Red mist, purple dawns

An 'incident' occured during training the other night that I did not really want to mention, and, now that I've had a few days to calm down and reflect on matters, it's better not to give the details, but suffice to say it led to me having a major hissy fit in class with one of my training partners.
I want to repair any damage between him and I and move on. I should add that in my many years of doing martial arts, I have very rarely seen flare-ups between two people in a class. It has happened but it's all usually handbags at dawn and after short while, the two usually kiss and make up...and then proceed to the usual routine of legally killing each other during sparring. I don't want to the be the jerk who moans and has a tantrum each time so I'll be on my best behaviour. All's fair in love and war after all.
Mind you, it did remind of one incident about 5 years ago when a fellow white belt found it funny to continually land his knee into my ribs during sparring. I got so mad I went a bit mental and nearly choked him into hell and back. But I didn't because (a) my technique sucked and (b) my technique sucked. Oh well some things don't ever change.

Roy Dean
Other than that, I was going to say my training has been going really well. I'm really trying to engage techniques in combinations of 2's and (admittedly rarely) 3's just like Roy Dean said a purple belt should be doing in his new DVD (Roy Dean, purple belt requirements).

You can read a very thorough review of this video on Slidey's blog here.

Without wishing to make any crass presumptions, but at 4-stripe blue belt, I guess I should be thinking ahead at what it is I should be doing when I am a purple belt. Roy Dean's DVD explains his take on the subject - and very enlightening it is to. I love watching Dean's elegant style. He's very up front and honest. He'll happily talk about his losses as well as his wins - all in the name of helping YOU, ie me the punter learn something valuable. On the disc, he shows lots of examples of him rolling with his students. You can clearly see the difference between how white and blue belts roll and how purple, brown and black belts do it. It's not about how many techniques they know, but in the timing and tactical chess that goes on at the higher level. It's marvellous to watch. If Roy makes it to the UK again, I would really love to attend one of his seminars.

And finally...
I had a little spare time so I redesigned my Meerkatsu banner picture. Bye bye mock-Kill Bill, hello mock-Streetfighter pastiche! Hope Capcom don't sue my ass.