Helping a friend (counselling service in North Wales)

There are few greater joys in life than helping a friend.  Recently, a friend of mine has started a counselling practice and, though I see less of him now, because he is so busy, I am happy for his success.  With that in mind, however, I must also help him to greater success, if I am able to do so.

His name is Karl Pegg, and he runs a counselling service from http://www.karlpegg.co.uk/ - by phone, email, instant messaging or in person.  He is very good at what he does.  Actually, the adage that a stranger is a friend you just haven't met yet is appropriate here.  My friend can help people, and I am also helping, indirectly, by publicising his service.

That's my good deed for the day.  I feel a warm glow now, and it's not just because I've had the heating on for too long.

Virtualisation

I had the idea of increasing my (already impressive) knowledge of operating systems by using virtual machines.  Unfortunately, the version of Virtualbox that comes as standard on the Debian edition of Linux Mint will not allow me to get past this stage...

In both cases, the GRUB boot loader obviously works fine, but the virtual machine freezes when it should load the Linux kernel.  Yes, I'm familiar with Linux already, but I thought it would be a great way to test the technology first.  If I were to have problems installing NetBSD or OpenBSD, for example, I might believe that it was due to my inexperience with those operating systems.

I also tried Debian and CentOS because, if I were to use Linux in a business setting, my choice would be between those two distributions.  Those of you in the know will notice that I was testing Debian wheezy.  Well, it is currently in "feature freeze", so is pretty close to release right now.  When learning about operating systems, it is best to stay ahead of the curve, as it were.

As for not being able to get past the boot loader, I'll figure it out.  I always figure it out.

Update: I figured it out.  My CPU does not have the Intel virtualisation extensions, so Virtualbox will not allow me to virtualise 64-bit operating systems.  32-bit OS images should work fine.  I'll try this out when I have more time.

Here is the i386 version of FreeBSD installing ...

Thought for the day: acquired wisdom

 I saw a set of five personal guidelines, written by someone else and, given my own experience, I rewrote them as the following...

1. Bring something of yourself to what you do - make it your own
2. Recognise opportunities and take them
3. No matter how busy your life, find some quiet time for yourself 
4. It is okay not to know everything
5. Don't put things off until later

 They are not a million miles from what was originally written, but I modified them in accordance with guideline number 1.

LMDE and printers

After a regrettable moment of madness, which involved installing xubuntu on my laptop, I had to reinstall Linux Mint Debian Edition.  To my horror, my Brother laser printer would no longer print.  According to the GUI configuration program, my printer was recognised, but any job sent to the printer, though listed as completed, never actually printed onto paper.

Searching the forums led nowhere.  Many people had experienced the problem, but no one was offering a solution, except to say that the problem was an "upstream" bug (i.e. from the testing branch of Debian).  Having used Debian testing for a long period of time, I didn't accept that explanation.  I reasoned that the bug had probably been fixed in the testing branch since the LMDE update pack was released.  So I made some additions to /etc/apt/sources.list...

#default LMDE repos
deb http://linux-mint.froonix.org/ debian main upstream import
deb http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/debian.linuxmint.com/debian/latest testing main contrib non-free
deb http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/debian.linuxmint.com/debian/latest/security testing/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/debian.linuxmint.com/debian/latest/multimedia testing main non-free

#Debian repos
deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free
deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian stable-updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian stable-updates main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main contrib non-free

Why did I point my sources.list towards debian stable?  Unbelievable as it may sound, some core packages of debian stable are more recent than in LMDE, and possibly newer than debian testing packages.  After making the changes, I did sudo apt-get update, sudo apt-get upgrade and sudo apt-get dist-upgrade.  After all the upgrades to the base packages from the stable branch, it was time to edit my sources.list to point to debian testing...

#Debian repos
deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian testing main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian testing main contrib non-free
deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian testing-updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian testing-updates main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main contrib non-free

After that, the same old apt-get routine.  If you don't want the LMDE repositories to clash with debian testing repos, comment out the debian lines with a hash at the start of each line, or delete them altogether.  I'm pretty sure that the next update pack won't be arriving for quite a while, so obtaining upgrades from debian is pretty safe right now.  More importantly, my printer now works as it should.

Why all the hatred towards England?

"Anyone but England" seems to be the cry.  In any sporting fixture (it's a rugby tournament between England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, France and Italy right now), the people of other nations of the United Kingdom will seemingly support any team that is playing against England.

Maybe there are historical reasons for this.  The problem I have is that, if it were practically any other nation on Earth, it would be labelled as unacceptable.  Certainly, I have seen a worrying attitude towards anyone English in Ireland and Scotland; in Wales, thankfully, it is at a much lower level.

The effect it has is probably the reverse of what is intended.  Though I live in Wales, I am English by birth.  Over the course of my life, I have faced a torrent of abuse, simply for being English - mainly during my time in Ireland, but also in my adopted home of Wales.  The problem is that, if you draw the attention of the perpetrators to the problem, the attitude is "If you don't like it, **** off back to where you came from."  Welsh, Scottish and Irish inhabitants of England are not subject to the same bigotry.

I don't know the reason for this, but the effect of it all, as I was saying, is to make me steadfastly proud to be English.  You see, all that hatred causes a reaction which makes me identify more closely with the country of my birth.  I am, have always been, and will always be, English.

Wing Chun and Arnis/Eskrima/Kali

It's a great source of irritation that some of my fellow Wing Chun students are already training at a local Eskrima club, whereas I don't have any spare time to do that until June.  The club I'm talking about is Warriors Eskrima at Rhyl, North Wales.

To compound my misery, at least one of the class is taking lessons at a Jeet Kune Do class in Wrexham - http://www.scimitarmartialarts.co.uk/

I realised that this actually worries me more than my upcoming grading on Sunday.  The JKD class will include elements of Kali (Danny Inosanto's preferred term for Filipino martial arts), though it is questionable how much Kali it will include.  The Eskrima class will teach more distinctly Filipino martial arts, though I know the instructor has also studied Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (not a concern, because my Wing Chun instructor also studies Five Pattern Hung Kuen).

I should explain some differences in terminology.  Very few people in the Philippines will call their martial arts Kali, though the influence of Danny Inosanto is changing that.  In Manila, and the whole island of Luzon, as far as I know, it is known as Arnis.  In Cebu, they have a tendency to call it Eskrima.

Why am I concerned about other students learning Filipino martial arts?  Well, this goes to my whole motivation for learning Wing Chun.  The grading is not so important because my grade is of secondary importance; my main motivation for learning Wing Chun is for self protection.  Ever since the two were first combined, it has been known that Wing Chun and Arnis/Eskrima go well together as an effective combat art.  I'm more than a little concerned that this knowledge is becoming more widespread.

In every martial arts class, you get the testosterone-fuelled macho idiots.  Contrary to popular belief, it is not always the younger members of a class who feel the need to prove themselves.  When you are learning a martial art for self-protection, the level of skill you may come up against in an opponent is obviously more of a concern.  I was already troubled by the rise in popularity in cage fighting.  Now, let us not get caught up in the argument over whether MMA is more effective in any situation than traditional martial arts.  The point is that, regardless of my beliefs regarding MMA, a trained cage fighter will be more skilled than the average untrained trouble causer.  It is more of a worry, because MMA classes tend to downplay, or totally omit, any philosophical context of what they teach.

Traditional arts like Wing Chun have had centuries to develop.  The Muay Thai, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and other arts which may comprise an MMA class also have a philosophical basis, but this tends to get lost in the bias towards competitiveness engendered in that environment.  Yes, the technical aim of Wing Chun is to incapacitate an opponent, but the philosophical context modifies that aim to a point where we only do what is necessary to assure our safety.  As my instructor has said many times, the only guaranteed method of self-defence is to run faster than an attacker can chase you.  It certainly sidesteps the issue of explaining your actions to a court.

What it all adds up to is that I have to start learning Arnis/Eskrima, even if I just get the basic concepts from a book.  When learning a martial art for self-protection, especially one that is constantly evolving, it is not wise to fall behind.

Intramuros

It's hard to believe that I only got to visit Intramuros on my third visit to Manila, but then, my main focus in going to the Philippines is visiting the woman I love.

As luck would have it, we visited Intramuros on Rizal Day.  For those of you who don't know, José Rizal was a Filipino revolutionary and is apparently the national hero of the Philippines.  That information came from our tour guide, who managed to keep a large party of people, including us, entertained for well over an hour (the tour was meant to last for an hour; no one seemed to mind that it lasted longer).

It was my fiancée's idea to have a guide.  Though Intramuros is a beautiful and interesting place, it's fair to say that being there would not have been the experience it was without the tour guide.  We were shown around this old part of Manila, told the history of the place and the Philippines in general, and treated to a humorous take on the role of various foreign influences on the country.  There were odd moments where the narrative was in danger of becoming a political rant, especially during an interval where we were treated to a thoroughly disturbing account of what happened to Manila during World War 2.  The scars of that conflict affect Manila to this day.  Most of the old city was lost under a blanket of bombs, and many lives were lost to those bombs and also to Japanese swords.  An old city now looks very modern, and some would say soulless, because it had to be rebuilt largely from nothing.

I should stop right there.  If you want to know more about Intramuros and Manila, I highly recommend a visit.  Do your research before you go and, if possible, visit the Ayala Museum in Makati as well.  If you have a day to spare, the boat ride from Manila Bay to the island of Corregidor (a US military stronghold during the war; now a tourist attraction) is well worth the effort.  As the tour guide said, many just pass through Manila on their way to the white sandy beaches and crystal clear waters of islands like Boracay and Palawan.  Those islands are no doubt very beautiful, but it is wrong to write off Manila.  There is much more to the capital than meets the eye.  Yes, it is noisy, overcrowded and polluted in the main, but also home to many hidden treasures.

I'll let the pictures I took in Intramuros speak for themselves...