the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

Secrets Not Often Told

Rather along the lines of TNT and RAT, I thought we needed a place to share obscure bits of wisdom that might otherwise be overlooked or forgotten.

I'll start. If you are cooking a Chinese recipe that calls for sesame paste, and you don't have any, put in sesame oil stirred into creamy peanut butter. The effect is very similar.

If the recipe calls for rice wine and you don't have any, substitute dry sherry.

If you are striking someone with your fist, momentarily and convulsively clenching your fist as you strike can pull your posture together for a split second so that you hit with extra clout. This should be practiced before you need it, on the heavy punching bag.

When foreign gurus or grandmasters tell you things that are lofty and obscure, they are putting on airs. Indians and Chinese are at least as capable of talking sense as anyone else.

You should never tell certain jokes in mixed company, or in a religious gathering, or to people whose first language is not English, or to anyone associated with the mental health field. In fact, it is best if you do not tell them at all.

Who else has secrets to share?

Common sense, isn't.

The Moral Majority, isn't.

Do not try to swear in a language not your own.

The world in which you were born is just one model of reality, other cultures are not failed attempts at being you.

The primary teaching of the New Testament and core value of Christianity is Charity.

^^ The last bit was cribbed from St. Paul. It is S.N.O.T. because people don't say it (or do it) enough.

Thanks. Your post is just the kind of thing I mean.

Old bicyclist secret (told to me by an old bicyclist)

Go to a gas station and get one of those travel maps that shows the main routes in the area. Now, you have a map of the roads to stay off of.

Very clever!

Dry off in the shower. Keeps your bathroom floor more dry.

A wet bird never flies at night! Word.

You are someplace where all the lights go out. It is totally dark. If you try to move about you may fall over something.

One answer is to get down and crawl. You cannot fall down if you are already down. Don't worry about training a crawling technique; you can't really get it wrong. Crawling is among the first things you learned to do.

greytowhite wrote:Dry off in the shower. Keeps your bathroom floor more dry.

YES! Why isn't this wisdom more widely known?

Bird nest soup is made from spit (from the cave swallow).

Michael wrote:

greytowhite wrote:Dry off in the shower. Keeps your bathroom floor more dry.

YES! Why isn't this wisdom more widely known?

You can save a lot on clotrimazole 1% salve if the toes and all other wrinkly bits are dry before you clothe.

"Half of all the lies people told about me weren't true." -- Yogi Berra.

I've long been interested in wilderness survival. I learned about different environments, with particular emphasis on what low-tech cultures had done, or were doing, to live there. There is a basic level of comfort and security without which your survival may be in doubt.

I astonished myself by boiling it down to a sentence: "Come in and have a cup of tea."

If you can say that you have the following:

• shelter from the environment--appropriate to the area
• controlled use of fire
• water
• a vessel for boiling water, possibly improvised
• cups, ditto
• something to use for tea, likely meaning at least a basic knowledge of plants in the area

In other words you have a pretty good handle on a set of common threats to your survival--exposure, dehydration and bad water among them. (Boiling water is a fine way to disinfect it.)

It may be that you have brought with you what you need. Perhaps you need to find or improvise some or all of the above requisites. Anyhow, I think the first priority when settling in should be--tea!

So, remember this survival sentence: "Come in and have a cup of tea."

When looking at things at night, don't look directly at them since that's where your colour receptors are most concentrated (and they don't work at night). Look about 15 degrees away from what you want to see. Using a red coloured light will interfere less with your night vision. Also, your ability to interpret movement via sight degrades rapidly as light levels go down - try juggling at twilight vs daylight and you'll see what I mean.

If you are following a new route and are planning on returning the same way, pause every now and again (particularly at intersections) and look back the way you came. When you return, that route will look more familiar and so you are less likely to go astray. I first used this when I was spelunking when you have to worry about route finding in three dimensions. It turned out that it was a technique practiced by some jungle dwelling tribes as well.

"no exit" means there's an exit.

Everyone wants to go to heaven, but not today.