Week 21 (24 May - 30 May)

It was clear that Spring had arrived, training was intensive this week, we did the stairs almost every morning. However this did not mean we didn't get a chance to enjoy the change in our surroundings.

 

On Wednesday the shaolin group was given permission to go and climb the nearby mountain which was quite a distance away. We set off at 8:00 and took us about 1:30 hours to get to the base during this time we walked through a number of small villages which were quite stunned to see so many foreigners. After about 30 minutes of climbing up the mountain we took a short break, it was an extremely hot day and we could feel the heat burning on our skin, we also encountered a few snakes that were soaking up the sun. After the short break we set off again and about an hour later we had reached the peak and the view was pretty spectacular. We spent about an hour at the peak having a small picnic and shared the junk food (potato chips, oreos, snickers, m&m's) we had brought along.

After a long and extremely hot walk back we reached the academy at about 14:00. I and some others had lunch at the restaurant outside the academy. We got the rest of the day off, most had almost gotten sun strokes, the new student, Alex White had been burnt to a crisp. This was his own fault as many of us offered him sun cream and advised him to put his shirt back on.

Late for line up:

The rest of the week we spent a lot of time training in the forest, the new student Alex White had claimed the nickname Alex Red, he had in fact been burnt pretty severely and couldn't do much.

On Sunday I went to hospital with Chris, he had an x-ray taken of his knee, the hospital really scared him.

Week 20 (17 May - 23 May)

For most of the week I took things rather easy as I had a really painful elbow and shoulder, both on the left side. These were both very painful and I was a bit concerned because it happened to be on the side that was affected during my car accident. However I wasn't too concerned because I thought it was related to the new form I was learning which might have caused me to over extend my arms a couple of times during training.





That week I had also spoken to the Chinese teacher to tell Jacki to go to the beginners class because the other students including myself believe she would be better off there. The teacher said she agrees however she can't tell her to change classes or she might get into trouble from the administration. I had to go about telling her to change classes which was more difficult than I thought, because I didn't want to offend or upset her even if I thought she was a bit of a spastic. She told me she likes being in our class because it suits her better and that she can learn faster because we are more advanced than the other class. I explained to her that it doesn't work like that with a language, especially with a language like Chinese in which the four basic fundamental tones need to be fully grasped and understood before learning how to formulate sentences and questions. She was rather upset and walked off, she then asked all others in our class if they agreed with me and they all said yes including the teacher. Later that day she did apologised for storming off, I think she thought I had some kind of personal vendetta against her.

On Friday we trained in the castle and there were many tourists because spring had finally arrived, they ended up taking hundreds of pictures of us foreigners.

Later that afternoon I went to Siping to get an X-ray of my should and elbow. The hospital was a pretty scary place, it looked really communistic but I had a friendly nurse that helped me out. I asked for an x-ray of my shoulder and elbow and they just said ok, back home you can't just ask for an x-ray. The results were good, the elbow was perfect, the screw from my surgery was not interfering in any way and my shoulder was just a bit swollen. The doctor told me to take some medicine but I didn't bother getting it.

On the weekend I went to Yehe and bought some building supplies, nails, hammer, saw and rope. When I got back to the academy Chima, Harry, Thomas and I went off to the forest to start building a tree house, by Sunday we had built quite a lot.

 

 

Week 19 (10 May - 16 May)

A new week and a new day however Rahul looked really unhappy at line up this morning and he was wearing a pear of padded jeans for training ?! I don't think so, I think he was prepared for the inevitable gooning he was going to receive for the death threats. Rahul was lucky he had prepared for the gooning because the shifu lashed out 20 hard blows, unfortuantely I was too far away from the action to get any candid video footage.

Tuesday morning I saw my first snake since I'm here which was quite exciting. Because it was the 11th of the month it was test day and I had to present the shoalin group had to present the group form, JT Quan and I had to perform Qi Xing Quan (seven animal fist). The performance was pretty average but I was satisfied.

On wednesday we trained on the stairs, we had to do the usual, sprints, hops, jumps and bear crawls. I twisted my ankle in the process but continued training anyway. Chinese class was rather annoying as the new girl Jackie is really annoying. She says things out loud like "my handwriting has improved", tells the teacher "that letter Q you wrote is really big", "there is a spelling mistake there... just kidding" I asked her to please be quiet. She isn't even supposed to be in that class because she is a beginner so she should be in the beginners class bothering other students. Later that afternoon we started learning a new group form, JT goon and I started learning a new fist form, shaolin quan.

By friday my ankle was swollen and my knee was cramping again so I took the morning off and watched the others get tortured on the stairs.

Week 18 (3 May - 9 May)

On Monday morning my cold had come back in full force, probably from all the travelling stress. I took the entire day off and just relaxed. We also got 3 new students that weekend Harry (25) from Scotland and Two older men from Israel (40s+), Vlad and Levin.

Tuesday morning I was feeling better so I trained, we did our warm up and morning training in the forest which was a pleasant change, the weather had also improved and it was now sunny with clear skies. Chris got gooned for swearing.



In the afternoon we had to help lay some concrete slabs to cover a gutter. The rest of the afternoon we just did acrobatics and in the evening we just went for a stroll in the castle and then the forest.

Wednesday 5 May the weather had gotten worse again, it was raining. Despite the rain I ran to the T and sprinted up the stairs which actually almost seem easy now. For morning training we had a relaxing session, first we did some Qi gong and then 40 minutes of meditation which was actually torture after the first 25 minutes. Because the Chinese class had gotten so big and now had many new students it was decided to have a Chinese class at 8:00 - 9:00 for beginners and keep the original 10:30 - 11:30 class for advanced students. In the afternoon Josh got 3 goons for not training. After training I helped the school repair their CCTV camera system which was not recording correctly, despite the Chinese program I managed to fix it and was promised free Internet. In the evening we got a new student from India called Groshankar (20).



The rest of the week we didn't do much but we did get a new girl Jacki(20) from the USA and she is just another nut job that has been attracted to this place. On Friday we planted some trees around the academy. During this time Clemente had an argument with the headmaster because he told him to take all the planted trees out again so that they could remove the biodegradable paper that was covering the roots.

After this a whole bunch of us when to Siping, it was Harry, Thomas, Chris, Umit, Eagle, Josh, Rahul and I. We went clubbing to a club called lala chang, Rahul was behaving like a maniac and started doing all kinds of weird moves whilst dancing on the bar like an idiot. We left at about midnight when everyone else left.

On Sunday I spent the afternoon talking with Deepak in the Restaurant, Rahul came and was getting really drunk. He then asked Deepak to kick him because he had practised archigong and could now not feel anything, such an idiot. In the end Rahul got upset but shortly afterwards he asked Deepak to kick him again, this time it hurt and Rahul got really upset and they almost got into a fight, Deepak called Prashant to help mediate the situation. When Rahul went back into the academy he was loud and noisy and so his shifu gooned him 6 times. Rahul came back outside and threatened to kill Deepak.

Deepak asked me to go with him to the headmistress to ask her to have Rahul expelled for his behaviour, I told him not to talk much and gave him some breath mints to cover up his alcoholic breath. The headmistress asked me what I would do, I said that this incident alone should not be grounds enough to expel however she should take previous bad behavior into account and that perhaps it should be made clear to him that this is his final stand, one more screw up and he is to be expelled. That evening Rahul approached me and told me that he had gotten gooned and laughed about it, always funny, long term cocaine and heroin use has these effects on people, no sense of reality. He told me that his shifu would goon Deepak at line up tomorrow, I didn't say much and just went to bed.

Beijing Motorshow 30 April - 2 May

Cars are one of my passions and when I heard that there was a Beijing motorshow I knew I couldn't miss it. It wasn't just any ordinary motorshow like Autoafrica, instead it promised to be even better than the Frankfurt IAA which I was lucky enough to attend last year. The Beijing motorshow promised to have many world first debuts as well as many rare supercars including the most powerful Ferrari roadcar ever the 599GTO. There were others such as the Bugatti Veyron Grandsport, Lamborghini LP670-4 Super Veloce China Edition (a special chinese limited edition, only 10), Bentley Continental Supersports. Despite all there would also be many new innovations and displays of technology especially in terms of saving the planet.
I arrived in Beijing on 30 April, the train arrived a little late and because it was a friday and a labour weekend holiday the entire station and surrounding area were filled with utter chaos. The first thing I did was buy a ticket back to Siping and I was lucky as I managed to get the exact ticket I wanted, the D27 express train back to Siping. Then I had to wait in line for over 30 minutes to buy a subway ticket, once I had that I made my way to the 9 Dragons hostel which I stayed at last time. When I arrived at the hostel I had to do some negotiating but I managed to get a room for 50RMB which included a shower but it was a dorm room for 5 people, I didn't mind, to my luck it was empty. I dropped my things in the room, took a quick shower, I then went downstairs and had some breakfast. I then had to ask for directions to get to the motorshow, luckily they were quite straightforward.

I got to the end of line 3 which was Tiantongyuan North station it was already 11:30am at this time. Next I had to take a Rapid Bus link (3RMB) to the exhibition center, this took about 50 minutes. After paying the 50 RMB entrance fee I got an outlining of all the different halls. Because of the time of day it was very crowded so I opted to see the less attractive cars and come back early the following day to get a better glance at the main attractions, this paid off well. One of the first things that I noticed was the fact that unlike any other motorshow I had been to there were more girls than cars.

Mercedes Benz unveiled its E-Class L (extended/long wheelbase) version which is specifically tailored for the Chinese market, quite strange that almost all german executive saloons sold here are sold in their L derivates. There was also the amazing new SLS AMG which I saw last year In Frankfurt and I must say it still looks just as amazing. Other attractions were the Mercedes Benz shooting break concept and the F800 which is packed with innovative technologies.

I was quite disappointed by the BMW display, there was the beautiful looking new 5 series in its L derivative and a matte black M3 fitted with some special carbon fiber bits. Other than that there were just two save the planet concepts.

Citroen had its new DS3 hatchback which promises to be a really amazing car, it looks really impressive.

Nissan had two GTR R35 displays, one skeleton model and one complete car. Every time I see this car I feel like a little boy, I know its "only" a Nissan but facts are facts and this is a monster, which is why the Japanese refer to it as the Godzilla.

Renault had its 2009 F1 car on display as well as its two latest super hatchbacks the Clio RS 200 and the Megane RS 250.

Honda had a huge display of cars and most of them were treehuggers, they even had the Honda insight on display which is a Hydrogen powered car. This car is already sold and driven in California, the only place on earth with an abundence of hydrogen filling stations.

I then went to have a look at Ferrari, Jaguar, Porsche, Bentley, Aston Martin, Lamborghini, Bugatti and Audi but it was just too crowded so I left it and decided to comeback the following day. I used up some more time glancing at some of the Chinese manufacturers and wherever I looked there were so many exact or almost exact copies of european cars. Aston Martin, Porsche Cayenne, Mercedes M-Class and Hummers had all been copied in one way or another, some were extremely convincing.

Later that evening I got back to the hostel and found out that my room had suddenly been occupied by 3 blonde Danish girls, every guys dream. Unfortunatly "for them" I was hungry and tired so I had a Pizza downstairs which was really good, afterwards I just went to bed and passed out immeadiatley.

The following morning I got up at 7, had some breakfast and made the same journey to the exhibition centre, I got there 30 minutes before opening time and despite this the security let me in anyway.

I went straight to all the main attractions, first Lamborghini the Murcielago LP670-4SV was breathtaking, so was the new Superleggera which had many new carbon bits making it look even more amazing.

The Bentley selection was also quite impressive especially the Continental Supersports which can run on Bio Ethanol and save the planet with its 600 horsepower W12, not really, but its great marketing and allows buyers to feel like they are contributing to a greener future.

Porsche, my favourites had all their latest facelifts and models on display, including the new 911 Turbo S PDK and New Cayenne Turbo which actually looks pretty good now. They also had a race car on display the GT3 R hybrid with the decals "Porsche Intelligent Performance" stuck on the side. I feel that technologies used on this car will be seen on normal road cars in the near future. Basically the car has a normal flat six 480 horsepower engine but also an electric motor which can give an extra 120 horsepower boost instantaneously, its basically like NOS which you see in the Fast and the Furious movies. However unlike gas this power is recharged every time the cars brakes are applied. This is just another one of those cellphone or computer instances where people (failure to envisage) say "never" and then 5 or 10 years down the line everyone has one.

The Bugatti was amazing because I knew what I was looking at but to the average person I don't think they would know they are looking at a 400km/h convertible rocketship with a 1.3 million euro pricetag.

Audi had the R8 Spyder which is beautiful but other than that there weren't any RS models on display, I was expecteing the TTRS but there wasn't even a TTS.

The main attraction of course was the Ferrari 599GTO which was as beautiful has I had imagined. Only 599 examples were available and they had all been sold as soon as the car was announced. The car is packed with F1 techonology and with 700 horsepower it is also the most powerful road going Ferrari ever made. There was also the 458 Italia, 612 Scalietti and California on display.

There was also selection of other Supercars such as Maserati, Aston Martin and Spyker but no new models.

I got back to the hostel in the evening and went to the pearl market to have a look at something but didn't actually buy anything despite being harrased. After dinner I went back to the hostel. The 3 Danish blondes were having drinks and snacks, they offered me a drink and asked me what I was doing that afternoon, I told them I had to go to bed because I had a 7 am train. I didn't want to go out and then try get up early for the train and possible miss it.

I left the hostel at 6am and got some food on the way, there were some delays in the subway and I knew that I was seriously late for the train. By the time I got on the last subway I had 10 minutes to spare and the subway had to make another 2 stops, I had almost accepted that I had missed the train. When I got to the Beijing main station stop I had 3 minutes to spare but I had to run to the station, get past security and find the correct platform. I ran as fast as I could and managed to get through security and skipping the x-rays and metal detectors. I could now see the train and still had a bit to run, by the time I got to the final staircase down to the train I could feel like lactic acid build up and my heartrate was peaking, I got on the train and basically collapsed, the train left about 30 seconds later. This delay however had an advantage because the express train was actually two trains and I had gotten on the second section and there was no way to get to my seat so the conductor let me sit in first class which was pretty good.