Tag: Aikido

The time flies like an arrow. Quite unexpectedly, it’s an upshot moment again!

War in Ukraine

This last year it’s become clear the war is the new normal now. With regular shellings of Ukrainian cities and repressions on the rise inside Russia. We call it the “negative natural selection,” when the meanest, the dumbest are in power, oppressing and punishing any dissent.

To an outsider’s eye it doesn’t make a shred of sense, that what the Russians are doing to Ukraine — or to their own folk for that matter. There’s, however, a strong, sinister feeling there’s a mighty good chance the situation will simply collapse into total chaos at some point.

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It was my very first visit to the Dutch city of Nijmegen, which is located near the German border.

The reason for my going there was a joint aikido seminar led by three senseis:

• Tom Dijkman (6^th dan aikido aikikai);
• Jan Thesing (5^th dan);
• René Habraken (5^th dan).

So I was brave enough to not get scared off by storm Ciara (but nonetheless happy to be back home before dark).

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It’s a short how-to on inscribing your jo (wooden stick), tanto (wooden dagger), bokken (wooden sword)—or anything else made of wood—with an arbitrary text or image.

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Even though it’s been more than a year, I feel I need to mend this.

On March 19, 2016 I’ve passed my first dan Aikido Aikikai exam. Then, a few months later, I received an official dan certificate from Hombu Dojo.

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Last weekend, 22-23 October, has been marked by a colossal event in the Belgian Brussels, lead by the Doshu (hereditary head) Moriteru Ueshiba, a grandson of Ōsensei Morihei Ueshiba.

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And here we are, almost four months after the exam I officially possess a Shodan Aikido Aikikai:

The diploma has been solemnly granted by Marc Jongsten (who also took the exam) during a short ceremony at Aikido Centrum Leiden.

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Last weekend, on March 19, 2016, the author of these lines has qualified for the first dan Aikido Aikikai.

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Even though I’ve now settled in Houten, I keep visiting Amersfoort now and then. I’m still doing aikido with Joginder Singh.

On September 7^th our dojo gave a demo on a “district day” Vathorstdag 2014 (Vathorst is the district in Amersfoort our dojo is in), just like six years ago.

I didn’t participate this time, but was filming instead. There was also another cam, so the idea was to put both footages together nicely, and I volunteered for that.

I’ve tried a number of video editors for Linux, most of them proved to be utterly unusable (Pitivi wouldn’t allow me to edit track properties, OpenShot lacked the very basic timeline shift function, Shotcut quit abruptly after adding a clip, Kino is discontinued long time ago). Finally I’ve tried Kdenlive, and that one is absolutely fantastic! I was surprised how quick and hassle-free video editing can be nowadays. All in all it took me about a couple of hours, including the final render.

The result is under the cut:

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I’ve done something useful in my spare time. I crafted a website for my aikido school (or dojo ) called Aikikai Amersfoort, which is now located at aikikai-amersfoort.nl.

The former website was really ancient-looking, built back in 2004 and totally outdated. For example, one had to download an .avi file if they wanted to watch a video. YouTube did not exist at that remote moment.

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