Seminar on Tian Xing Yi Quan in London, UK.

[eddie mush]

what a bummer, in so many ways.

[yusuf]

Iason..

I guess its a 3000 pound lesson... now you just have to train like a maniac for 20 years and then go challenge them

peace

Yusuf

[Plante]

Very sad for you, Iason.

Why am I not surprised...

[Darthwing Teorist]

This sucks. Good luck to you.

[canard]

Iason - Sorry to hear that dude....that is a very bitter pill to swallow.

[Josealb]

So, how is this different from Blacktaoist hyping a fight 3 months in advance, only to cancel everything at the last minute?

Yeah, you know the answer. Video clips. Cheaper than an air ticket, and does not rip the good working man off.

[alexg]

Wu De my arse

[alexg]

Lets keep this lesson in mind the next time some arsehole starts lecturing on the importance of culture when learning CMA

Fancy sending an impersonal email to say you are not coming after you asked that same person to spend a lot of his own money.

I say go and takes some lessons with Steve Morris at least the guy seems genuine and probably knows a lot more too.

[Azer]

Did anyone deposit money for this? If so, have you been refunded?

[Chris McKinley]

What an asshat.

[Iskendar]

Damn, glad I didn't book a week in London (which I seriously considered for this). Total bummer. Hope you manage to recover some of your losses.

[Leishen]

I am very sorry about that George.

It seems that there are by far worst things for the "reputation" of some group than just some people from the Song family who fought some wing chun guys for a tv documentary and didn't succeed well. And then all these articles from Tian family about that incident etc....
The more "simple" things are what makes us better, not only the fighting aspect.
Honesty and respect are some of these, wude or not wude. It's plain and simple social behaviour. And respect is not only from the student's part (or future student maybe in the case of George if I am not mistaken) but from the teacher's part too, especially if this was his first attempt to open his family to the Western world.

I was expecting Tadzio to post here these days, at least to tell his part of the story. I had the feeling he was a direct and straightforward guy....not answering to George or to the people here, says volumes about some people's way of thinking and behaviour in general.....

Too sad.

[Pandrews1982]

I've just got back from London about a hour ago and didn't have any real internet/email access while I was there. But here's my take on things. I don't know if Tadzio and Li Jingshen were genuinely unable to attend or if they were scamming George but it seems dubious that they pulled out at the last moment and arrangements for visas were being finalised only a day or two before the planned flights. Coupled with the fact that Tadzio's professed want to take his style public is backed up by virtually no concrete media material to show it's efficacy or veracity. I had already become suspicious as I have Tadzio as a friend on facebook and noticed he had posted something about cancelling a seminar or something in Brazil earlier in the year. Now it seems Tadzio's facebook profile has disappeared and all details of the seminar are deleted from his website. I think this speaks volumes about this guy.

So the whole situation was messed up, but I told George that we were going to make the most of a bad situation, and that's what we did. George has put a lot of effort into trying to arrange this and he was genuinely very upset it had fallen through. Fortunately Air china have told George he will be refunded the majority of the money he paid, so we should get a refund for the seminar and George hopefully will not be too out of pocket. We live a learn guys and this was a fucked up situation but you have to accept things, move forward and make large misfortunes into small misfortunes.

Anyway As soon as I heard that the chinese guys were not coming I asked George if we still had access to the training venue so we could still train. I may not be a chinese "master" but I taught a crash course on the five elements of Hebei style xing yi over the three nights and two days. This included a lot of detail on each of the methods including multiple variations, how the energy and jins were used, defensive and offensive strategies, partner drills, demonstrations, foundational exercises etc. It was quite hands on and practical, especially for the couple of guys who acted as my victi...assistants. I also demonstrated a few bits and pieces from other areas of the art, I ran through all the animal lian huan as a demonstration, showed some animal applications, showed a bit of counter grappling methods, showed a little bit of niu da and yan yi, explained a little bit about weapons (I had some wooden jian and ci/needles with me). My existing students grilled me a bit on things they wanted to cover in detail or wanted to be clarified.

Some of my students were signed up anyway so they came and trained, I asked a few other guys to drop by too and a few of the other people signed up came along and joined in and enjoyed it, a couple of others came and watched but were less hands on, which is fine. I tried to accommodate everyone and be as honest and open as possible while trying to keep the information at a level which could be accessible. I gave a lot of information out and we filmed and took some photos so I will be looking to cut some of the film together to show a taste of what we did. The guys at the classes will get film of all the stuff we did.

I hope that everyone who attended got something from my teaching and enjoyed what we were doing. I enjoyed everyone's company, was happy to step into the breach and had a great time in London, outside training we experienced London's finest turkish cuisine, sampled a lot of drinks, had some good banter together, heard some great music, went to some nice venues (highly recommend Passing Clouds in Dalston!) and chatted and danced with a number of nice girls

A few of the guys there want me to come back and do some regular workshops and I'm willing to do so, so if others are interested watch this space as they may get a xing yi training group going in North London. Hopefully the guys at the community centre will have us back after all the noise we were making and the pounding their floor took.

[lazyboxer]

Thanks for that, Pandrews, and for helping to salvage a horrible situation. As it happened, I'd only just left hospital a few hours before on Friday and was too stitched-up and anaesthetized to enjoy myself properly.But it did my heart good to see your lively self and fine xingyiquan, and everyone left in much better spirits than expected after the Tadzio debacle.

I don't know how Tadzio will ever be able to hold his head again up after letting everyone down so badly, to say nothing of his attempts to rewrite history by trying to sweep everything under the carpet. The IMA world is small and incestuous, so his reputation, and by extension his teacher's, are now toast.

[Leishen]

Pandrews
Nice of you to do that.
That's the other side of the coin, the positive one.