 
Now I just attended a four-hour course on Knife-Fighting last Saturday. The aftermath includes, bundles of sore muscle tissue, a battered big toe, intimate knowledge of the usage of edged-weapons and a heightened sense of confidence should I ever get involved in an ugly argument with an enraged butcher. I particularly liked the part where we learnt how to deal maximum damage with everyday pointed objects like pens. I'll never look at office stationery the same way again. Even now I'm marvelling at the makeshift armoury that is my desk. Mechanical pencils, ballpoint pens, metal rulers, keys.......office essentials.....instruments of punishment and mayhem. Good luck to the next colleague who siddles up to me to start an annoying lecture on the effect of MSN on work productivity. For one of the drills, we had to evade the strike of a would-be attacker. I believe Brandon coined this technique "Limb-Cutting". This involves using nifty footwork to get into safe range while simultaneously slicing the outstretched arm of the attacker as he tries to stab you. Piece of cake right? Wrong. A little Wing Chun voice in my head kept screaming " Block the attack, trap his arms, jam his momentum and chain punch his head into kingdom come! " I had to fight my instinctive agressiveness from all my prior WC training every inch of the way. Brandon kept hammering away with this axiom : " Get away....AND take a piece of him with you, let them bleed out. " As such, I felt like a little vicious piranna.....a vicious piranna with a rubber knife. Dodge and slice, dodge and slice, dodge and slice, wash, rinse and repeat. Cowardly you, watching your attacker slowly bleed to death from all those nicks and cuts.........GOOD Agressive you, standing over your comatose attacker, pumping your mangled arms in the air in victory......BAD Other highlights of the course include : Getting my right foot stomped on by the instructor repeatedly as he demonstrated the drills, Accidentally palm-striking Alex's face......HARD (thank god he was wearing safety goggles), admitting to myself that my once-brilliant footwork has gone to the dogs and discovering that I now have the lung capacity of a 5-yr-old girl. Oh and all that lightning-fast lunging has killed my left calf muscle. Killed it dead. My 'Pimp Walk' is now my default walk. Swaggerin around like a badass rapper with a bullet wound in my left leg. Charmingly cocky on the outside, excruciatingly painful on the inside. So ladies, if you see me pimping down the street, don't swoon..........empathize. Welcome back to the world of Martial Arts you wimp. Sengz, out. | 
