Infrequent Musings

Infrequent Musings

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Below are the 10 most recent journal entries recorded in the "The BondageWoodElf" journal:

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January 5th, 2012
07:54 am [Link]	Oh jolly! Lightning strikes, so no trains between Utrecht and Schiphol Bugger. The commute to work is going to suck again today... I hope this has cleared up by this afternoon, because I want to attend Aikido Winterschool (in Arnhem), which is, on a good day, already almost 2 hours of travel (and starts at 18:30). Current Location: Utrecht, the Netherlands Current Mood: annoyed Tags: aikido, klm, rant, work (What you say?)
November 21st, 2011
03:09 pm [Link]	Aikido grading session The grading session went very well: all black belt candidates passed and almost all (except 1) of the while belt candidates passed. It was truly a marathon session: it took from 1 PM to about 4 PM to have all the 20 candidates do their thing: two 6th kyu (that's the first grading we do in our association, counting down until 1st kyu, the next one is 1st dan, a.k.a. 'shodan'), five 5th kyu, four 4th kyu, one 2nd kyu, 4 shodan, 1 2nd dan (nidan) and 3 3rd dan (sandan) candidates. Sensei asked the black belts to sit all around the mat to observe all candidates up until my own grading, and the gradings for the 3rd dan candidates, where everybody sat in the regular, traditional Japanese way (Seiza) This meant for me, sitting in seiza from 1 PM to 3 PM with 2 short breaks. Urgh! My ankles and calf muscles are still a bit sore. So, for me this means my teacher is going to apply me for nidan at the Aikikai Aikido Headquarters I Japan, and when approved I will receive a nice certificate from them I am quite pleased. This is a very nice birthday present. Also, several people filmed the entire proceedings: I am really curious how all those have turned out. I've never seen myself perform techniques at a grading before (except the one time where I failed my 2nd kyu grading) Current Location: Schiphol-Rijk, The Netherlands Tags: aikido, body, grading (What you said (4) \| What you say?)
November 13th, 2011
12:54 pm [Link]	My version of a shopping spree We went downtime yesterday to select a new Kipling backpack that was supposed to become my birthday present this year from alexilian. However, the Kipling shop turned out not to have the model any more that I wanted, and the other 2 models I liked were not in stock in the colour I wanted. So, we had it put on order. We can get it next week, probably. That means it'll still be on time for my actual birthday. Consequently, we had some time left to buy some other stuff I was planning to buy for some time now. First stop was at a shop for some new gloves. I couldn't decide between a pair that was nicely warm, but not very subtle, and one that was very nice sleek black leather, but I thought they wouldn't keep very well (thin smooth leather is a recipe for scratches and small tears). I couldn't decide: one was good very daily usage, and the other one for special occasions. So I bought both. I suddenly remembers I also needed a new wallet: the old one had been patched up several times with duct tape in the last three years. I always said to myself: I'll buy me a new one when I'm getting new gloves, in the same shop. I remember that when I was getting my bank card out, so we spent some time to buy a new wallet (which turned out to be more expensive then either of the pair of gloves). I also needed a new winter coat. My old 2 woollen coats I bought in Melbourne in 2000 have been falling apart slowly lately, so I really needed a new one. The first shop we stopped at had a really good one, so now I also have a new woollen coat. It's black, but with a tinge of grey, has a nice brownish-red lining and a detachable rough leather collar (I'm not going to wear the collar much). I also like that the buttons on the front are not protruding, being behind a strip of cloth, so they won't catch themselves behind things. Current Location: Utrecht, the Netherlands Current Mood: accomplished Tags: shopping (What you said (7) \| What you say?)
November 12th, 2011
12:22 pm [Link]	Nidan grading next week I got my grading form for second dan from sensei yesterday night. This means next week Sunday I am 100% definitely going up for my second dan in aikido. Of course he already told me about 6 months ago I should 'start to prepare for nidan in November' but that's not an official invitation for the grading. It's going to be tough: my body still hasn't quite recovered from the vitamin deficiency I got myself into last year. It's going to be a huge grading session: in addition to many people going up for a whole bunch of kyu grades there's 4 people going up for first dan, one for nidan (that's me) and 3 for sandan (third dan). Last time there was a grading for sandan there were 2 candidates and they had 5 training partners lined up for each candidate; I hope we're going to have enough of them this time... In other news, the day after the grading it's my birthday. A nidan grade would be a very nice present. Current Location: Utrecht, the Netherlands Current Mood: pleased Tags: aikido, body, grading (What you said (4) \| What you say?)
September 13th, 2011
06:23 pm [Link]	(Belated) Post bicon post. Say hello or whatever, all comments screened. 2011 was classic! talk to me! ;-) Current Location: Utrecht, The Netherlands Current Mood: cheerful Tags: bicon (What you say?)
August 6th, 2011
04:47 pm [Link]	Things I wonder about IV At work there's a new, I guess you could call it a procedure or state, called "Ithanic". When it is declared it means there is a critical "IT Panic" of the order of a 747 having crashed on top of the datacenter or a datacenter completely or partially disabled because of fire or flooding and we should all scramble to prepare to execute or execute our Disaster Response Procedures. So, what I wonder about why is it called 'Ithanic' with an 'h' in there? I get the reference to "Titanic" and to "IT Panic" but there's no 'h' in either of these... Current Location: Utrecht, The Netherlands Current Mood: confused Tags: klm, things i wonder about, work (What you say?)
August 2nd, 2011
11:30 pm [Link]	bal folk Last year alexilian started doing bal folk and she dragged me along a few months back to a dance night. I kind of like it.. I can dance a few beginners dances already: andro, han terdros, Cercle Sorciere, Gigue, Gavotte de l'Avens, Scottish and Mazurka. Also, there's one that the instructors of last Sunday made up, called, in Dutch, "Grabbelton" (Grab-and-Pick-from-a-barrel). Also, I can recognize a few others, but I don't have the steps down yet: 3-point Waltz, 5-point Waltz (in 3-2), 8-point Waltz (in 3-3-2), Tarantella, the standard Gavotte and several versions of the bourée. I might have missed a few. It's danced on neo-folkish music and there's often live music. The atmosphere isn't usually as rowdy as with a Ceilidh but the dances are definitely related. Current Location: Utrecht, The Netherlands Current Mood: cheerful Tags: dancing (What you said (4) \| What you say?)
July 31st, 2011
01:17 pm [Link]	In other news ... This weekend I'm having a nice time with alexilian at the annual Summer Darkness festival again. We saw VNV Nation yesterday night and it was, as always, an excellent concert. A nice dinner was had at restaurant Blauw (i.e. Dutch for 'Blue', where everything is red inside, don't ask me why) but it took some effort to make their 'Vegetarian Rijsttafel' really actually vegetarian; quite a few dishes contained trassi/terasi and that (being made of shrimp) is NOT vegetarian. Instead we were adamant we wanted a real vegetarian dinner so they changed the dishes for us; they even made a special vegetarian sambal for us to go with the vegetarian starter. Current Location: Utrecht, the Netherlands Current Mood: accomplished Tags: dancing, dinner, food (What you say?)
01:09 pm [Link]	Things I Know Now That I Didn't Know Before V Apparently, amine fluoride, present in many brands of toothpaste is made out of tallow, and hence not vegetarian. Now I need to check my toothpaste and maybe find a different brand. Who knew that brushing your teeth means putting a dead animal In your mouth? Current Location: Utrecht, the Netherlands Current Mood: annoyed Tags: rant, t.i.k.n.t.i.d.k.b (What you say?)
April 3rd, 2011
01:10 pm [Link]	Things I wonder about III I was just putting some of my aikido uniforms into the washing machine when I noticed that the pants, that had seen 2 hours of very sweaty exercise last Friday evening, actually smelled rather nice. However, it turned out that this was because I had knocked over a bottle of after shave (that I had forgotten to close) over them. I wonder how the laundry will smell when comes out of the machine? Current Location: The Netherlands, Utrecht Current Mood: relaxed Tags: aikido, things i wonder about (What you said (2) \| What you say?)

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