CITIZEN

The story begins on the morning of Saturday the 8th of July 2006. I wake early to finish the latest update to www.stillflying.net and upload it. None of which quite goes to plan. The update takes much longer than planned, with more needing to be done than I thought and those updates taking longer and being harder to implement than expected. But finally it is done and the site is ready for upload, ten minutes before I have to leave the house in order to drive to Portsmouth harbour to catch my ferry to the Isle of Wight. I upload it to the testing server and it works perfectly. ‘Great’, I think before deleting the old sites files and uploading the new ones. I navigate to the URL to expecting to see the website in all its glory, only all I see is a loooong list of php error messages. Five minutes until I have to leave. I go through the error messages and it’s apparent that the site can’t find any of it’s include files, despite the fact it’s looking in the right place and they are all there. I search I look I scream I shout I beg I plead and then I change the single variable that reads “/sandbox/” to “/” and re-upload and everything suddenly works fine. I send those last emails, shutdown the computer, finish throwing my cloths in a bag (missing some that I end up needing) and throw everything in the car. Off on the road again to Portsmouth through sun, traffic and jam. I arrive, just in time, just over half an hour before the sailing, so naturally I had a 45 minute wait before I could even board the ferry. The bonus is that I managed to be the first off the ferry, and despite my GPS telling me to turn left when it meant right I arrived at the caravan park which was to be my home for the next week. I unpack, attend the group meeting and then go for a beer at the bizarre little ‘Family Fun Club’ which has some sort of Cabaret one man Karaoke act being performed by the campest man never to have appeared in a Carry On Film. So the first day comes to an end with a late night of beer, TV and badly cooked sausage casserole, how better to start a week of intensive Kung Fu training? I’m here for a weeks Kung Fu training for the style I am a student of, Nam Yang Tiger Crane combination Kung Fu. Nam Yang originated in the Fukkien province of China, and is a combination (as the name suggests) of the Tiger and White Crane styles of Kung Fu. The Tiger style is a very strong style, and is where the twisting punch that is a hallmark of Shaolin marshal arts comes from. The Tiger is beatable though by the Monkey, Monkey style Kung Fu uses weaker attacks but combines them with fast approaches and retreats that prevent the Tiger from attacking, in this way the Monkey can defeat the Tiger by constant attacks without receiving a hit. Which is where the White Crane comes in, the Crane sticks to it’s opponent, thus when the Monkey attacks the Crane stays with it while the Monkey tries to retreat, and waits for the opportunity to strike. In Tiger Crane combination the ability of the White Crane to stay with an opponent and the strength of the Tiger are combined to produce a strong style that can stay with and attack even the Monkey. I look at the training schedule, 6 full days, Sunday to Friday each day split into 4 sessions, the first starting at 8:30am and the last finishing at 7:00pm. The only exceptions are Wednesday (1:30pm finish) and Friday (5:00pm finish followed by a demonstration), it’s going to be a tiring week. The training starts early at 8:30am on Sunday the 9th of July 2006, that is the day is [u]supposed[/u] to start early at 8:30am. In defiance to the expected weather and the roaring Sun of Saturday the day begins cloudy, overcast and with a good sheet of rain in case no one knew that it wasn’t a very nice day. We wait an hour. It continues to rain. It’s beginning to look like the script to a bad Carry On Kung Fu film, well we do have the overtly camp guy. After a general meeting we decide to wait another hour, after which the weather clears up and we can make our way down to a field to start the

CITIZEN

Wednesday is a half day, and also marks the beyond half point of the week, which is bad. We start in the morning with Qigong and go over some of the simple Tai Chi forms in the morning, and the later session is fitness and sparring. As with the previous day I had to go back to the nurse for dressings, where I found the old dressings had slipped (obviously nothing to do with the sparring matches…) causing the Micropore tape to stick to the burnt flesh. Thus when the old dressings were removed half my arm went with them, something that is quite painful, and something I don’t recommend to anyone else. After wincing my way away from the medical centre I decide to meet a number of other members of my club at the beach where we just generally sat around and some of us tried to learn to speak seagull. All we seemed to manage to do was spark a war between Seagulls and Ravens (seriously they even called in reinforcements). I guess this goes to prove that you shouldn’t use Kung Fu students to broker your bird peace treaties, especially between war hawks. Unfortunately I missed the evening’s entertainment because I was teaching an American student the finer points of British humour, namely the works of Monty Python. The entertainment to which I speak was at a nearby pub where some guy had taken it upon himself to tell a group of Kung Fu instructors and students that he could kill them with his finger, leading to predictably humours results as he attempted to prove it on one of the Singapore instructors, who predictably brushed him aside with ease. Thursday was another day of Kung Fu, but also the day we decided to go out for a meal after training. So the whole group went into town, and where else would a group of Kung Fu students go? That’s right we went to a Chinese restaurant. The food was great, the beer was great, if expensive (£5 a pint, ouch) and they tried to stiff us on the bill. For instance there were eleven people on one table, several of which didn’t drink and the restaurant tried to charge them for 46 bottles of Chinese beer, a quantity that would have surely lost them the use of their legs. In short if you’re ever in Sandown in the Isle of Wight and decide to eat at the Royal China restaurant, good food, good drink, read your bill very carefully. Then on to a pub so I can show off my extreme (lack of) Pool skills. I lose, naturally and that marks the end of the second to last day. So Friday, the last day of training and as such it’s quite bittersweet. The training is much the same as the other days until the afternoon, when we decide what we are to do for the demonstration later. I’m down for the Tet Bey Sum Chien (The Shuffling Three Wars) one of the fundamental routines. It’s a relatively simple routine; the only problem is that I was doing it with another person and we had to be in synch, and we only had half an hour to practice. But in the end it all comes off alright and no one notices my poor performance of the routine… There’s also the ubiquitous Lion dance which is one of my favourites, and the breaking really hard stuff with bare hands thing. One of the instructors proved you need to be thick skulled in this game by breaking a stack of roofing tiles with his head, and the youngest member of the group (and reining junior champion) broke a house brick in half with a palm strike. Of course there was also the guy getting hit with an axe, always a crowd pleaser. So that’s it, my Martial Arts week is over and I will soon be returning to work, hateful boring predictable routine work. We eat the remainder of the food, collect what’s left of the drink and begin the end of the week party, predictably filled with all the substances a pagan temple needs. It’s a good night that leaves me comatose, yet thankfully without hangover the following morning as I finish my packing and prepare to leave. With my car packed and the behaviour bond returned I leave, making the solemn journey back to Fishbourne where I shall catch another (late running) Ferry to Portsmouth and the mainland. I arrive too early

JORJAREYNOLDS

Ok hi everyone these are some pictures of 3 of my 7 miniature horses I own.

RIVERISMYGODDESS

If you haven't read it, my

LONEWOLF7

Yeah, sorry for the break in writing. I logged in about 80-some-odd hours of work between Monday and Sunday, so the first things on my mind were shower, food, and bed, and the last thing on my mind was writing. Friends Among Enemies (chapter 1) will be posted this week, and I should be getting back into the swing of things (hey, I got a season to finish and a movie to write!) Stay tuned...

RECO

Hello, thank you for the words which all of you worte!!! you guys are all great and i hope like hell that there will be more stories. Everything about the series and movie are great. The world which Joss created is a world that i think we can all see being real. this could be us in 500 years!! As Nathan said "this is us, we have the same problems....Only spread over more planets" This site is one of the best one i have ever been too. i would find myself looking at this site at least 20 times a day just to make sure that i have not missed a new post of my favourite fanfic. In my last Blog (which was my first!!) i said that i was leaving this site because i could not stand thinking of the show without any new stories. but you guys are right!!! this site is truly worth being apart of. Thanks "You hold!!!"

STEAMER

And more. And more. Don't know what's going on in my unconscious mind. Frankly, don't care. Some of these dreams have turned into nice fluffy plot bunnies, and....bittersweet though it is, they have caused a rift in my affections. Well, first the plot bunny. The dream I had the other night was post-BDM. Most of it was pretty vague, but I think some Independent extremists had approached Mal and Zoe wanting them to lead a renewed assault against the Alliance - basically restarting the war. Neither of them was particularly keen on the idea, but the extremists were persuasive. So eventually they kidnapped River. Bad move. This part I remember unmistakably. We all went in - me, too; guns blazing a la War Stories. Mal was freakin' pissed, but do you expect anything else? Jayne was having the time of his life, but...well, yeah. Jayne. Have to say the resistance didn't waste any time crumbling since they weren't expecting us. Eventually Mal and I split off and burst into that good ol' pitch-black, sparsely furnished room where they like to keep prisoners. And indeed, there was poor little River trussed up and lying on the nasty concrete floor waiting for us. I was miffed to say the least - however it didn't hold me from making a mad dash over, giving her a hug and cutting her loose. And thus we were out of the frying pan and into the fire; namely, Mal's final showdown with the big guy. Numerous words were exchanged about loyalty, sacrifice, misery and destruction before Mal finally had enough and blasted the guy in the gut. Got no positive answers to his question about whether anybody had a problem with that. That's all she wrote - except for one more bout of tonsil hockey between me and River............ I love those dreams. :wink: