Update

It's been a while since my last update, and lots of stuff has happened.

DW and I went to the U.S. in October for two weeks - DW spent almost the entire time at her sister's, where her Mom was visiting, back from the Solomon Islands. I went off to my sister's for about a week first, where I had a great time, met my parents for a few days and got lots of exercise - I joined her in doing the "Couch to 5K" program, went to her dojo twice (Isshinryu), did "core" with her (lots and lots of crunches), and went bowling with her and the kids as an early birthday present to me :-). I came back to Georgia and my sister-in-laws on my birthday, where we celebrated an all-in-one birthday party the next day (mine, my mother-in-law's, my brother-in-laws all in the same week). Then I visited my cousin near Philadelphia for a day, and finally went to D.C. where I met up with DW and we celebrated her birthday with a few hundred thousand people (well, they mostly weren't there for her birthday, they were there for the Rally to Restore Sanity, which we were there for, too). We did a road trip back to Georgia, which was pretty fun - lots of time with DW. :-)

In December I passed the belt test for green belt. I did lots of prep and held children's "free training" Saturday mornings again - the kids did pretty good when they were tested. The youth were more mixed. The lower belts were really good, the middle belts were so-so, and two of the youth who had just moved up from the kids failed - the standards are much higher for youth than for kids. I'm hoping that they don't give up: they're both good.

We did some visiting during Christmas and had a small New Years party with Raclette at our place. I continued to work. I felt very out of shape after a couple of weeks of not training.

Then I jumped right in with a "trainer training", from Wed. (5-Jan) evening to Sunday noon, training, training, training, with a surprise: on Sat. all the green belts were given a surprise belt-test, and we're now all blue belts. I also have a trainer "C" certificate, allowing me to train in our dojo with my sensei's permission. I still need to get my first aid certification, though.

Mom is still cancer free, though it's really too early to say it is really gone. She's also just had a cataract operation on one eye.

Completion

I got my orange-green belt (sorry for taking a week to report on it). It was a good test. Everybody passed, kids, youth and adults, but only one person skipped a half-belt (adult), and she really deserved it. I was her regular training partner before and uke during the test :-) . We had been expecting Shihan J. to be on the test commission, but he didn't show. The test commission was only two black belts, our Sensei, H., and Sensei T. from out of town. I sat next to them for the kid's belt tests and called out what they were to do. I was both happy and a little disappointed in the kids: I felt most of the lower belts should have done a lot better, the higher belts, most of whom showed up Saturday mornings for kids' free training, did better (sigh of relief). For my own test, I was more relaxed than previous times and managed to recover several errors rather than ask to restart, but still not relaxed enough to remember to kia, despite Sensei H.'s reminding me to two or three times :-( . Generally, neither the kids nor I got to show off any extra techniques, which was a little disappointing: both the kids and I had trained to the green belt program, though we were testing for orange-green. The youth, with one exception, were very listless and barely scraped by - the one shining star was J., the newbie white-belt, who easily outshone the much higher belts.

The Ruhi 8 course is completed. It was interesting stuff - I'm motivated to read more Baha'i history now. I need to order some books.

In other Baha'i news, we had our reflection meeting this past Sunday. We're going to have a 3 week expansion phase instead of 2 weeks. I think that's because of an event this weekend that would distract from any events we might plan.

I need to sign off now: almost time for the devotional for the Martyrdom of the Báb.

Upcoming Belt Test, Ruhi 8, OpenMoko and Cancer

Well, it's been about a month and well past time to update.

Belt test is rapidly approaching (July 1st) - I'm feeling pretty good about it: I'm feeling much more comfortable both throwing and being thrown with the new hip throw. My forward roll left is still not as strong as right, but it's still good. My biggest worry, as ever, is remembering how each move starts, which is kind of compounded by the recent changes, but I think I have it under control. In general I'm just feeling much more relaxed while training. I should - I've been training nearly every day. One (hopefully) minor hitch: my ring finger on my right hand got jerked rather hard yesterday during practice and has started hurting whenever I try to grasp something. I don't think it will be a problem, but I need to keep an eye on it.

The kid's training has been going well, too. Last time 8 kids showed up and no co-trainers, so of course there was some boredom as I kept switching between the advanced and the beginners, but I think it was tolerable. A week and a half ago I did a dry run of the test and was shocked to find some rather large gaps in their routines, which I think are now more-or-less under control.

As expected, we've started Ruhi 8 on the Covenant. A very intensive course: we've had three days so far, all from 10:00 am to 10:00 pm - the first day there was a mild conflict with the kid's training, where I left training relatively early and arrived at the course a bit late. There's a lot of memorizing and a lot of homework: this last time I turned a quote into a song to help us memorize it, and researched short Biographies on Ethel J. Rosenberg and Thomas Breakwell, two early Baha'is from the British Isles.

I managed to almost trash my OpenMoko - I issued the command "opkg upgrade", which tells it to upgrade everything it can. It worked for a while, but then tried to upgrade the WiFi program - problem being that it was connected via WiFi at the time. *sigh*. It worked as a basic phone, but various other things were broken, including especially WiFi. I flashed the NAND memory from scratch and things are working again. The latest Navit is still not showing roads - I wonder if the Navit developers are seeing the same things I am, because it has become completely unusable for me. I would try and fix the problems, but it refuses to link with the toolchain I have, which makes fixing things rather a problem.

Mom is doing as well as can be expected - better really. I told her about William Li and his antiangiogenic diet (see this TED video), and she has been going wild with that. I think it gives her the sense of control she needs.

That's all for now. :-)

LSA, Scanners, stuff

I forgot to mention in my last post, that we elected a new Local Spiritual Assembly (LSA) this past Rizvan. We had 10 people eligible, so there actually was a vote. Yesterday we elected the officers.

I was just reading up on the scanners - apparently a lot of the new scanners are back-scatter soft x-ray scanners. The safety studies on the things average the radiation exposure over the body, whereas almost all of the absorption occurs right at the skin, meaning your skin gets a nice unhealthy dose. Joy of joys, yet another reason not to fly. If I fly, I think I'll just opt for the strip-search over the scanners.

General Update

Well, things have been rolling right along. I'm supposed to take a month of vacation leftover from last year before the end of June, but I haven't managed to take any yet. I've been rather busy with work of late, despite the "Kurzarbeit".

In related news, I've been banging my head against the wall trying to create a proper cross-compiler toolchain for big-endian ARM processor so I can develop for my OpenMoko (SHR) / Neo Freerunner. Getting the cross-compiler itself is easy, but getting all the libraries etc. to compile is near impossible. I've given up for the moment and taken an older pre-compiled toolchain, just so I can get something done.

I've taken part in 2 Jiu Jitsu trainings since my last post. I'm continuing to be a co-trainer for Nippon Jiu Jitsu, and in fact am adding to it by leading 9:00 am Saturday "free trainings" between now and the belt test next month for any kids who want to practice up before the belt test. I've discovered I need a first aid certification before I can get a green belt - I need to do that soon.

We're continuing our Friday evening devotional, sometimes with more, sometimes fewer people, but still going good. Our (Baha'i) cluster is now officially an "A Cluster", meaning we have a vibrant community with lots of people involved in core activities. I'll probably be participating in a Ruhi 8 course soon - though my Saturday morning free training may conflict with that (time and place is not yet set).

Oh - big news: Mom has cancer, but most of my few readers will already know that. She's undergoing chemo and radiation - the prognosis is good, because it was caught early.

I *still* don't know if I'll be going to the U.S. this Summer. DW is definite that she's not going: she protesting the new Teraherz scanners the only effective way - boycotting air travel. If I go, it will be around the week of July 10-18.

Belated Anniversary and Naw Ruz

The bad news first: my Mom has breast cancer. She's already been operated, and will have to have chemo and radiation. My sister has been helping out there, despite that she has her hands full taking care of her father in law, who has cancer, too. It got caught at a relatively early stage. As I understand it, the survival rate for her type and stage is about 80%.

While we're talking cancer - a co-worker of mine died this past Friday of lung cancer. He's going to be given a "forest burial", probably middle of April. My company is planning on either participating, if his children wish it, or holding our own memorial, if they don't.

And at the beginning of the fast A.M., who I haven't seen in years, called: her Mom died - and I went to that funeral, about an hour away. It was just A.M., myself and I.D. - I.D. has now gotten married and has a two kids, one his wife's from a previous marriage, and one his own who is still a baby. A.M. is not doing well health-wise herself, but it was good to see I.D. is doing well.

All in all, I notice I'm getting older (48) - people I know are getting ill and dying with increasing frequency. As they say: getting older is better than the alternative.

The fast went well this year - not too much difficulty, despite Jiu Jitsu Mondays and Thursdays meaning that I only got a small sandwich somewhat belatedly after sunset. I've officially been working five hours a day, roughly accurate - sometimes more, sometimes less. It hasn't gotten to the point where it is conflicting, which is good.

We went to a restaurant for our anniversary, as has been our custom the last several years. This was our 27th. We went to a nice Indian restaurant for it. :-)

Naw Ruz on the 20th was rather laid back this year - we had planned to celebrate the evening of 20th at a friends house who was combining it with a small Birthday party, but that got canceled, so we spent it at home. Then on the 21st there was a nice celebration in a restaurant in a nearby city - there we met with A & A and their two daughters and had a really nice time. Mom A. is Hindu, Dad A. is Christian, but they're both very practical, so there is not much conflict - in fact they're thinking of sending their kids to Baha'i children's classes when they get started in their new city (they moved there a few months back). On the 23rd, we celebrated Naw Ruz yet again at a private gathering - for some reason I'm totally blanking on that celebration.

Tomorrow I'll be attempting to teach the Jiu Jitsu kids "alone" - Sensei will be there, but he wants me to lead the class while he watches from off the mat, so I get practiced in case of a real emergency. It is now school vacation, and probably half of the kids will be gone (we usually have over 20 these days) - ideal for practicing.

Miscellany

It's about time for an update:

A week ago last Tuesday I went to the company central and dragged along my "praktikant", even though he was no longer a praktikant and his contract was about to run out. He's now done and starting his studies at the University here. :-)

I am doing a lot less "Kurzarbeit", i.e. a good deal more work. In particular I am currently trying to get a set of cross-compile tools set up for both MIPS and ARM processors. Documentation in OSS really, really sucks. I think once I get my set to compile, I'll post my script to generate them somewhere.

My Sensei was out both Monday and Thursday this week. On Monday, his official assistant, B., managed to get some parents really angry with him and give Sensei an earful - he was too heavy-handed and caused a couple of kids to be really upset. On Thursday, another brown belt, T., led the group - this time, the kids were so happy with T., that several asked if he would be there on Monday, too. I think that evened things out a bit. :-)

We've also been very active in Baha'i activities. Last weekend, we were all underway in different cities for the Baha'i cause: I was at a practice session for guitarists and singers who wished to improve their skills for Musical Firesides, DW was at an institutional meeting, and K. was underway trying to get youth and children's classes started. Tomorrow we're having an Ayyam-i-ha celebration at our place - I've made some stollen for the party. :-)