dear Santa,

For next year please make the trip to San Francisco possible.

thank you 🙂

And to all our JKD friends,  Merry Christmas !

Next week we would have been on a plane on our way to our beloved town but we could not make it this year.

I feel sad about it, I know how sunny and awesome the town is in november compared to what we have here.

We are of course already planning for the trip next year and we want to make it as soon as possible.

So Allen , Annie , Julie and  Jeff,  we´ll see you soon !

That is the plan this year in september, I really look forward to this even if I am sad I won´t be in San Francisco this year. I cannot really explain the fact that San Francisco has a so huge place in our hearts, there are many things that we love about the town itsef and its relation to Bruce, our friends and the history behind it. It will be interesting to see if we get a similar feeling from Seattle, I for sure look forward to be able to pay my respects to Bruce and Brandon I am sure this will be the peak of our trip.

Kee NG is Mikael´s  tea supplier she imports the finest tea from China, she asked for basic training for her son and she also organized a training place and a few other students, 6 kids totally , one girl and 5 boys around 10 years of age.

 We only went through the basic warm up and a little kick and punch training on pads as well as some footwork and statical training.

We had a talking time after that, I asked who knew who Bruce Lee was and one answer was “ is he the one in kung Fu Panda ? “ that was funny but also interesting, these kids are 10 years old and never heard about Bruce Lee before, the fact that they immediately associate him with martial Arts , in this case Kung Fu is pretty amazing to me. Jeremy was the one with most knowledge , he said “he was an actor who made a lot of cool fight movies” but again, he learned about Bruce Lee in a video game , also pretty amazing, it seems to me no matter what you do, how old you are, Bruce Lee is coming up almost everywhere, pretty cool.

 We were also asked to talk about respect and discipline and how should or should not martial arts be used.

I will explore this in another post

Thank you Kee for arranging this and thank you all the kids for being there.

See you next time!

My godson Louis visited me for a week, he had asked to try train with me so I did a quick  session at the beginning of the week; I went through the basic footwork and 3 punches, I did not go deep into the techniques for him to get a simple first basic overview.

I found him very interested and dedicated right at the beginning, 12 years old and no JKD knowledge whatsoever, he did better than some of the beginners I have seen during the years. I was very proud of him and the JKD question came back several times during his stay. He participated to a session with the group, he worked on drills with both Mikael and I and after we were done he asked when he could do that again 😆

When I asked him what was the best thing he had done during the week , his first answer was JKD.

I also showed him some of  Bruce, Mikael, Ted and Stefan´s videos on you tube, with his eyes wide open he asked me several times: “is that for real ?” 🙂

As a birthday present Mikael gave him his first mitts and gloves and I showed him what he needed to work on at home.  As he lives in France he is a long distance student but I am sure he will do well, we´ll see the progress when we are in France next time!

Wow there are a lot of angry people out there, angry with life, angry with people, angry with everything… I used to be one of them and what did that bring me? More negativity and the hole I was digging was getting deeper, so one day I decided to try to be happy, I chose to take what I had and make the best of it , life Is easier that way. There are battles that are not meant to taken, especially inner ones. Everyone has his own load of inside demons and some of us have been through hell, I am one of them but I could find the light and take myself out of self destruction. I moved away from a family drama, I live better now, moving to Sweden was probably the best thing I have ever done, the travel was not easy but it´s been 12 years and I learnt a lot to become a better person. JKD and all that it brought me on a personal level has a lot to do with my better balanced state of mind.

There are few famous people I admire aside from Bruce Lee, actually it is pretty simple there are 2, Michael Jackson and Bruce Springsteen.

I never had the chance to see Michael in concert and I deeply regret that because it will never happen but I have the chance to see Bruce Springsteen and this is why I never missed a concert in Sweden since 2006.

Just like Bruce Lee´s movies, I listened to Michael and Springsteen´s music more or less since I was born, these people are lasting forever,  this is one of the reasons why I admire them.

From what I counted, Bruce Springsteen wrote 202 songs that were recorded and numbers of songs that did not make it on albums, a career that started in 1962 and is still going on. In 2013 at 63, the man fills a Stockholm stadium with more than 55000 people two nights in a row, how many can do that after so many years?

I went to both concerts with Mikael who has seen more concerts than me ( !!! ),   I hope we can make it to the third one on saturday !

It was a nice surprise to learn that our movie star Coshe is back home for a while, we will have a special training session on Saturday night and hope Michel will join too.

It was a long time since we met our original students and especially now that the spring is coming we are happy to be able to increase the training opportunities and take some of it outside.

The winter is still here which is not normal for the season , it has been one of the hardest winter for me since I live here in Sweden, I have had a very hard time with the lack of light, a lot for sickness one after the other and not a very good state of mind either.

I feel better now, and it is because of the light, it is difficult to imagine for people who are not used to live in darkness 6 months a year but the impact it has on the mind is uncontrollable.

Now I see the positive aspect of what is coming and I feel better, I need my training, it is always the same story nothing new here, I really don´t know what my life would be without JKD. For The mind and body, there is just a need, it is hard to explain it is a feeling and I think anyone practicing understands it.

So we are making plans for the spring training and  we also have plans for next winter, I can´t say I am too happy that our trip to San Francisco has to be in November. I think it is too far away, I long to go back there, to meet Allen and Annie and Jeff and Julie but there is no choice regarding which week it will be because the prices are doubled any other week of the year. Seeing the positive aspect, it is better than nothing ! So on Monday we will book it.

wow ? I mean boo!  sometimes it feels good and sometimes it does not. Training has its ups and downs, how to accpet it is another story.

I felt bad yesterday at some point I even thought than some people up there  must not be very proud right now!

Then Mikael cheered me up:  ” see the bright side,  it can only be better ” , hm that also means it can´t be worse ?! 🙂

But seriously I have had bad days before who hasn´t , it is done now so I am focusing my energy to next time and it will be better!

This is the first post of the year , I wish this new year to be full of adventures and training.

My Chinese horoscope is Ok this year, I am a rat and rats are apparently smart, I will have a OK year,  not too good but not bad,  if I behave! 🙂 Last year it said I would have health problems and I had so let´s  hope I am out of this path now.

About my plans for this year, I want to be healthy and able to train,  then I will be in balance,  this is my wish for this year.

Tomorrow will be the first training of the year with Mikael, 2013  let´s go !