Secrets (aka how my Sifu hides his secret techniques)

My Sifu has said a funny statement to us several times, and I thought I should share it. The saying goes something like: "I don't need to keep secrets from you. The secrets protect themselves." Of course, I didn't have a recorder handy, so I have to recreate the quote from memory. Anyhow, it's a pretty fitting [and funny] quote. It is true that my Sifu has never kept any martial arts secrets from us. And even if he did, we wouldn't have a deep enough understanding to realize it (ironic, isn't it?).

Most people training martial arts nowadays train it as a fun pasttime or form of exercise rather than as a serious pursuit. There's nothing wrong with that. People should do what makes them happy. But the lack of serious pursuit does have the consequence of producing few people with deep understanding or real proficiency. That leaves a lot of martial artists out there with limited understanding of their arts and less than real-life effectiveness. It's the limitations in understanding that keep the secrets safe. Not like the secrets are all that complicated; in fact, all of them that I've learned so far fall under the K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid) principle. My Sifu has told me the same things time and again, with only more refinements as my understanding improves.

Everything has been out in the open from the beginning. It's just up to me to train and reflect enough to grasp the lessons so that I can physically manifest the theoretical concepts. Of course, during the process of training and learning, I feel like I've missed an obvious point every time. I slowly realize that what I've just learned has been presented to me several times before. So, I plod along with my training gradually realizing that the "secrets" are pretty simple. Considering the skill differential between me and my teacher, I can safely say that some secrets will remain safely in the open for the forseeable future.

Great minds think alike?

Do you ever ponder something completely meaningless but yet still infinitely fascinating? Last night, the phrase "great minds think alike" popped into my head, and I got to thinking: why in the world do we use that phrase? Great minds often think differently than everyone else. The collective mind of the masses willingly bends to pop culture, religious idols, and political ranters. Homogenous thinking is a trait of those who don't wish to spend the mental energy for critical thinking. The phrase is nonsensical.

So, where does the phrase actually come from? Well, as best as Google can tell me:

GREAT MINDS THINK ALIKE -- "Often quoted in jest today, this saying originated in the seventeenth century as the comic-sounding 'Great wits jump.' Daubridgecourt Belchier first recorded the saying in 'Hans Beer-Pot' (1618) as 'Good wits doe iumpe (agree).'...The expression 'Great minds jump' appeared in the late 1800s..." From "Wise Words and Wives' Tales: The Origins, Meanings and Time-Honored Wisdom of Proverbs and Folk Sayings Olde and New" by Stuart Flexner and Doris Flexner (Avon Books, New York, 1993).

and also:

Used ironically. Both verb and noun have changed in the course of this proverb's history, the earliest instance of the present form thus far discovered being quot. 1898. Jump used absolutely in the sense of ‘agree completely’ or ‘coincide’ is now archaic.

Though he made that verse, Those words were made before. ‥Good wits doe iumpe.
[1618 D. Belchier Hans Beer-Pot D1]

Great wits jump: for the moment Dr. Slop cast his eyes upon his bag‥the very same thought occurred.
[1761 Sterne Tristram Shandy III. ix.]

As great minds jump this proves‥that my Mind is Great!
[1889 A. James Journal 1 Dec. (1964) 61]

Curious how great minds think alike. My pupil wrote me the same explanation about his non-appearance. ‥
[1898 C. G. Robertson Voces Academicae 24]

‘Great minds think alike—that's why we're never in agreement.’
[2002 Washington Times 28 May C9 (Bottomliners cartoon)]

I probably wasted too much time thinking about the phrase and looking up its origins. But then again, I rarely have the time to just pursue such idles. I'm still glad I wasted some time satisfying an academic curiosity.

Ultrasonic Buzz

I'm a bit of an ultrasound imaging geek considering that I spent many years of my life doing ultrasound research. Ultrasound stories in the news invariably pique my interest. I was pleasantly surprised to see this bit of news in the headlines this morning. Apparently, you can create a pretty good facsimile of a fine aged wine using ultrasound. How cool is that? Of course, it doesn't do me an iota of good since I don't actually drink any alcohol.

In a way, this is sort of related to my previous research life. I used to work on improving cardiovascular medicine by applying 3D ultrasound to heart imaging. You could say that making better wines with ultrasound are sort of cardiovascular related, given the studies showing that red wine has some heart protective qualities. Ok, it is a bit of a stretch. Still, I at least found the idea of using ultrasound to age wine to be pretty nifty. It's definitely a bit of technology more likely to quickly make it to the marketplace than my graduate research.

The side job

It's a little over a month into the new job, and boy am I tired. I'm not so sure I like this working 10-11 hour days. With Gen also having to work long hours now that school has started again, it's a little rough keeping the household in order. It's particularly rough on the food side of things. If neither of us has much time to shop and cook, we often run into "what the hell are we gonna eat?" moments by midweek.

Despite the long hours, I have actually managed to do a freelance job. My creative juices don't flow as freely when my brain is tired, but I'm still happy with my latest mini-project: TheInternalArts.com. My freelance work seems to be very martial arts biased. Why "TheInternalArts" and not just "InternalArts"? Well, can you believe that a PC repair company took the other domain? Really, the nerve. Don't they know that "internal arts" refers to esoteric martial arts and not computer repair?! ;-b

One of these days I'll get back around to working on my own website.

Nearly unpacked, and other small miracles

It's a minor miracle. We almost have our apartment unpacked. The living room only has 3 boxes left, and two of those are earmarked for storing things we want to either give away or sell. My office looks spiffy, especially now that I have enough space to set up my parallelettes. If I can get myself away from the computer long enough during the day, I should be able to practice my tucked planches during my stretching breaks. Now all I have to do is unpack the rest of my clothes and figure out where to put my guitars.

Another small feat was our cooking this week. I was out of town last weekend, Gen was sick, and our jobs don't seem to give us enough time to make it to the market during the week. That means we hadn't been grocery shopping for over a week and a half by the time I got back into town. We quite nearly ran out of food and had to get a little creative with our cooking. You really learn to appreciate fresh food when you're forced to eat dried and frozen foods for an extended period of time.

Love and Marriage

I've been married for a little over two weeks now, and I have to say I've been enjoying married life even more than I initially thought I would. It's weird. Even though Genevieve and I have been together for quite a while, being married still brings an elation I didn't quite expect. Everyone tells us we look so happy together. I never really thought of it before, but after pondering it, I realized that we are pretty blessed. We actually are really happy together.

There are still some things I'm still adjusting to though. The first is this wearing a ring thing. It's a weird feeling to be wearing a piece of jewelry now, especially considering that I never usually wore any adornments in the past. Heck, I dislike even wearing a watch. Assuming I remember to wear my ring, getting it on and off is also sometimes a challenge. My finger diameter seems to change with the weather, time of day, and how recently I've done any exercise. Sometimes it's a real bear to get off, and other times it slides right off. The other weird thing is that sometimes when I'm not wearing it, it feels like I'm wearing a phantom ring or that something is missing from my finger. I guess I'm now in a strange transitional period where it feels awkward both when I'm wearing and not wearing my ring.

A new experience that I am enjoying is referring to each other as husband and wife. Before, it was just "fiance/fiancee" or "girlfriend/boyfriend." Now, it brings a smile to my face to check the "married" box on questionnaires and introduce ourselves as a married couple. When I wrap up work for the day, I enjoy thinking that my wife is waiting for me to go to the gym and have dinner. It's a little surprising to me that I feel this way. I guess I've been a closet romantic all this time. The stereotype is for the romance to fade as a couple grows older, which I guess is natural as passions mellow out and become more even keeled over time. But I like to view our elopement as a harbinger. If we're already this happy about being married after 7 years together, we'll still be happy together many years down the road.

The Insanity

Well, it appears my blogging has taken a major plunge over the past month. There has actually been good reason for my extended absence. I've been crazy busy with the convergence of several events, creating a perfect time suck storm. But fear not, it takes more than a mere lack of free time to totally stop me from making my miniscule presence felt in the blogosphere.

So, what has been keeping me busy? Well, first I switched jobs. For a good month, I was wrapping up at my old job while simultaneously putting in hours for my new job. That in itself was really racking up the hours of preoccupation. If you count the fact that I was still teaching my class at the YMCA, I technically had three jobs at the time.

To make life even more interesting, Gen and I were also preparing to move during my job transition period. Packing up and moving when you're working long hours is not a fun task. We decided that we've had enough of moving ourselves around, so we did smartly hire movers this time around. Still, we had to get everything packed for them, deal with apartment hunting, and worry about unpacking at the new apartment, and clean up the old place. Minus the apartment hunting and booking the movers, which took place a few weeks earlier, the whole move process
took place over something like 5 days. There were long hours of packing, unpacking, cleaning, and driving back and forth. All the while my new boss seemed to think that I should be working 12 hour days.

The last contributing factor to my recent lack of time insanity was getting married. Genevieve and I decided to elope. As sad as it is to think that we were never able to find enough time to plan a regular wedding, we were almost too preoccupied to even throw together an elopement. I know there's something very wrong (but also amusing) with that picture. At any rate, we are now happily married and trying to enjoy as much time together before our schedules get busier with work (Gen starts teaching, and I don't imagine my job at the startup getting shorter hours).