Giving up Seats to those who Need in Public Transportation

It is not the first time I witness such an incident that people can be so oblivious to their surrounding. An elderly women, obviously old in her sixties or seventies, can be left standing in the train with no one offering a seat to her.

I am pretty irritated at how Singaporeans are becoming. Everyone for himself. Most of the commuters were strong, healthy looking individuals, at least strong than that elderly woman. However, why they could not even offer a seat to her?

Just as I was standing pondering over this issue, there was this Indian man (he did not look local by the way), who stood up from far and brought the old woman to his seat.

This Indian man was clearly not local, maybe a Bangladeshi. That very moment, I had a great respect for this man's action. Not only did he represent his own moral values, but also he represented the entire non-local Indian population's moral values.

I have heard Singaporeans who looked down upon them. Now, I think it is time we think twice before looking down on such non-locals. We, educated people with at least an 'O' level or diploma, could not even match a Bangladeshi in terms of moral values. Most of the commuters who were sitting down were decently dressed with office attire. Others were at least secondary school students.

I am not generalizing all Singaporeans as ungracious people. However, I would like to make it clear that each one of us represents our entire Singapore population, our own education system, and our parents' upbringing. Therefore, it is best that it is time we wake up and shake off our selfish character so that we can stop this vicious cycle of immoral actions from perpetuating within our society. The rationale is if we as the adult population in Singapore do not feel anything wrong about this actions, we will not be able to educate our next generation of Singaporean what is right or wrong.

Let us start looking out for people around us to care for and help. =)

Animal Styles in Chinese Martial Arts (Kungfu Panda?)

After watching a recent funny animated movie , I would like to go into the topic talking about animal styles in Chinese Martial Arts.

One of the most interesting and exotic traits of Chinese Kungfu is the imitation of animal styles a.k.a xiang xing quan in chinese (象形拳). As the chinese characters imply, xiang xing quan is the direct manipulation and imitation of animal movements, i.e. feeding, preying, fleeing, feinting, resting, fighting, or roaring etc., for real combat and self-defense.

Famous styles that incorporate imitation of animals directly include Hung Gar (洪家), Choy Li Fut (蔡李佛), Shaolin Five Animals (少林五形), Five Ancestor Fists (五祖拳), Eagle Tumbling Style (鹰爪翻子派), Mantis Style (螳螂派), and Ground Tumbling Boxing (地趟拳). For the various styles mentioned earlier, I will go into more details for each styles for later articles.

Why imitate the animals?

Humans are created weakest in terms of physiological and physical aspects. Compared to various animals species, humans are relatively the weakest of all.

An ant can carry more than ten times its own weight, but a human can only carry load about two to three times his weight. A cheetah can reach about 110km per hour, but a human can only splint about fastest 27.6km per hour (for 100m short splint Olympic athlete). A chimpanzee is naturally able to control its arms and legs for climbing and acrobatic moves, but a human cannot do it naturally.

However, our strength lies in our intelligence and brainpower. That was why our ancestors understood that if we imitate the combat movements of these animals, we will build up stronger physique and anatomy. This leads to the imitation of animal styles in Chinese Kungfu.

But imitation of animal styles is not an easy training process. One needs to develop very strong anatomical weapons through hard body training or hard chi gong training. In simple terms, you must make your knuckles smash through bricks, your fingers dig through concrete, your feet uprooting tree trunks, and your body as hard as steel. Steel? Yes, invulnerable to attacks with iron clubs or steel baseball bats.

Only after months and even years of daily routine training in hard body conditioning will allow you in the perfection of using deadly claw attacks or even a deadly shoulder nudge. This is because when chinese kungfu masters say the weapon and body become one, they really mean it.

After this hard body kungfu conditioning, the techniques of animal movements will set in (In some styles, hard body conditioning comes concurrent with technique training). In partner training, single shadow boxing, or even attacking of wooden dummies/ sandbag targets, the practitioners of animal styles will train their speed, power, and precision with these animal style sets. These traditional style sets do not contain anything that are very 'flashy', because the main aim of these style sets is to train them into deadly fighters with real application of striking, tearing, uprooting, drilling, pounding, crushing opponents bones, joints, and vital organs/points.

Yes, animal style practitioners are deadly fighters just as animals in the wild fight for survive of the fittest.

Finally, to answer one query: Is there PANDA style?

Erm... not to my knowledge yet. I only know there is Bear Style and Bear style is more a pounding and wrestling style, with good crushing bear hugs. Panda... a bit too gentle to fight, so I do not think there is any panda style in Chinese martial arts. =)

VACATION MODE

Sorry folks... I am undergoing a busy period of training. My rate of posting new article is greatly slowed down.

Stay tuned. More will be upcoming.