Mike Sigman Workshop

Mike Sigman is running a two-day workshop "Basics of Internal Strength" on 1st 2nd Juy 2006 at Wadhurst, East Sussex.
Details.

Here's a good background interview explaining some of Mike's approach.

End of month report

Unlike most of my other blogs, this one's hosted on my own webspace. Which means I can read the log file. Therefore I've just noticed that another internal martial artist blog is linking this one. It's called Formosa Neijia, and it's pretty hardcore wushu-type stuff. Ni hao! This is what he says in his (presumably) About thingy:

I came to Taiwan six years ago to pursue my interest in IMA (internal martial arts). I am a continuing student of xingyiquan, baguazhang, and taijiquan. Lately, I have also started studying Han Qing-tang's long fist system.

Edit: he moved his blog in October 06 to another location.

I also noticed some search interest for "Mike Sigman". Amazing, these logfiles. I do know he's going to be in the UK, in Sussex, in July I think, doing another internal strength workshop. I've got the flyer somewhere, so I'll dig that out the pile of paper on the kitchen table and post details here. Otherwise there should be some floating around in Wang Hai Jun's taiji class tomorrow (looking forward to that).

On the Mandarin learning front, reading and comprehension is going pretty well. I'm actually enjoying the backwards difficulty step, as it's obvious that some of the basics didn't go in properly the first time. Right now we are doing some of the 了‘s and the 是...的 construction. Having the audio on the ipod really helps.

I found some great grid-paper on the web, with included diagaonals, ideal for practicing han zi. Scroll down to the Chinese section at the end, but wonder at the other varieties on the way. Oh the depth of human ingenuity! If you want just squares, I got squares. (Doc and PDF, A4 and Letter. 60 kB zip).

I like writing han zi, but I can barely remember more than a few dozen, or so it seems, and I am s-l-o-w. It takes at least half an hour to fill an A4 sheet.