Short intro

Hi,
My name is Maija - yes, I could never come up with anything more witty, so I post as my own name (though y'all can call me Wielder of the Immortal Dragon Sword and Slayer of the 13 Demons of the Outer Planets if you like )
Been compelled to practice martial arts for over 20 years now. My 2 primary practices are Visayan Eskrima through Sonny Umpad, and Bagua Zhang under Luo De Xiu of Taiwan, also Hsing-I and Tai Chi, and for the last 2 or so years Toyama Ryu Battodo with Mike Esmialzadeh.
Walking around in circles makes me very happy, as do pointy metal objects, though I'm happy to make do with a stick or a cane if needs be.
There's some footage of what I do, along with some of my teachers, up on Youtube (along with every man and his dog!) so if you are interested my channel is: Rndmflw . I also wrote an article about the training method of our Eskrima system which comes up if you Wiki Sonny Umpad.
I'm very interested in learning more about combat in all it's forms, and consider The Book of 5 Rings a must read.
I have no fighting experience unless you count the 'altercation' I had with my (then) fiance's 60lb male dog who thought he was higher up than me in the pack. I'm happy to say I won that one.
Was not going to start posting on another forum, but then y'all started talking about motorbikes, another joy of mine, so thought I'd join in.
Looking forward to learning a bunch more stuff!
Maija.

Hi Maija

Great to have you on the forum mate. Thanks for joining in

I look forward to your posts

Cheers

Al

Maija

Thanks for signing up mate
Look forward to your posts

Craig

Welcome mate
mick x

Welcome Maija all the best mate.You mention Sonny Umpad saw some previews of his material on another forum very cool

Welcome to the Forum mate.

Dave.

Thanks for the warm welcome!
Looking forward to getting to know all of you, at least in the ether, and hopefully contributing something interesting also.
I vacillate between thinking there is way too much blah blah blah, to having a bunch of questions. From thinking everything is very simple and all the questions have already been answered, to realizing I know nothing at all compared to the sea of knowledge out there .....
Could be an interesting year :-)!

Hello Maija

Welcome to the forum...Nice knife collection!

Mike

Hi Mike,
Thanks ....and thanks!
Just FYI, all the blades in the picture are aluminium practice blades representing many of the different blade shapes found in the Philippines.
My teacher, Sonny Umpad, made them all by hand.
His friends and students would bring him scraps of metal (sometimes pilfered road signs!) and he would cut and shape the blades to his own design, and add the handles, which were made of anything from wood, to leather, to sawdust and super glue. Quite amazing really.
Even though they are not steel, they are all amazingly well balanced and a joy to work with, made in pairs for sparring and flow practice.