Well, to be honest, training in Hong Kong is a tricky proposition at best.  Why?  Well, part of it has to do with the culture and attitudes towards wushu in Hong Kong, and the other is a matter of logistics an

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But now that my future plans are “official” I can talk a little bit more about what is going on in my future over the next year.

You see, part of the problem with my current situation is that my work load and current obligations don’t really allow for a consistent amount of training.  Often I will have to drop my training for a period of time while I travel to meet a client in Hong Kong or spend a few all-nighters finishing up a project.  This doesn’t really bode well with me as I am the type of person that, if I am going to do something, then I really want to focus some energy and attention on it and not spread my attention across too many things.

In other words, I’m not all that in to multi-tasking.  I prefer to focus on 2 or 3 main priorities in my life than spread myself too thin with 10 different projects.

So, in looking at the various alternatives that I had available to me I realized that there was one opportunity which I’ve been around for the past 5 years which I’ve never really explored.

Teaching English.

Now, to be honest I’ve had my reservations about doing something like this.  It took me a long time to get comfortable coaching wushu, and I had zero experience teaching English aside from a few conversation partners and some English practice sessions with Jet and his English teacher back in L.A.  I figured the best thing to do would be to try it out in a controlled environment to see how I felt about it.

So I scouted around for some light teaching opportunities.  I put up notices that I was available for English conversation practice at some of the coffee shops near universities and even replied to some requests for part-time teachers.  One request was for someone to teach twice a week at a primary school in Gao Xin.  Well, I thought I could at least check it out and see what it was like by watching someone teach.

But when I got to the school I was told that I would be teaching that day!  There I was in front of 50 3rd grade students with zero classroom teaching experience and no lesson plan.  Thank goodness that Ruhi was able to quickly give me some suggestions on the phone before I stepped in to the room.  But it was certainly a stressful 2 classes.

Coincidentally, on that day I also made contact with a private school in Xi’an that was opening up and they provided me some neat opportunities to learn a bit more about teaching as well.

And finally I was able to help out with a class at a local university teaching Oral English once a week.

Those combined experience made me realize that this was something that I not only was interested in doing, but that it was something I actually was enjoying as well.

So I applied for a teaching position at Xi’an International Studies University (XISU), one of the top Foreign Language studies universities in China.  Actually it has a very good reputation and probably the only other language school that would be better on my resume would be Bei Wai in Beijing.

But that aside, it is also a good situation because we get on-campus housing, which allows us to both save some money and takes a couple hours off of Ruhi’s commute, since this is also the school where she is getting her Master’s degree in Chinese studies at the moment.  Plus, to be honest, I sort of like that side of town better.

So, what does this have to do with wushu training?  Thats an excellent question.

I knew that, if I was able to get this teaching position, that it would actually free me up so that I would not have to take on so many projects at once.  And, as I mentioned, taking on so many projects has been hampering my ability to get any exercise and training in to my daily routine.

Come the fall I would be able to teach in the mornings and spend my afternoons training.  I could keep two of my maintenance clients and focus on providing them with good service and my life would suddenly become free to study Chinese, spend time making some Friends, hanging out with my wife a bit more, less traveling to Hong Kong every month, and other important things like that.

But in order to get from where I am now (inundated with projects) to where I want to be (see the previous paragraph) I would need to get ALL my non-essential projects finished up and out the door as quickly as possible.

In fact, I’m planning a trip with Ruhi back to the U.S. in August for 6 weeks.  And during that time I am really hoping to be able to enjoy myself and not be constantly stressed out about work.

So, my current focus is on getting everything done.  All my projects (except for those 2 clients).  And to do it all by the end of July.  For the sake of my future ability to train in wushu, I will sacrifice the following 3 – 4 months without any training so that I can clear out these obligations.

And this is why I haven’t been training very much lately.  I have been trying to focus on getting these things out of the way — on getting all of these projects finished and completed.  And to be honest I still have a long way to go.  I still have a lot of things on my plate that need clearing off.  So, for the time-being at least, you are still going to have a bit of silence with regards to my training in wushu.

I will still try to blog whenever possible, but for the next 2 months you will have to be patient with me while I work on taking care of a few loose ends so that, come the late summer months and in to the fall, you will be able to enjoy some high quality blogging and a lot more wushu videos and information for the coming year.

I was waiting until now to write about all of this because, right now I’m in Hong Kong and I just received my work visa for my new job teaching English at XISU.  Now that I am officially on my way towards the coming year’s plan to get my priorities re-aligned, I felt it was okay to share all of this with you guys out there in the blog-o-sphere.

So, there you have it.  To celebrate this, I finally posted up some of the videos I took at my last training with the Shaanxi Wushu Team back on May 15.  They were preparing for an upcoming Compulsory forms tournament and you can check out their forms here:

And finally, here is a wushu training vlog that I made when Qi Peng Hui invited me to eat at their cafeteria.  It was my first time there so I thought I would put it on video.  Enjoy!

Related posts:

1. Returning to Wushu: The 40 Year Old Version – Week 1
2. Returning to Wushu: The 40 Year Old Version – Week 2

This time around I opted for air travel, since I was a bit more pressed for time and train travel does take a bit of time.  Here are some photos of my early-morning flight from Xi’an to Guangzhou, as well as my bus trip to the Guangzhou East Train Station and the train trip from there to the Shenzhen border.  I actually took the train to Lo Wu, but since I was going to Jack’s it was much easier to take the Shenzhen subway to Lok Ma Chau (Futian) and cross there.  Then I could just catch a $10HKD bus straight to his front door.

Here are some pictures of that trip (By the way, all photos were taken courtesy of my new cell phone.  I didn’t bring any other camera with me to test if it was a good solution for trip blog photo taking – seems to have done the job decently … ):

Taxi to the Xi'an Airport

Xi'an Airport

Working at the airport

A view of Guangzhou from the bus

Lao Tai Tai's on the train to Shenzhen

Watch out!

Bus to Jack's

I arrived the day before Jack was leaving for the U.S. to attend a friend’s wedding so we went out to grab a bite to eat at “China Land”, a restaurant close to his home.

It was as hot as it looks

But the fun was short-lived since I had a lot of work to do at the North Point office where I would be stationed for most of my occupational duties.  While working there I thought it would be a good chance to experiment on different ways to make the commute from Tin Shui Wai to North Point.  The fastest ended up being the 969 bus to Sheung Shui (although it goes all the way to Causeway Bay) and then the MTR to Quarry Bay station.  Less than 90 minutes (for around $28HKD).

But by far the most pleasant way was to take the 269 bus to Hung Hom ferry pier and take the ferry across from there to North Point and walk a few blocks to the office, however it took the longest at just around 2 hours (for $25HKD).  The 269 bus is nice too because it also goes through TST, which is pretty convenient.

I took pictures of my various travel methods which you can check out here:

View of Causeway Bay from the bus

Western Tunnel Toll Booths

A few highlights from my trip were checking out a showing of Kick Ass with Khalil, Davina and Yuklan, spending the night in an office in TST while setting up a computer network (which I ended up having to re-do a few days later – ugh!), Checking out a super late showing of Iron Man 2 in Mongkok on my last night in Hong Kong, catching coffee with Ryan at Starbucks, eating dinner at a really fancy restaurant located in a clothing store, going computer equipment shopping in Wan Chai, and getting some great expense tracking software for my HTC Touch Pro 2.

Here are a few highlight photos from the rest of my time in Hong Kong:

Didn't get to see it -- waiting for English subs

Many levels of escalators!

Dan getting some Adidas swag

On my way back through Shenzhen I got my wallet picked from my pocket at the Futian Border crossing.  That would have sucked way worse if I actually had anything vital in there.  Just an ATM card for one of my Hong Kong banks and about $60HKD.  All of my vital stuff I keep in my travel belt wallet that goes securely under my shirt and pants waist.  So aside from some inconvenience it didn’t create any super horrible situations and I was able to make it to my subway / train / taxi / plane / bus back to Xi’an, where I arrived home, safe and sound, just an hour or two before Cinco de Mayo.

This will be my last trip to Hong Kong until at least sometime in June.  It will be nice to spend a bit longer at home, since I’m up to my neck in a backlog of work and tasks that need completing.

Some big news and information about my future plans on the horizon too, but it is still premature to talk about that, so for now you can just keep your eyes peeled for the post in the coming weeks.

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I picked up a 3G USB Wireless Modem at the DianZiGuangChang in Xi’an and signed up for a trial package to see how it works.  The 3G stick includes a slot for my 8GB MicroSD card too, so it acts both as a modem and a memory stick (8GB MicroSD was 115 RMB or around $20 USD).  The USB modem was 320 RMB and I signed up for 3 months of the lowest nation-wide access rate plan, which includes 60 hours of online 3G access each month up to downloads to 15GB.  If this proves to be helpful there are plans that allow for unlimited use.  I think the best deal was unlimited nation-wide use for 2800 RMB / year.  That comes down to around 200-something RMB / month, which is only around 100 RMB more than I’m paying for this plan.

Anyway, the plan is 100 RMB / month but you have to get a 3 month block.  So I paid 300 RMB for that.  Around 735 RMB all together.  Not too bad.  I have 3 months of 3G wireless access for a little more than $100 USD.

The other reason I got this was because next month (assuming this works well) I’m planning on attending the Duilian competition being held in Tianjin.  Yeah, it isn’t your normal wushu competition, but I feel bad about not attending this one so at least I can provide some interesting duilian footage from Tianjin.  I hope to Tweet from the competition too and if that works well, then you can be sure that, come Nationals in the fall, I will be there with my laptop giving you the up-to-the-minute play-by-play.  Will even try to post some pictures from the event too, if possible.  And even video, you ask?  Well, who knows?  That is entirely possible.

I’ll keep this short.  I have more stuff to blog that I’m a little behind on, but I’ll save that for when I am able to plug in my computer.

BTW, I’m putting together an FAQ here on wushuzilla so that all of the (constantly repeating) questions I get will be searchable through the website.  You can ask a question here if you want it included:

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