesterday, which was good. It is looking fantastic! I'm really pleased with the artwork and am glad that I was able to work on the project. Hopefully, I'll be able to work on more like this one in the future.






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Sucker Punch

I have a new favourite film! I picked it up on bluray yesterday. Sucker Punch is visually stunning with a cool story and an incredible soundtrack.

From Zack Snyder, who also directed Watchmen and 300 (two other fantastically stylish films) and starring Emily Browning, the film tells the story of Baby Doll; a twenty year old girl who is put in a mental institute by her abusive step father. To help her cope with her incarceration and an impending lobotomy, she retreats into a fantasy world where she plans her escape.

It is kind of like Alice in Wonderland or Pan's Labyrinth, except with sexy girls, swords and guns, steam powered zombie Nazis, dragons, giant demonic samurai, and high-tech robots. So... maybe it isn't that much like those other films... ;p

It didn't go down too well with critics and reviewers, saying that it lacked depth. But I don't think it was really supposed to have any. It's supposed to be visually breath taking, high octane fun!

It bugs me when reviewers do that. You wouldn't mark down Forrest Gump because it's not sexy and lacks explosions and visual effects. It wasn't supposed to be that kind of film in the first place! Would these same reviewers pan a Heavy Metal song for being too loud? Hehe.

Sucker Punch is an extremely stylish, sexy, over the top, all action, visual extravaganza and it certainly pushes all the right buttons for me. It is awesome!

Emily Browning has been promoted to the top of my 'list'. She is an amazing actress, a fantastic singer (she provides vocals on several of the songs from the film) and she is a total babe! ;D





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L.A. Noire - Finished!

Last night I finished the main story for L.A. Noire on the PS3.

What a fantastic game! The story and game play were exceptional. Apart from the odd bit where the choices available didn't seem to make sense. Choosing 'doubt', for example, could result in the main character completely flying off the handle and shouting at the person being interviewed rather than just subtly pushing for more info (as I expected him to do). There were also a few times when I would choose 'Truth' which revealed that they were indeed telling the truth, but that that wasn't the choice I was supposed to make to progress the story. This resulted in me being wrong, even though I was actually right. Odd and really my only issue with the game.

I don't usually go back to many games once I've finished them, but there are still more than a few things to find and cases which I could do better on, so it still has plenty of life left in it.

The face technology used was amazing! So much so that whenever I look at other games now, the faces seem incredibly dull and un-realistic. I have been spoilt! :p

Hopefully the developers will continue to support the game and release more and more additional content for it.





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Helping out with the kids

Starting last Friday, Gem and I decided to arrive early at Kuk Sool so that we can help out with the children's coloured belt class.

We were each given a small group to work with and essentially just left to get on with it.

I must admit that I floundered a little at first. I wasn't sure what to do with them and KJN had so many other children and groups to see to that I felt like I was pestering him when I asked.

I took my group through their form a few times and then did some techniques. We finished off the class with some blocking using a foam sword which they really enjoyed.

On Monday's class I was much more confident which was then re-enforced by the boy I taught on Friday coming over and asking me if I'd be helping again and wanting me to work with him. Afterwards he told me that I was "cool", bless him.

Even though I feel that working with children doesn't particularly come naturally to me, I want to stick with it. That little fella really boosted my confidence when he paid me that compliment.

It was great being able to help out and give something back. 





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