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the-master-cylinder · 4 years

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SUMMARY Beautiful bookseller Virginia (Jenny Wright) fosters a growing interest in the works of reclusive novelist Malcolm Brand (Randall William Cook). After much fruitless searching, Virginia finally receives a package containing Brand’s recent book, “I, Madman,” about a deranged doctor spurned by a beautiful woman. But, as Virginia devours Brand’s latest offering, she begins to have chilling visions of characters from the book — and the line between fiction and reality grows terrifyingly thin.

DEVELOPMENT/PRODUCTION This is David Chaskin’s second horror film for distributor Trans World Entertainment; the first, The Curse, directed by actor David Keith. Moshe Diamant, head of Trans World, approached Chaskin with his concept for I, Madman (a.k.a. Hardcover) while The Curse was in postproduction. Chaskin wrote two drafts of the screenplay and Rafael Eisenman was brought in to produce. Takacs had been offered many projects in the wake of The Gate’s success, but chose I, Madman. “It was the most interesting script I read,” Takacs says. “I was really attracted by the idea of experiencing danger in a safe environment. There’s a cozy feeling you get when you sit down to read a good horror story. You say, ‘This is gonna be good,’ like watching an old Twilight Zone episode. There’s a certain feeling of familiarity, but then the story goes more and more into left field. It’s the power of imagination. Does it really matter that you’re frightened in your dreams? Is it real because it felt real to you?”

Both Chaskin and Eisenman have high praise for Takacs. “It was not a typical director-producer relationship,” marvels Eisenman. “It was almost like a student film-not in the level of the production, but in the spirit of the filmmaking.”

“There is no comparison for me between The Curse and I, Madman,” Chaskin remarks. “I, Madman was a delight. I was involved from the beginning right through postproduction. The project had a guiding intelligence behind it, from the director, the producers and the actors. They all shared the same creative sense about the film.”

Eisenman’s background includes directing commercials and music videos, so he is sympathetic to the director’s job. “I support the director as much as possible,” he reasons. “It’s a writer’s film first, but once it goes into the director’s hands, it’s the director’s film. I protect him from anything that interferes with the creative process.”

The nightmarish horror in I, Madman will inevitably prompt comparisons between Freddy Krueger and Malcolm Brand. “They’re both complex characters,” comments Chaskin. “They both have twisted agendas, although Malcolm is a far more complicated character than Freddy. I tend to view Malcolm as a more classical monster, more stylized, less like Freddy and Jason and more like the Phantom of the Opera. I like to think of him as a character that Lon Chaney would have relished playing, a classical character in a 1980s frame.”

Production began on I, Madman in November 1987 in Los Angeles, and principal photography wrapped the following January. “The main problem, production-wise,” confides Eisenman, “was taking the limited amount of money we had and getting the most value I could on the screen with the cinematography and the special effects. It was a very tricky thing to do, but we had some great people on the crew. The cameraman, Bryan England, studies the old masters like George Folsey, who shot Forbidden Planet and Animal Crackers. He hangs around with these guys, takes them out to lunch. He has a tendency to go into their classic style.’

“I know Trans World is pleased with it,” declares the producer. “We had the most incredible creative freedom on this film. There was no intervention from them. We ended up with the director’s cut, which is rare. I had input, but I never forced my ideas on Tibor. I’d argue until I’d either convinced him or not.”

Chaskin is happy with the picture. “I was at rehearsals, polishing and making dialogue changes to fit the actors, and even in postproduction we were looping new lines,” he marvels. “I was privy to the whole process. It was probably the best experience a writer could have, short of directing the film himself.”

Producer Eisenman, meanwhile, hopes to work with Takacs and Chaskin in the near future. “It was a very good team,” he testifies. “I’ve never had anything like that and I don’t know that I ever will. That’s why we’re talking about doing something together again with Tibor and David.”

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SPECIAL EFFECTS Similarly, FX technician Randy Cook, who had worked on The Gate and designed the animated “dogs” in Ghostbusters, is influenced by model animation great Ray Harryhausen. Eisenman reports, “When Randy told Ray Harryhausen what he was going to do in I, Madman, Ray said, ‘It’s not possible.’ Randy proved his technique as he went along, and when he showed the film to Harryhausen, he was very impressed.”

Cook also delivers a bravura performance as the malevolent Malcolm. “It was something that Randy always wanted to do,” grins Takacs. “To entice him to work on this low-budget movie, I had to come up with something!” It’s fitting that the interview should take place on Halloween, one of Cook’s favorite holidays. (“I’d go out trick-or treating tonight, if I thought I could get away with it,” he said.) Ever since the age of 12, How did he get the job as the titular character in I, MADMAN? Cook smiled knowingly. “I could give you any number of hyperbolic interpretations that I was the best man for the part, that they couldn’t have done it without me, and so on. But the fact is, I got the job through sheer extortion. I said to Tibor, If you want me to do the special effects, let me play a part in the movie.’ Tibor asked, ‘Which part do you want to play?”The villain, of course,’ I said. Simple as that.”

Genre fans will find I, MADMAN of particular interest due to the fact that Cook, the actor, is killed by a creature that Cook, the effects supervisor, designed. At the end of the film, Brand does battle with a stop-motion character referred to by Cook as the “Jackal Boy” (a pint-size character from “Much of Madness, Much of Sin”)—a “horrid, tormented character, made miserable by his misbegotten parentage,” Cook explained. (The doctor combines his sperm with the ovum of a jackal-thus the creature’s name.)

Cook eventually expanded the fight sequence-which takes place in the attic of the bookstore where Virginia works-when it was decided to make more prominent use of the Jackal Boy. “I wanted to make their fight somewhat less perfunctory, something more of a miniature set piece,” said Cook. “So I tried to orchestrate the scene the way one would do a live-action fight within certain limitations based on the fact that we were using one character that existed and one that didn’t. There’s a lot of biting, tussling and scratching between us–I even used a stop-motion puppet of myself in certain shots. We tried to construct a fight that people would talk about.”

Working on the film both as an actor and a special effects technician meant that it was often necessary for Cook to be on both sides of the camera. “It was a really busy shoot,” he said, his weary expression mirroring the exhaustion he experienced during his multiple 14 hour days on the set. “We not only had to shoot the live-action plates, but I had to be in the plates and check them on video playback to make sure I was in the right place in the frame-as well as tell the other actors what they were supposed to be reacting to. It was just me and Jenny and Clayton, and a bunch of air that would later be filled with a creature.”

Because he likes expressionistic compositions, Cook changed the setting of the scene to a bookstore warehouse with an open-beam ceiling. Originally the scene was to have the Jackal Boy on top of a bookcase. “Arguably, it would have been more metaphorical, but it wasn’t nearly as visually evocative as putting him up in the rafters,” said Cook. Elsewhere the Jackal Boy will be used in two very short scenes at the beginning of the film both done through suggestion, so as to save the actual look of the creature until the climax.

The effects were prepped and shot over “a grueling six week period” in November December of 1987 at Ruckus, by I, MADMAN’s director of photography, Brian England (who will also be shooting THE GATE II). Cook’s crew consisted of his chief assistant, Fumi Mashimi (who constructed most of the Brand miniature animation puppet. Cook did the sculpting), Bill Bryan (the Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man in GHOSTBUSTERS, helped sculpt the prosthetics for Cook’s makeup) and Gil Mosko, who ran foam for the shop. In addition to the 15 inch-tall articulated model of the Jackal Boy (a foam-rubber construction over a tooled metal armature), Cook designed and sculpted a cable-controlled closeup head with eye, brow, lip and tongue movement.

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Cook didn’t seem particularly interested in discussing the gruesome makeup he devised for his Dr. Brand character, so he whipped out a photo album-titled “Randy’s Hair Cut”—to do most of the talking for him. “I came up with the perfect way to do a bald cap,” he explained. “I shaved my head.” To be precise, makeup effects artist (and friend) Craig Reardon played barber for the shearing, and Cook took a razor to his scalp to obtain the final billiard ball look.

The degenerative makeup for Brand was done in five stages (which Cook humorously described as “a subtle augmentation of progressive male-pattern baldness and organ-rejection syndrome”). It was created using face casts, prosthetics and the like. “I’m not remotely interested in presenting a textbook version of decaying tissue, “Cook said. “I’m more interested in finding a way to dramatically illustrate the degeneration of the character in physical, concrete terms. The makeup needs to work metaphorically as well as theatrically.”

Cook and crew worked about a week longer than they had planned-which meant extra post-production shooting and more time spent by Cook in makeup. “As so often happens when you’re shooting in a locale unfit for human habitation, I got sick-I got the flu that was going around. Everyone else got very green and sickly looking; I got green and sickly looking under two inches of green and sickly looking makeup. I couldn’t get the pity that the other people were getting. The crew would come up to me and say, ‘The makeup looks real good tonight.” Cook’s long hours under makeup-23 days, 12 of them consecutive-eventually took their toll. “I didn’t have any face left after the shooting was over,” he recalled. “The skin around my eyes was like jelly. And the bitch was, I couldn’t sue the makeup man.”

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CAST/CREW Directed by Tibor Takács Produced by Rafael Eisenman Written by David Chaskin Jenny Wright … Virginia Clayton Rohner … Richard Randall William Cook … Dr. Alan Kessler/ Malcolm Brand Stephanie Hodge … Mona

CREDITS/REFERENCES/SOURCES/BIBLIOGRAPHY Cinefantastique v19 Fangoria#80

I, Madman (1989) Retrospective SUMMARY Beautiful bookseller Virginia (Jenny Wright) fosters a growing interest in the works of reclusive novelist Malcolm Brand (Randall William Cook).

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heleftnowwhat · 5 years

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I haven’t written in a while. I have had some repeat doggy clients so I wanted to wait for a new one to write about.

OMG, I just had a my tiniest guest today. Diego is a 10 week old, 3lb Beagle/Chihuahua mix. This was his first visit and he did very well. I assumed that he would play for an hour and sleep for an hour and I was correct. I took him out every 60-90 mins to go potty, which he did. All and all, a great first visit. I believe that he will be coming back, YAY!!

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Like I said, I have had some repeat clients….here they are…

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Also, A friend and I went back to PA for a weekend in Sept. We joined my sister’s team, to walk and to raise money and awareness of Melanoma. It was fun and very successful. I am excited to say that my sister has had her 12th and final treatment and all looks good now. She is so strong. This is her story…..

My Melanoma Madness Family history: none Number of full skin checks I had through my life: zero Melanoma type: Acral Lentiginous (subungual) the most common in Asian, Hispanic and African American races. Of which I am not. This type of melanoma makes up less than 5% of all melanomas. Melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer. Timeline: Years and years ago I got a mole on the cuticle line of my left big toe. It was fine. Appeared normal. I thought it odd to get a mole on my toe, but I was not concerned. Fast forward to sometime in late 2017-ish I notice I have what I think is a blood blister. It’s near or on or around the “mole”. So I google blood blister on toe. Because who googles toe cancer??? I go several months until having it looked at.

May 2018: I’m in my 3 month diabetes check appointment with my Doc and at the end of appointment, I ask him to look at my toe. He glances at it and tells me it’s ugly and I should cover it for a week and if it doesn’t improve I should go see a podiatrist. Ok!!! Sounds easy. So I do what he tells me and it seems to start to dry up so I don’t go to the podiatrist.

September 17th 2018: Ok, I give!!! Made an appointment with the podiatrist because it seemed to get worse again. I go in, sit down and show him my “blood blister”. Instantly he tells me it is a wart. Oh! I ask if warts oozed and bled. He shook his head and told me no and that he wanted to biopsy it to see what kind of wart it was so he knew what type of antibiotic he may need to prescribe. OUCH. That kind of hurt. But ok! The results will be in in 7-10 days. Thanks doc. So, because I’m impatient, I go buy a wart freezing kit and try to freeze the little bitch off. HOLY CRAP. OUCH IS AN UNDERSTATEMENT. And it obviously wasn’t even worth the pain. Tic tock…. tic tock September 28th (10 business days later): I call the office to ask about results. I am told there are none. Sometimes these things could take up to a month they say. Of course, I argued that and said that the doctor told me 7 to 10 business days. They shrug and say they hope it’ll be in next week. HOPE?????? Mind you, I struggle with anxiety and unknown things are huge a trigger for me. Ok. Sigh.

October 5th 2018: Ring ring. Hi, this is Stephanie Heart. Calling to see if results are in. Nope. What the hell????? Ok. This is science. Deep breaths. October 17th 2018: Cell phone rings. I’m in middle of something and can’t answer my phone. Voice mail says: “ hello this message is for Dr. B…, this is so-and-so from the pathology lab in Maryland and I need to speak with you directly about one of your patient’s biopsies” UMMMMM….. what the hell? Now I’m freaked out. So of course I call back and leave a message. No response. Text— no response. Call doctors office and leave urgent message with answering service. Call doctors office again first thing in morning and start pushing. Hard. Turns out the initial abnormal results were in a couple weeks ago and lab was doing further testing. WHICH NOONE INFORMED ME OF. The lab certainly broke some rules by accidentally calling me directly. They say they will have doctor call me. 15 min later he does. Tells me same story. Says he is trying to get in touch with pathology lab and will get the results for me and I can pick them up in office tomorrow. Ok. Fine. Instantly google cancer on toe, because why else would a lab be trying to reach the doc?

October 18th (my cancerversary, I guess) I arrive at the office and go to desk and say I’m here to see the doctor about my results. They tell me he gave us this for you and hand me a sealed envelope. Um. Alright. I leave office and am in lobby. Remember, I’m impatient. So I open envelope while alone in the lobby. And all I see is MALIGNANT MELANOMA and I am alone. Frozen. Oh. Also a note with a referral to a dermatologist. That bastard let me read that alone. Ok. Now it’s a search and destroy mission. I immediately call this dermatologist and fax over results while I am on the phone. While scheduling the appointment with the receptionist, she asked me to hold on and out of nowhere this doctor gets on the phone. He tells me that he would gladly see me, however, he would be telling me immediately to get to a surgeon at Fox Chase Cancer Center and gave me the name. He told me that this was a deep tumor and it would have to be removed. Holy shit. This is serious. Like WAY serious. My fingers instantly started dialing the number to the doctor he referred me to. They were amazing on the phone while I cried and they got me set up for an appointment with the chief of surgery in less than a week. Begin massive anxiety attacks. Google. Bing. Explorer. Knowledge is power.

October 25th, 2018 Appointment with surgeon. The guy who saved my life. Tells me that the depth on the report puts me at a stage 2. Which means they remove it and then do a sentinel lymph node biopsy to check the nearest lymph node to see if it spread. But only 20% chance it would have. And then he tells me that to remove it, they have to amputate the top half of my big toe. Wait. WHAT??? Alligator tears begin flowing. Sends me on my way to schedule surgery.

November 2, 2018 Surgery day. Maybe after today I won’t have cancer anymore. Ativan on board I head to the hospital with my army. Long day of waiting and tests. Blood work. They do the injection for sentinel lymph node biopsy. Waiting and scans. Then it’s time to head back. I don’t remember any of it. Wake up. Foot is wrapped and I have a nerve block. They said they were sure they got clean margins. So as long as lymph node comes back clean, I would be cancer free! Remember only 20% chance of the lymph node being malignant. They send me home same day with healing instructions and tell me results will be in in 7-10 days. I’ve heard this before. Anxiety is in high overdrive. My family and friends took amazing care of me. But in the midst of this I told the boyfriend to take a hike. Zero empathy and he couldnt understand my fuss. It was only a toe. Not even a whole toe. It wasn’t like it was a boob or a lung. I’m sorry…. you’re out of my circle now. Piss off.

1 week later: Still no results. Tic tock. All I can think of is just getting back to work and I did. I work from home so was able to do some work and elevate.

About 12 days post op: Guess who is in the 20%???? Of course I am. Worst news I could have gotten. I now have stage 3 melanoma. Stage 3. Are you kidding me? You have to be. Now what? Time to have a PET scan of my entire body to see if it has spread anywhere. This would place me at stage 4. Thank goodness, it had not spread. I remain stage 3, but now I have to face a year of immunotherapy treatment with CT scans, skin checks, MRIs, ultrasounds and a slew of other tests every 3 months or so.

November 28 First meeting with medical oncologist. He details the plan of action to do everything we can to make sure the beast stays away. Melanoma is really sneaky and can just show up anytime anywhere. Sigh. A lifetime of anxiety. There is no cure. We set up the treatment plan.

December 5,2018 Treatment day. Lab work first to see if my body can handle it. Meet with oncologist again. Then head to the infusion room. Walk in and there are a ton of cancer patients in their chairs hooked up to IVs. Not gonna lie. It was scary and I couldn’t believe I was there. They begin the infusion after mixing the medicine. They have to wait for doc approval for this as they bill my insurance company $115,000 a month for this drug. Yes, the comma is in the right place. Infusion begins. And ends just as fast. Only about 30 min. And they send me home. Almost instantly, my entire body is hot and so itchy. A normal side effect. Any type of “itis” is. I’ll take that over chemo though. The itch continued for 2 months. My first 2 treatments.

Wash rinse repeat. I just completed my 6th of 12 treatments. I’ve had some scans and skin checks in between. So far…. I am FREE of cancer. We call this NED. No evidence of disease. And we celebrate this.

A few things I have learned: Not all melanoma comes from the sun, but most does. Mine didn’t. I am now susceptible to any and all skin cancers as well as having an increased risk of developing other types. I must be diligent with protecting myself from the sun. When in doubt, get it checked. Schedule yearly dermatology appointments. ADVOCATE for yourself for fast treatment and diagnosis. You are never too busy to take care of your health. In times of crisis you really learn who your true circle of people are. Mine is huge and I am truly blessed.

I am so thankful for the care I have received and continue to receive from everyone at Fox Chase Cancer Center. They literally have saved my life.

I still struggle with anxiety and depression and some pain and swelling. But I’m managing it by staying informed and positive and laughing at things. That’s how I deal. Gotta laugh. My side effects haven’t been horrible from treatment. I hope that my story can help at least one person to get help if needed. Early detection is KEY to surviving melanoma.

I am a melanoma warrior. A survivor. And I plan on keeping it that way.

GET CHECKED PEOPLE!!!

Doggy Guest #30 Diego and more I haven't written in a while. I have had some repeat doggy clients so I wanted to wait for a new one to write about.

#Acral Lentiginous (subungual)#cancer #dogboarding #doggydaycare #dogs #dogsitting #LynnesDoggyBnB #Melanoma

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weownthenitenyc · 5 years

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Reinier Zonneveld talks Church of Clubmusic, Filth on Acid, live improvisation and what sets him apart.

The exceeding gifted Dutch musician, DJ and producer kick-starts a busy tour season in support of his third and most notable album to date “Church of Clubmusic,” is scheduled to perform live, playing only his music except for some remixes at Thuishaven — Amsterdam. Followed by a two-day appearance at next month’s, Drumcode Festival in his hometown. Before embarking on the “Filth on Acid” label worldwide tour, Reinier will host his label’s showcase at ADE, where he will play live for 12 hours.

Hello Reinier! Thank you for making some time to speak to us!

For our readers who aren’t familiar with your music, can you tell us a little bit about your path to becoming an artist?

I started playing piano when I was 3. I’ve been basically listening and playing around with music my whole life. When I was around 10 years, I got my hands on a copy of Reason 1, and in the beginning of course had no idea how it worked. But with playing around with the functions which I really liked, I began to make some recordings. This was all just on the side as a hobby, but when I went to my first real techno party when I moved out of my parents house, I was 16 or just 17, I knew that that was what I wanted to do. The very next day I started working on it, and since then I’ve been producing and playing techno (and sometimes other electronic music styles to keep it diverse). I used to play a lot of illegal raves all around the Netherlands, and from time to time official gigs at clubs and festivals. By 2011 I did my first release, and in 2015 my music got played by a lot of the biggest names in the scene; Carl Cox, Adam Beyer, Richie Hawtin, etc. In 2016 I released a record “Rushchamber” which included “Sharp Bust” on Oliver Koletzki’s Stil vor Talent. Suddenly I made the step from sporadious gigs to touring full time, and I’ve been touring ever since.

Some of your work marries your classical background with detailed elements. How much experimentation does it take to create that balance…or do you just manage to do it instinctively?

I think this came as a result of playing (and writing) classical music, these influences will always come out one way or another. To get it right is another thing, I spend a lot of time trying things and also thinking about how you can combine melodies on the foreground with something that also bangs on a dance floor.

You recently released your third album “Church of Clubmusic.” What’s different this time? How has your process changed, if at all?

My first album, Reverse Psychology was very much focused around hypnotic / experimental techno and ambient. My second album Megacity Servant was build around melodic techno with some tech house influences. For my third album “Church of Clubmusic” I really wanted to showcase a more diverse album, that takes the listener on a trip and showcases the many electronic styles I love to produce. Something very suited for home listening, while also having tracks on it that work good in clubs and festivals. I included reworks of tracks that I made over 10 years ago, but also fresh cuts from half a year old.

On the most notable track on Church of Clubmusic…

I think that ‘Hard Gaan’ is definitely the highlight. It once started as a live improvisation in a dark club in Berlin, somewhere in the morning at the end of 2016. I suddenly turned the BPM up to 145 during my set, put an extreme distortion on the kick drum, and played the sequence of the track from a synthesizer. People started asking me at every show if I would do the crazy thing they heard or saw online from that night. And it happened that every show I did a completely live variation of just that. The track evolved and every version was different. Then at Awakenings festival in 2017 I closed the set with it, and it completely blew up the crowd (this video went viral online and is seen by tens of millions of people now) and decided to give it a name: ‘Hard Gaan’ — which means literally going hard.

On how Filth on Acid started…

Together with my very good friend Axel (who is now also my manager), we were always talking about how we would like to start a label. We got the idea for the name from a track we did together back in 2014 (Reinier Zonneveld & Axan — Filth on Acid). Axel focuses mostly on the backside of the label, but we always discuss all the ideas and plans we have together. The A&R I always do by myself alone, I like to have full control over the music we release. We knew one thing for sure: no compromises on quality, put in maximum effort and try to get people and other artists involved into the sound I was doing. No compromises for us for example means that all our cover art is hand drawn by a dedicated artist, for every single release. In the beginning this approach was a bit stressful, since a label only costs money until you stream / sell a lot of music, and especially so if you want to everything the best as we could. We invested all our savings in it. Then we’re super happy to see immediately from the first release on super good support from artists and the audience on what we were doing, and I could invite some of my favorite artists to do a release together or solo, with as the big highlight the collaborations with Carl Cox; last year Inferno and this year a 3 track EP in June that is released on 28 June.

Can you name some notable artists on your radar right now? What draws you to their work?

I really love what Mees Salomé is doing. For me he is one of the producers in the electronic scene with the best feeling for melody; the perfect balance between emotion and danceable music. The music can really grab you, while at the same time exploding a dance floor at a club and festival.

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Your music is usually a melting pot of genres, do you have a vision for the final product when you start, or do you discover it during the process?

Usually I start a track when I already have an idea in my head. This could be a melody, a sound, a rhythm. Whenever I get an idea like that I record it on my phone (imagine me singing a techno track in a full airplane at 8AM) or better; I take out my laptop or quickly go to my studio to start sketching out the main ideas of the track. This doesn’t have to be techno, if I get a nice idea for a hip-hop track or an ambient piece I would do the same.

What did you learn while making ‘Church of Clubmusic?’

I really learned to think more about track order and storytelling with a lot of tracks combined. Instead of just putting the most popular tracks on top (which is often done with regular club EPs), for an album you really have to think about the path a listener takes through your music.

Arguably, there are a lot of producers in the scene. Your work, however, always stands out to me. How do you feel you’ve been able to create a unique “sound” and style with your body of work over the years? What sets “Reinier Zonneveld” apart?

Thank you! In the past I used to hear from a lot of people that I should focus on fitting my music into a certain sound of a label. I tried to do this, but it killed my creativity. At some point I started to let this idea go, and that’s when for me a whole new world opened. I just make whatever I feel like and I’m way happier with the music I make now because of it. By working this way you really open up the way for getting the sound that is inside your mind out in your recordings. Next to that I think the fact that I play only live, touring a very big amount of gigs every year, means that I have always feedback from the crowd on all the techno tracks I make. Some of them I might play 1 or 2 times to be just used for some obscure loop in my sets later on, some I feel really work and these get adjusted by remembering how I change during my live sets and implementing that for the final release. Finally, I think an important aspect in my sound is that I do everything on my own: writing the track, producing, sound design, mixing and mastering, so you very much hear exactly how I want my techno tracks to sound, without the influence of for example an external mastering engineer.

Reinier Zonneveld – Church of Clubmusic

https://soundcloud.com/filthonacid/sets/reinier-zonneveld-church-of

On his favorite space at home…

In front of my speakers in the living room.

On essential tools in the studio…

Good monitoring and room acoustics.

To cap off our interview, what does the rest of the year have in store for you?

There are so many good things coming, which I’m really happy and thankful for. My touring schedule is very, very busy and I’ll bring my music all around the world for the rest of the year. Some highlights for me are definitely being a resident for Awakenings, Cercle on the 1st of July in Kiev, and also my own Filth on Acid parties. On the FOA parties, I play all day or all night long live. I bring out a lot of machines from my studio, like the classic Roland gear: TR909, TB303, TR606, SH101, the Moog Sub37, and some boutique synthesizers and drum computers. I will play only music by me (with the occasional remix I did of course), showing the full spectrum of my sound. At Thuishaven Amsterdam I’ll play 10 hours all day long, and at Amsterdam Dance Event I’ll do 12 hours all night and morning. We’ll bring these shows after the success of Filth on Acid Berlin also to the rest of the world (more cities to be announced soon).

There you have it folks. Electronic music’s modern day Mozart is on a field of his own. Don’t take my word for it, go see for yourself — catch the cerebral sensation live.

Reinier Zonneveld: SoundCloud | Spotify | Beatport | Vinyl

INTERVIEW: Reinier Zonneveld talks Church of Clubmusic, Filth on Acid, live improvisation and what sets him apart. Reinier Zonneveld talks Church of Clubmusic, Filth on Acid, live improvisation and what sets him apart. …

#ReinierZonneveld #ADE #Amsterdam #Church of Clubmusic #Drumcode #Drumcode Festival Amsterdam #Filth on Acid #Filth on Acid Beach #FOA #FOA Beach #Reinier Zonneveld #Reinier Zonneveld - Church of Clubmusic #Reinier Zonneveld (live)#Thuishaven #Thuishaven — Amsterdam

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whistlekick · 5 years

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Sifu Clark Tang is a martial arts instructor and practitioner. He is the founder of the Wing Chun Temple in California.

Being a warrior, being a martial artist, it’s okay to be unhappy. It’s okay not to go in your way. But let me tell you, you live a life that’s not only for you, you live for something bigger.

Sifu Clark Tang – Episode 388

As a child, what are the odds that you’ll be inside a kung fu theater that’s showing a Shaw Brothers’ film when you are not even supposed to be there? We can call it destiny but it definitely brought the best out of him. Sifu Tang has successfully related his faith with his martial arts through his spirituality. Sifu Clark Tang is the founder at the Wing Chun Temple and he is in the lineage of Ip Man. Get ready because Sifu Clark Tang gave us a very spiritual and emotional episode about his life and journey to the martial arts. Listen to find out more!

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Show Notes

On this episode, we mentioned Bruce Lee and Sensei Fumio Demura

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Show Transcript

You can read the transcript below or download here.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Hello, thanks for joining me! This is whistlekick martial arts radio episode 388. Today, I am joined by my guest, Sifu Clark Tang. My name is Jeremy Lesniak, I’m your host here at whistlekick martial arts radio. I’m the founder of whistlekick and we do stuff! we do so much different stuff. It’s really hard to describe it in any other way. You can check out all the stuff we do at whistlekick.com. One of the things that we do is we make stuff and you can purchase any of that stuff with a discount. PODCAST15 gets you 15% off sparring gear, great apparel, uniforms and some other cool stuff so check that out. Of course, one of the other things that we do is this show. We do it twice a week, all for free, and we’ve been doing it for 4 years. Man, we’re closing in on episode 400 and you can see every one of those episodes at whistlekickmartialartsradio.com. We have photos and links, sometimes videos and other stuff to give you more context, more insight into the guest or the topic, whatever it is, and it is all because we love martial arts and we do too. As I said my guest today, Sifu Tang. We had a lot of different folks over the years and a lot of those people tell great stories but not all of them, in fact I would say few of them, tell those stories with as much heart, as much openness as Sifu Tang does. I was honestly transfixed at the way he told his stories whether they were simple anecdotes or some of the deeper experiences of his life. He goes deep and I mean that. He goes deep quite a few times through this episode and I hope you enjoy so here it is. Sifu Tang, welcome to whistlekick martial arts radio.

Clark Tang:

Hello. Thank you for having me. It’s my great honor and a great pleasure to be here.

Jeremy Lesniak:

I’m looking forward to this and listeners, this doesn’t usually happen but we just spent about 15 minutes having great conversation, and selfishly, I let that go a little longer than maybe I should have because we were having a great time talking. I said, I got to bring this back and we have to start the show and there have been a couple times where I look up and it’s 30 minutes later and I ask the guest to say hey, can we just make that the beginning of the show? It didn’t seem appropriate today so I didn’t do that but I’ve got a feeling that we’re going to have great conversation.

Clark Tang: Oh yeah, definitely. Going back to my college years when I was younger, I am a morning person. By 10, everybody knows, my family, my friends, close friends, know they can go party at 1 or 2 but me, I don’t care nor I love it. I’ll be going to sleep because I don’t like that but I get up at 4, 4:30. That’s a biological alarm. I wake up, oomph. But let me tell you when my buddy from the martial art, we would get together at around probably evening and we’re going to sit and talk all day until 2 or 3 in the morning, my goodness, and I remember one of my ex-girlfriends said, you guys, I think you guys are gay. You guys start talking and sometimes you’re whispering to each other. You don’t normally, you go to sleep a certain time, you don’t go to sleep. Something’s wrong with you. It’s amazing, to me, with another martial artist when we start talking, it’s almost like a fellowship. It’s bringing that energy, at church we do the same thing, fellowship, and I think there’s no difference in martial art. We do fellowship with each other. We call something positive, something great, something bigger and also, like I mentioned earlier with you, Jeremy, you take this and I’m sure you’re thinking bigger than about making money and using it as a business. I’m thinking we’re doing this not only to save ourselves but to save a lot of people so I’m just thinking out loud.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Have you always been a morning person? How far back does that go?

Clark Tang:

Always. Always.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Even as a small child?

Clark Tang: Yes, believe it or not.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Was someone forcing you to wake up that early?

Clark Tang: Yes and no. I was adopted when I was one-year old by my grandmother and my grandmother, very strict. A certain time I have to get up and if I don’t get up, I will get whipped. Whipping, when I look back, it just like, oh, you got scared of the whip, but actually my grandmother she didn’t whip hard. You’re thinking about a whipping you got scared. Only a couple of time I got whipped but most of the time, it was normal to wake up. That’s where my most productive hours start now, as of right now, I still do the same way. This year, I have a baby it’s different. After my baby, I get up, I just stare at her and I go, geez, how did this happen? I’m trying to think of a way, every time I started dating or start thinking about no babies please and all of a sudden, here, I’m just thinking, oh my God. I just can’t believe it just like a miracle. How did God using me or use me as an instrument to produce another person? And also talking about my baby, I’m going to interject a little bit here, people tell me, hey, what is the most thing you learn about martial art and I look at my baby and I go, you know what? She is my great Grand Master. No one can teach me something better than her and they ask me, what is that? Patience. If she’s not my baby, oh lord, but she is my Grand Master, I’m telling you and I think this couple year, my Kung Fu improved way better than before. I look at patience in a different way, almost like a different side before patience is only like I talk, I walk, sort of walking but now, Jesus, I walk even though a certain thing, impossible I look at it, I make it possible so things like that.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Wow, okay. So, we’ve got some information about you at the very beginning and now modern, now. So, let’s go back and kind of, in some way, split the difference. In your very early years, you weren’t a martial artist, at least you weren’t at some point, and you are now. Somehow that changed and I’ve got a feeling that you, no, I’m not going to say anything about that yet. I’m already starting to put a picture together of how you view martial arts in the world but I think we need some foundation for me to confirm that. So how did you first find martial arts?

Clark Tang: Well, first of all, as a child and you tell people, you talk to anyone that’s an adopted child, they all have a similarity of going through this mental questioning or I would say, self-examine. As soon as you realize you and the world, and I think about four or maybe five, I can’t remember back and that’s what it came to my mind and said, Jesus, where’s my parents? Why am I living here? Why am I given to my grandmother to raise instead of my parents and all that so you have all these questions. What happened with my parents? My parents didn’t want me? Didn’t they care about me? All of these questions and in a way, those questions is a very despair question if you talk to any adopted child or without parents and it really bothers me a lot. It made me really sad, made me very…I don’t know how to fit into this world and then I remember one day, I think probably six years old, for some reason I didn’t know how I got in there, I got into a Kung Fu theater by myself. I know an adult outside and somehow, I sneak in there and I saw a Shaw Brother movie. Master [00:09:39] and Master [00:09:41] they start fighting and all that sudden, that moment I had the enlightenment. I got my answer, this is it! I can feel the movement and all that. I feel like wow, hey, I don’t care about anything that I do, I wonder if I can do this, empower myself. That move or you can feel the movement is very powerful and for some reason, that’s the tipping point that martial art really got into me and from there on, my God, you don’t believe it. Every day I start doing form by myself and all that and my uncle start training me, he trained me from there on and that was it.

Jeremy Lesniak:

We’ve heard a lot of different origin stories. A lot of these ways that people find martial arts and sometimes it’s a family thing. Sometimes, it’s the parent saying that oh, we think you’re lacking something that martial arts may provide. I believe you are the first guest who wandered into a Kung Fu theater as a child and saw a movie. We’ve had people stumble on movies but certainly not at that age.

Clark Tang: Yes.

Jeremy Lesniak:

It seems like destiny, doesn’t it?

Clark Tang: I believe so. When I look at it, well, I’m a Christian and I’ll tell people, people know me around, I’m a Christian, I’m a Christ-lover, follower, everything but I’m not a religious person. No way. I don’t understand any religion. I don’t care. I’m a spiritual person outside and when I look at, this is almost like the, you call it the pre-destined, I think, like God put me in a certain situation and then having questioned then I followed this path and then I continue even though I didn’t know what I was doing because in the bible, again, God used situation to have his way. For example, I’ll give you the story about Joseph. He’s the most beloved son of all the brothers and the brother was jealous so throw him in a well and then sold him to be a slave and from there on, he became somebody. You know that? And then again when his brother came in, he met his brother and then what I like the twist about Christianity, you talk about forgiveness and you don’t judge at all. That’s one thing. Like for example, his brother came, hey, Joseph, and again, we’re so sorry we did this to you and Joseph said, oh, brother, it’s all God’s plan if you didn’t sold me as a slave or you didn’t beat me up or whatever, we wouldn’t have this day and I wouldn’t be able to save you this day and every time I talk about that, it made me a little emotional because that’s what Christ drive me to do and I think Kung Fu, in some way, have that spiritual level which a lot of people, most people, they focus on the fighting part, the physical part. How can I kick somebody’s ass? There’s a certain technique and all of that technical get on and I see some Grand Master and that’s all they stuck in their whole life and they’re like, I can do this technical and I go, oh man, give it up. Martial art, or anything, first, you train your body. Second, you train your mind and then your mind control your body and that is the highest level and people that practice martial art for years they understand this. Now, when you’re using your mind with all your body, the movement more fluid, movement faster, almost like lighting like almost like Wing Chun. In Wing Chun, my punch, I don’t care who you are, if you got to stop my punch, considers that one in a million and I test this over and over. I even get people I said, if you can stop my punch before it almost land to your face, okay. Most people can because it’s already in their mind. The mind is already hit before the body get there. Let me give you an example, for example, if you move yourself, I’m going to go to, let’s say I’m in the house right now, okay, I’m going to go to the living room, I start walking. You see the body slow, you start walking because you’re in time but if I’m in using my mind, it’s not about time. It’s about the timing just like lightning, impulse. I said, okay, I’m thinking I’m in the back of the room when you get to that level just like it’s amazing. Anyway, what are we talking about? See, I’m going to do this a lot.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Yeah and the listeners are probably laughing because this is what happens on this show is I just let people go and we started to get somewhere. So, here’s what I want to ask about because you’re certainly not the first person to bring up their faith with regard to martial arts and I know there’s some folks out there who get a little bit uncomfortable when we start talking about faith and I want them to reserve that judgment and that resistance for a moment. In our initial conversation and you’re continuing this here, I’ve got a feeling that some of your perspectives on faith, we could strip the label off of them and a lot of people would just see them as an extension of martial arts philosophy. So, I’d love to know how the two, your martial arts training and your faith, how they blend together.

Clark Tang: Okay, again, if I have about 10 seconds here, if I mention it but again, I don’t mention names so I respect everybody. If you do martial arts, you got my respect already but again, this is I’m talking about my perspective, I don’t mean to disrespect anybody. As you know, in the martial arts, we are in the warrior world. Start the respect and they respect and I don’t mean to step on anybody’s toes. Talking about martial art practice and my faith, let me put this way, you ever see a show called Shen Yun at all? You heard about it?

Jeremy Lesniak:

No.

Clark Tang: Okay, no. This is a group of Chinese…

Jeremy Lesniak:

Actually, wait, yes, it’s funny you bring that up. That’s coming to Vermont very shortly now. I just have to think back to these large banners being strung across some of the streets in Burlington so yeah, please continue.

Clark Tang:

Shen Yun, it mean when the movement and all of a sudden when I’m watching that and then I go, oh my God, I connect the dots! I go, voila! After the show, I watch the show and never get tired. The movement is beautiful, boom, bouncing, I’m like wow and toward the end, they come in and tell what Shen Yun mean. Shen Yun meaning the movement is from the heaven. Movement is from heaven and then all of a sudden, I connect the dots. Aha! If I go to church, the pastor is preaching the word and we start singing. Now, you praise to God in vocal speech and then singing. Well, again, martial art, we praise to God in our movement and that’s part of communication. So, and I feel, I go, man, no wonder if when every time I do my form, my mind’s not here. My mind is somewhere out. I’m in heaven. Somehow, I do a certain form and all of a sudden, I go, man, how do I do that? I forgot but it doesn’t matter. It’s the flow, the meaning behind is more important. Does that make sense? You go to church. You’re singing, praise to God but hey, with martial art, we’re communicating with our movement. For example, the native tribe or I don’t know much about others but they do dances to their God, isn’t that right?

Jeremy Lesniak:

Yeah.

Clark Tang:

Does that make sense? It depend on perspective. I think bad martial artists, I don’t call them martial artists because martial art is for the good. If people they use it for bad, I don’t think they’re martial artist, they’re just scumbag.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Yeah, I would agree. That really needed better instructor.

Clark Tang:

So, that was said, the way we pray. Now, my faith personally, I was born into the Buddhist family. It’s not by choice, it just happened to be there and, of course, I was struggling with my life as I said earlier. Why my parents gave me away and why didn’t nobody…if I see now people and their parents hug them and all, I’m like man, what’s wrong with me? And I grew up with this mentality. This is a child without a parent. I’m not good enough. I’m not good enough. That’s not me. Are you going to go to college? No, that’s not me. That’s for people that have parents. They have parents that support them. That’s my mentality but when I had martial arts, I can see anything is possible. Almost like with God, anything is possible. To me, martial art is almost like [00:21:31] of God. They call it manna. Chi. I think the chi is God himself because chi is, if you look at it, it’s the good energy there. It is God. Everything belongs to God and now, let’s look at another level how my faith is applied to martial art. Now, before I studied Wing Chun, I studied other martial art. I don’t care what it is just, okay, a strong kick and punch, whatever, that gets me, whatever. So, I had kickboxing, Taekwondo and I even get a black belt in American Kenpo, [00:22:21] Kenpo, I did Tai Chi, I do Yoga, you name it all, I used to do it because martial art, when you start, it’s hard to stop, you keep going and then, however, I know about Wing Chun a little bit and I knew it’s just like wow, I want to study that because I was inspired Bruce Lee. How come is Bruce Lee so good? His move and everything and I thought, man, I got to learn Jeet Kune Do so I can be like him a little bit and then, I bought his book and I start reading the book. Man, Wing Chun. If I study Wing Chun, it’s the root, I get Jeet Kune Do, I got everything else, I’m thinking, he started Wing Chun, I wanted to take the same path so my goodness, here in Long Beach, 1980 or 1990, it’s very hard going to school so I did finally find one in [00:23:27] valley which is about almost 30-minute drive from Long Beach to there and I did, with my first sifu, Sifu [00:23:40], he’s still here with us. We have tea all the time, we start talking all the time. He just like, the word sifu meaning father. There’s a saying, one day teacher, a lifetime father which is Kung Fu. I mean, that’s something, it’s the difference between the other martial art in term of culture. Chinese culture is we tend to see things a different way, in terms of our philosophy of Kung Fu and all of that so that’s, anyway, that’s my first sifu and his lineage is not even Ip Man. His leanings come from Chan Wah-shun and you know Chan Wah-shun is the teacher of Grand Master Ip. So, I studied there so the Wing Chun is a little bit different and then for some reason, his school was in the verge of closing down so I went to study another teacher, he’s no longer with us. Sifu Jerry McKinley. In fact, he’s the one who trained Nicolas Cage if you watch that movie, Bangkok Dangerous if you saw those moves, it was by him when he was alive and he was under Grand Master Ip Man and then my last sifu which I have, because I study Wing Chun here and I go back and forth, back and forth to Hongkong and I met another sifu of mine, Sifu Grandmaster Wong Long, he’s still alive today. He practiced, he started Wing Chun under Grand Master Ip even before Bruce Lee so that made him the Kung Fu big brother of Bruce Lee [00:25:50]. He told us he start about 5 or 6 month before Bruce Lee and [00:25:54]. Now, why I’m telling you this is because why this had to do with faith? To me, two things in my life: martial arts, God. Those are the two things that I always seek and always improving, always. Now on my Christian side, I go to different church all the time. You name it, I go to different, I go to Catholic church, I go to different church. I was looking for what is the one? What is the closest way I can get to God better? And then I found my church, we were talking about love, about God, the reason why God came to Earth is because of love and from there on I feel like, man, I’m not a religion. Religion is very technical from A to B, that’s it. So, it’s a technical and is very dry but when you get to the certain level as a Christian in life, you feel like yeah, if you start feeling God’s love and then God’s spirit in you, it really doesn’t matter. You go to Church this day, you don’t go to Church this day like how is that compared to my journey of the martial art? When I study other Taekwondo and all, it’s all about technical. There’s no fluid there. It’s all about kick, punch, kick, punch. When I start to take Wing Chun and then after a year later and I go, my God, everything else is almost like a religion. Wing Chun is more than religion, almost like Christ. Everybody go to East, well, no we’re going to West so Wing Chun is opposite. For example, Wing Chun, we don’t believe in instruction. We believe everything is going to be destroyed. We don’t believe in fire, we just like if you look at Karate it’s all about fire and hitting. Wing Chun, we’re relaxed and everything moves so fluid. This is, I even wrote my article, I said Wing Chun is a spiritual martial art. You got to believe it. I can prove it to you. You got to be in spirit in order to do your Wing Chun effectively. If you can see all the other Wing Chun around, it’s very technical here and there. That level sometimes it looks great but you got to [00:29:02] another one because that’s what Wing Chun is all about. To describe Wing Chun let me give you some aerial. First, you saw the technical but Wing Chun is just like this: when you start driving a car and all of sudden, your car get to a pothole and it start flipping and you go, how is that possible? Pothole and all of a sudden you drive and the car get flipped. Now, there’s a physics behind that and there’s something behind that. Now to making the flipping, that’s Wing Chun. Wing Chun, a certain move we use the opponent energy to do that sort of stuff that’s why Wing Chun is just like, if you look at from the outer, it’s very dry. Later on, when you understand internal power, it’s like oh my God, it’s just amazing and I think that’s what set us apart from other martial art is that, not that better or not, again, it’s not a style who’s better. I think it’s practitioner, again. I give example, do you know Grand Master Demura?

Jeremy Lesniak:

Fumio Demura? Yes, he’s been on the show.

Clark Tang: Oh my God, yes, him. Now, I talked to him, he lived close by me about 20 minutes or so and he doing Karate. Now, people say oh, Karate is very technical but if you meet him, oh my God, he is so fluid, I don’t care what it is, he is that level and I said, I don’t care he’s learning whatever but man, he got [00:30:57] so again, yes, I compare the style again and I know other people go, oh man, it’s just a different style well, when you’re on a certain level, you got to compare. There’s no way out around it. When you get to a certain level, that’s not style. It’s just, again, it’s a practitioner, practitioner. People can do, I don’t care what it is, most of their life, they go over and over and over, they can achieve that level, same level to almost like a spiritual level if you get what I’m saying.

Jeremy Lesniak:

I do. I do. I’m curious. I’m curious. I have this theory that everyone who finds and stays in martial arts was missing something and you’ve spoken several times so I feel comfortable bringing it up about the impact of being adopted and then, of course, you brought up the point that Sifu means father. Do you think there’s something there? Do you think maybe martial arts wouldn’t have resonated so strongly for you if you have remained with your birth parents?

Clark Tang:

You’re absolutely right but you know me as a person. Gosh. I’m very independent, strong-minded and I have to believe what I do. If I don’t believe, I get kicked out, yeah. If I, that’s why I look at it, everything is just the way God direct my life and where I’m at, it’s just amazing, the journey and now, I went to Concordia University, I don’t know if you know, that’s a Christian…I was going to be a pastor. I want to be a pastor because when you go through what you went through and you see other people struggling, you want to help because you went through that and you have a way of unlocking that misery because, again, if you look at people around the world and they have all sorts of, I’m not going to say, stupid idea about it but stupid idea about things, stupid ideas about…these are all emotion and emotions good but you got to put emotion where it should be so, in other word, martial art is learning how to manage your emotion. There’s a certain thing you should say, you should think like for example, I met way back like a friend of mine, like his girlfriend breaks up and all and he wants to kill himself and I go, oh, what a stupid thing and I went and talked to him and I said, okay, great, so you want her huh? Yes, I want her! I cannot live without her! Really? Gosh, what has she done to you? For you? is she God? If she’s God, yeah, go and kill yourself but she’s not God, , she’s another human being, man. There are other people there so this is the emotion you’re going through just like you want to have her. Okay great, you can have her, what are you going to do with her? You’re going to eat her? What are you going to do with her? She’s another person and I told him and I said that’s not love, that’s selfish love. You want her to mold it your way. If you truly love her, no, you care about her happiness. What does she want? She want to leave you for another person? Good for her. You should be happy for her and then after the conversation, he sort of shelved his, he came out from it so I think that’s amazing part. For my part, I’m saying about God and martial art, if I can steer people a certain way and their emotion, because these people, they live with their parents, they think life is a La La Land, I want a certain way, I should be a certain way, I’m entitled this way. The way I see life, let me tell people, I look at the warrior way. For example, here, if there is a certain thing I need to do, I’m going to do. For example, one day, parents come over, my family, whatever, man, I’m going to kill them before they get over me now. That’s what I’m talking about. Martial art, again, let me transform to a warrior way. When we talk about the warrior way, we’re talking about the science. We’re not talking about the emotion. An emotion, you want to put where it’s supposed to be. I read Musashi, if anybody have not read about Musashi, oh my God, read about that. He talked about the warrior way.

Jeremy Lesniak:

The Book of Five Rings, that’s what you’re referencing, right?

Clark Tang: Yes. Yes! He talked about certain strike that you have the emotion and focus come to a certain point and I said, oh my God. I think everybody, when they don’t have martial art, they think life is just everything’s so grand. Everything just like, oh, I have to do my way, and I think most of it I blame on parent upbringing, spoil them. Well, anyway, hey, if you have parents, you’re a good son and good daughter, hey, you’re out, you’re the exception. I’m talking about the other part and I think, also, the social media, including that part and they grow up and they have certain expectation of life and then their life is already disappointed because, of course, when you have high expectation, if it doesn’t go your way, guess what now? You get depressed, you’re unhappy and I think being a warrior, being a martial artist, it’s okay to be unhappy. It’s okay to not go your way but let me tell you, you live a life that’s not only for you. You live for something bigger like we talked earlier. Like to me, when I was that 4 years old, almost 6 years old, when I saw martial art, I touched with martial arts. I go like, man, I can save the world. I’m telling you. With my Kung Fu, I kill all the bad guy in the world and world peace. That’s what a child is. That heroism, so life sometimes is not about you. for now, I have a daughter now and I really understand that and my faith with Christ, even right now, before, you say oh, well, God gave his son, die for you, for love. I say, okay, yeah, I got it. Now, I have my daughter. I go, oh my God, I can’t believe this. With her, I give up my life, instant, without question. Like before, I tell people, oh yeah, I’m superhero and all that but I don’t know I always think really? Do I really want to do this? But your daughter and then I understand faith and Christ. What God has done, sacrificed own begotten son for us, I mean, come on, that should shook the world.

Jeremy Lesniak:

I think what it can draw a lot of correlations between faith and martial arts and I don’t think it’s an accident that most of the time when faith comes up on this show it’s usually within the family of Christian denominations because I feel like that sacrificed ideal is so front and centered versus at least my understanding of other religion and yet in martial arts, in order to progress, you’re making sacrifice. At the very least, you’re sacrificing your body and your time but quite often, as any of us who have been training for a long time know, you’re sacrificing sometimes friendships and personal relationships and sometimes you’re sacrificing meals out and there’s so much that we often ignore or neglect for the priority that we place on martial arts and that’s why I wanted you to go deeper on that because I think that there’s really something there. We don’t talk about martial arts from the perspective of sacrifice very often and I think it’s easier for us to look at religion, faith, spirituality, whatever you choose to call it, I think it’s easier to discuss that notion of sacrifice because it’s more front and center, it’s more prominent when we talk about the story that come out of really any faith but martial arts, I guess I would argue, anything pursuit require sacrifice of something. Question is, is it worth it? So, I want to continue that in the sense and ask you about has it been worth it? You’ve told us a lot about you and your story and your upbringing and so if you look at where you are now as a martial artist, when you look at the challenges and the pain and however you choose to organize the past, when you look at it, has it been worth it? If you can undo it all, would you?

Clark Tang:

I’ll do it again.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Okay, I expected that answer. So, the question is why?

Clark Tang: Yes. Now, as you know, going back to my childhood, the way I thought of the world, the way I go how can I fit in this world of my circumstances? And then I found God, I found martial arts. Now the reason why I take this, I feel like this, I need this. It’s almost like a nourished food. If I don’t do this, I would die. If I don’t pursuit Christ, I’m going to…when I say I die, I mean spiritually dead, or maybe physically. You know what I’m saying? Going back, I remember somebody said, if you don’t eat food, you will die a certain way, maybe two weeks or water, it’s thirty days or whatever and he said, if you spiritually die, you’re already dead so when I pursue, when I get up and do martial art, I am getting closer and closer to my life, I’m getting closer and closer. It’s almost like driving me that I’m pursuing something. I’m pursuing closer and closer to that notion of being free, being liberated, being, for example, again, I seen people when they’ve been in religion all their life especially older convert. They were a certain religion and all of a sudden, they feel guilty of a certain thing like their life they carry over and all of a sudden, they became a believer of Christ. They go, Christ died for me? Oh my God, you should see the tears in their eyes. I have all this. Isn’t that great now? I can take off that burden and give it to Christ and now you know that you’re not tied to that. You’re born meant to be free so why are you putting the burden on yourself like that so as for me, yes, sacrifice. When I go through martial art, when I go start dating and you say I demand time or whatever, that’s why I couldn’t stay in a lot of my relationship because of that because I choose martial art, I choose God, because that’s my life and if people can’t understand that, they just don’t get it. Plus, those two, I can sacrifice any of that. Is it worth it? Yes, it is worth it. That sacrifice because I needed it. I need to live, I need to…because I want to be free from whatever I’m thinking. All these like hey, I’m not for the world because you weren’t raised by your parents, you don’t have a certain way until today, I said oh my God, imagine if I can just hug onto my dad and say, oh, Dad, I love whatever. I mean, man, that would be…that’s the moment. You know I will get that and again, when I went to competition when I was younger, sorry, I’m a little emotional here.

Jeremy Lesniak: It’s okay, take your time.

Clark Tang: I seen other kids and they take like a…they start doing form, I go, oh, Lord and the parent, oh, honey, that’s really good! That’s really good! Yeah! And man, for me, I think, where I’m champion too, for me, nobody care for me. I feel like these…so, there’s a matter what I do with this. Nobody…anyway, so as you can see, very emotional about that side.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Yeah.

Clark Tang:

So, I need God, I need martial arts to live, so yeah, if I’m going to sacrifice everything, yes, yeah, I’m going to sacrifice everything. This is my life on the line. I’m not doing martial arts to look good. I’m not doing martial arts to check off the bucket list, no, martial arts is my life and everybody around me knows that, so, yeah, anyway. Sorry.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Please don’t apologize, no. One of the things that’s nice about the podcast format is that people get to listen and listen however, wherever, whenever they choose and it allows them to sit with it and to press pause and to contemplate and to listen to parts again and I suspect that there are folks out there who may have listened to some of that again or might have pressed pause because they’re tearing up. Admittedly, I am fighting back some tears because I have to host the show so I don’t have the luxury of crying with you right now. I’m going to do that later and not everyone’s going to relate to every aspect to what you’re talking about but many of us, maybe even most of us, is going to relate to some of it and there’s a lot that you just talked about that hits home for me. I wasn’t adopted but pretty much everything else you’re talking about is pretty square for my experience as a child.

Clark Tang:

Right, right.

Jeremy Lesniak:

So, I want to shift gears now. We’ve come through a pretty powerful place and I want to make sure that we take some time to use that as a foundation.

Clark Tang:

Excuse me.

Jeremy Lesniak:

No, by all means, quite warranted after what you’ve shared. I want to look forward, I want to look into the future. I have no doubt that your relationship to martial arts, your relationship to your faith is going to continue but I’m curious how you see that manifesting. You’re going to continue to train, you’re going to continue to be the person that you are but what are you hoping to accomplish if you’re not going to be able to use your martial arts to bring about world peace by beating all the bad guys in the world, what are you going to do with it? Clark Tang:

Well, you heard the Wing Chun temple, don’t you? Yeah, Wing Chun Temple, again, when my sifu told me, hey, I’m ready to go and start my own school, Wing Chun Temple, he said Wing Chun is the most, if you look at Shaolin, they got two or three hundred form, American Kenpo like probably 40 or 50 form or maybe more so all other martial arts style system have a lot of forms. Wing Chun only have what? Six forms. That’s it. 3 empty-hand, 1 wooden dummy, long-pole and a butterfly knife and when you do the form, one thing about Wing Chun and what I tell people, again, in college, I took music appreciation, so the way I listen to music is different now because I know how to listen now. I love most classical music like Mozart. If you look at it, his music is very balanced, symmetrical and what he set on the thesis, that’s what he’s going to present. Wing Chun is almost like that. It’s a very elegant martial art. Like the first form Siu Lim Tao, the idea, first idea or little idea, they set out the thesis throughout the system. When you get toward the end, you’re still coming back to the beginning. So, ending, beginning, ending, beginning, it’s almost like very [00:52:39]. Again, the first form, it’s like that, it’s like the alphabet. Whatever you write, you always use the alphabet so that’s why now, Wing Chun is that’s the way I look at it. It’s just amazing. Now, so in order to be progressed in your learning of Wing Chun, you got to start, well, you got to, at school, we have a system. A little brother, a big brother, a newcomer so we always, and with sifu permission, of course, when we learn something, we sort of master a little bit, we start showing to other people. Again, we don’t use the word teach. When we teach someone that mean oh, I teach you. No, you cannot teach anybody. You show people. Now, who can they teach? They teach themselves. So, when you use the word teaching it’s like oh, I get the credit. I’m teaching. No. when it’s Kung Fu, it’s different. You show the person and the person practiced thousand, thousands and thousands of time and they get it, they go, oh, man, see? So, they are teaching themselves. So, when you show other, you learn a little bit. Show other, learn a little bit. So anyway, I came, so when I go, okay, it’s ready for me to get a school and plus, we don’t have a lot of Wing Chun school. Most of Wing Chun master, a lot of great Wing Chun master out there and let me tell you something, they are disguised, they don’t want to show their…their skills is phenomenal and I’m telling you they don’t even care about sharing with anyone because a certain thing that is so good when you share, it’s spoiled and I think one of those is Wing Chun is a bad one and again, for example, when Christ send his disciple to give the Good News of Christ, and if they don’t want it, it’s almost, again, it’s just like oh, man, a slap in the face. You’re telling me that Christ died for you, take all this, you get to be free all your life and you don’t want that? You’re just like that is so insane. You’re not in your right mind. Wing Chun is like that. When you met a certain master, they show you something and you’re just like, oh my God, phenomenal and a certain tweak and you know what, you got to have the right mind, the right attitude, you got to earn their respect first before they start showing that because if you show them, they don’t understand, they make fun of it, they talk about just like oh, man. Being a martial artist, you learn all this here and the learning doesn’t come easy. You got to take a little bit here, a little bit there, fight here, fight there, you do all this. You start learning, it’s not easy coming to that conclusion and now you got this, you give to another person and the person don’t understand and you go, ah! And that kind of hurts or again, it’s almost like disrespect to the art itself. So, that’s why, I’m telling you, I know a lot of great Wing Chun Grand Master out there. They don’t want credit, they don’t want anything. You got to know them, those out there. Again, they don’t want to start school because it’s commercialized, they don’t want to deal with that and I think that what I do is among a few that hey, you know what? I feel that this is important. When I look at it, it’s beyond the skill of fighting skills, self-protecting and I tell people, I said, well, yeah you learn self-defense but you’re learning one part of self-defense. Protecting your physical, that meaning if somebody hurt you, you’re able to block and hit back, you hurt them, great! Nothing wrong with that. What if mentally, let me tell you, some people always say, you got bullied all your life or talked down by your parents or your guardian, you go, oh, you’re no good, you’re nothing, nothing. Imagine that’s beating down on the mind and look, how do you defend that? That’s why all these kids, no wonder they flip, , I don’t give an F. I’m going to shoot everybody else and I’m going to take my life and I’m done with this. Now, how do you explain that? See that? That’s defending the mind part but I look at it, yeah, you self-defense your physical, your mind, your spiritual and how do you defend your spiritual part? I’m telling you, you need God. If you don’t have God, evil is lurking. I’m just saying from my perspective but if for me, it’s just like your spiritual part is almost like an empty cup. If you don’t fill it with something, guess what? Something’s going to be filling in there so might as well, fill it with something good and when you fill something good, bad stuff is hard to come in. It doesn’t mean it won’t come in, it will try like that but like, again, I work in the social service field. A lot of people came up [00:58:55] a lot and I’ll be able to share with people. A certain people there, they have difficulty a certain thing like for example, it’s drug or whatever and they said, oh man, I can’t go a certain time, it’s just like I can’t control, I got to do this a certain time. I say, okay, let’s say from 3 to 6, you can control that and I said, okay fine, from there on, do something else, fill the time with something else. Let’s see what happen, if you’re busy with something else, guess what happen, the other stuff, Jesus, you forget about me now? So, after a while, they go, okay, you never mind, you don’t care about me so [00:59:38] will leave you alone. See, it’s about gravitating. If you gravitate to something, this is what you’re going to get, you reap what you sow. If you do good, the fruit is going to be good. That’s why I tell people, if you tell me you’re Christian, your action is not Christian, oh no, you’re not a Christian. If you’re a Christian, the good tree will always give good fruit. That’s the bottom line, I don’t care. You’re Christian, you’re Muslim, you’re Buddhist, I don’t care who you are, it’s just that is my baseline. Good tree will give good fruit.

Jeremy Lesniak:

I like that.

Clark Tang: You can say whatever, do whatever but your action toward the end, the bottom line you’re doing that, hey, you’re not good yourself. So, I found Wing Chun Temple and why did I find it? Because when I was young, I always had my dream of Shaolin Temple. I didn’t mind at all like, hey, my grandmother gave a Shaolin Temple, I wanted to practice martial art, learn the knowledge part and then all of a sudden, I think, wow and also, I’m thinking about the Bible part of it. Man, the Old Testament and the New Testament. See, the Shaolin is Old Testament. They’ve been here for years and the tree, and all of a sudden, man, I got it! Let’s make a New Testament of martial art. Wing Chun temple. Forget about the traditional monk. You can shave your head and you put on, again, I don’t want to hurt and pretend to be a monk, really I don’t care your life. I know a lot of people, they’re a monk but we’re all human being, come on. Then I go, Wing Chun temple is the New Testament of martial art and we’re a monk but we don’t need to shave our head or put on a robe. No, we’re a modern monk, what in our heart support. Just like Christ said, you can show yourself, like you said, this is on a sermon on the mount and a lot of people, oh, God, I never said. Okay great. Have you even hurt your brother, I mean kill your brother? And Christ asked, they said, no, I never killed my brother, I never kill anybody. Okay, great. You ever hate your brother? Yes, I hate him. Well, you already killed him in your mind. If you can, you would, I know that and I know a soul if I hate someone, gosh, if you can, oh man. I’ll be the Dexter. I’mma tear you apart to pieces in your mind so you already kill your brother already so what in our heart, our mind is more important than our…so yes, in Wing Chun temple, you can say that I’m trying to create an outlet for other people to seek their peace that I practice Wing Chun. I’ll tell people all the time, only practice it for the physical self-defense, mental and spiritual, this is what Wing Chun temple’s at and we’re the modern monk and what is our heart support and as you know, I’ve taught this to Wing Chun practitioner, in order to be a good Wing Chun practitioner, you have to have a clear mind and a clear heart. You got to have a good intention. In a way, it’s almost like a Buddhist martial art. If you feel that day, you have a certain way, your fire coming out, that’s not Wing Chun. That’s to power. The power is to manifest a certain way, like water instead of fire. That’s the energy we’re talking about. Controlling, controlling, controlling like for example, I’ll give you an example, when Christ…this is the only time when Christ ever recorded to be sleeping if you look at it in the Bible, when the storm coming in, everybody like Lord, how could you sleep when there’s storm? And then Christ go, gosh, why you so unfaithful, little faith? He came and come down, see, that is what Wing Chun is all about. When you see the guy do all the flashy move and you’re just aha! You square a part and then don’t think about yourself, anticipate your move, so in other word, it’s not about the past, the future, it’s that moment, the present. How do you react to a certain thing? Not because that you want to do a certain thing, no, because of your opponent. That’s why Wing Chun is adaptive like for example, he’s using hard kick, side hard kick, what are you going to do with that? You can do, they call this [01:05:41] and then again, for Wing Chun, we don’t only block the strike, we do [01:05:47] and also break his knees at the same time and that’s one move we can counter but again, it’s not in the mind, it’s not planted, it’s just in that moment so that’s what Wing Chun is and yeah. Is that sort of answer? I don’t know. I just get a lot of stuff.

Jeremy Lesniak: I don’t even know. My job’s to keep you talking. My job’s to ask a question and just see where it goes.

Clark Tang:

Oh my God, I can talk forever!

Jeremy Lesniak:

I can tell.

Clark Tang:

You know when I gone to Wing Chun and…

Jeremy Lesniak:

I can tell and that’s a great skill to have and I think a common skill among martial arts instructors. I don’t think I’ve met a martial arts instructor who can’t talk.

Clark Tang:

Well, a good way of my sifu, my last sifu, Sifu Wong Long, I’m pretty sure about Ip Man movie of Grand Master Ip Man.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Sure, yeah.

Clark Tang:

Grand Master Ip Man, I wrote down and said, there’s only two good-looking students. One Bruce Lee and one is my sifu, sifu Wong Long. Good looking guy. The difference between the two and I tell him to his face, Bruce Lee can talk, he can sell and Sifu, you can’t talk. When he talk, he doesn’t know what to do, oh, just go, come on, what do you want to show me? He just start doing chi sao, he said [01:07:13] I don’t want to talk.

Jeremy Lesniak:

I love it. I love it.

Clark Tang: And you know what, let me tell you how I met him and I feel like oh man, he is the real deal. I’m telling you this now and the Wing Chun community and everybody knows this. If you hear Wong Long, they’re all shaking because Grand Master Wong Long, oh my God, I’m going to say for him, even Bruce Lee, I don’t think will take him. He’s that good, that good. I can say it. That good in the skills and also if you look at his arm, his leg conditioning, well…his arm, he condition, I mean, from what his wife’s telling me, he start kicking wood, kicking iron. Imagine. I’m good at kicking, I practice a lot of kicking and I condition all these years. When I got into him, oh my God, he really did hurt. Imagine, he kicked an iron bar, I said, okay, that’s it. So, with him, it’s not only a good skill and I tell people, I said, you can have flashy moves but without good conditioning, you’re not that great, in a sense. You have the move but if you cannot take punches or cannot take kicks, man, you’re still a step back and again, that’s what I tell Grand Master Demura, oh my God. He’s the same way, conditioning, my goodness. You cannot touch him, he’s just bam, bam, bam so that’s what I’m talking about and not only that, look at his heart, this is how I met him. I’m going to share a little bit how I came and met my last sifu.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Please.

Clark Tang:

We’re going Hongkong back and forth, back and forth. We all practice and of course, as a Wing Chun practitioner, you always find way to sharpen your skill. You cannot stay where you’re at because, again, Wing Chun is an organic martial art, it’s a living art. So, what I’m trying to say is organic, living art is like this: when you grow old, your body depleted a certain way, you got to come save something else so you start learning. That’s why you see this old man, my sifu is an old man, he’s older than Bruce Lee. He’s 80-something now. You cannot touch him, that’s why because he’s that good. He can feel your movement even before you know and I think the same way when one of the student of Grand Master jerry Poteet, you know that guy is? Jerry Poteet?

Jeremy Lesniak:

I’ve heard the name but no.

Clark Tang: Yeah, jerry, Grand Master Jerry Poteet, he passed away already. He’s one of Bruce Lee’s student. Very close student. He’s also in Bruce Lee’s story, movie, with Jason Scott Lee, he was in that too and one of his student share with me when Bruce Lee went back to Hongkong and again tried to chi sao with Grand Master Ip Man and afterward he called to Grand Master Jerry, Jerry, Goddammit, this guy is old and he smokes, I cannot even get close to him, what the hell? That’s what Wing Chun is. Wing Chun when you get older, your body depletes, you come save with something else. I always say almost something like intrinsic anticipation of reaction ability. That’s what my sifu is, my goodness. I want to hit him here, I feel comfortable, I almost fall. If I want to move here, he go, and I go, oh man, there is no way, he’s like and I go, sifu, I am hopeless. He was laughing but now, let me share with how I met him. So, when I get back and forth and we have a gym over there at Hongkong, we go and practice and him again, he’s a very…to me, he’s like a living buddha, my goodness, all he does is good stuff. that’s why I’m telling you, we as practitioner, it’s hard to be bad. When we go turn dark, when we turn back, guess what how Wing Chun is turned bad the same way so we got to be good. So, with him, when I met him and I go, one time, very noticeable and then when he start practicing and we stayed the whole thing and then he start, everybody start to leave, okay it’s time to go. Tradition is we go to eat, so we’re going to go and eat out there, great. So, everybody pack up, ready to leave but him, this is what he does: imagine he is a Grand Master. Grand Master Ip Man’s student, a big brother to Bruce Lee, he’s that but he just doesn’t care about that but that’s how we look at it and then he started looking under the couch, under the chair. I say, sifu, what are you looking at? He said, well in the past, people leave their cellphones, stuff like that and that’s the way he look at that. You see how he look out for his other student and all that and I say, okay, I see and then I say, are you ready to go? He said no, I need to sweep because if we don’t keep clean, they won’t let us practice here anymore. Man, he take sweep and, in that moment, I feel like oh my God, I can’t believe this. How can you have this? Why don’t you use one of your students? He said no, no, they’re busy, I’m okay and I only imagine this is Kung Fu. This is Kung Fu story that I read. One guy was looking for the master, went to the temple and he saw one old man start sweeping he said, I’m looking for the master and he said, well, what do you want? The old sweeping, asked him, what do you want? He said I want to look for the master and again he said, is there anything I can help you? and he said, no, not you, I want to look for the master and then later on he realized, oh my God, he is the master. Don’t you know in the Chinese martial art world, we said that the highest skill, the higher Grand Master will have no other problem is the guy who sweep so in other words, if you’re high in rank or you understand that you’re wise, you don’t have a problem to do little stuff. again, let me reflect that to Christ, that moment, I reflect myself to Christ, remember when Palm Sunday, they’re going to crucify Christ and then they wanted to wash his feet and all the disciple, Lord, let me wash your feet, no! and Christ said, no, I’m the one that’ll wash your feet, no, not you. that moment, I felt like that, sifu, I found my master because look at the real world, this is reality. Normal work, if you got status, you got power, you got fame, guess what happen? You can do whatever you want, seriously. You got that power or you got that, what did I say, the privilege to do it, you can do it. You know what? You choose not to do it. You choose to be common people, to be…to serve. I mean, to me, that’s what Kung Fu is all about: to serve. The more you serve, you feel like oh, you know what, that’s what we’re here for. See, that’s serve and trust me, I met a lot of Kung Fu master out there, they’re abusing their power. I’m not going to say whatever but I feel like that’s not the way Kung Fu is. From there on, my God, I’m going to follow him. I’m going to make him my teacher. It’s almost like Christ. I’m going to make you fishermen, fishermen, fishermen. So, yeah, my sifu is so humble, so clean and oh my God, that’s a person I can be. With that inspiration and guess what, in the Wing Chun world, hardly anyone knows him until I came along and start talk about him and people go, who is he? In the Wing Chun world, they know but they shut their mouth. Don’t bring him out. Hey, don’t bring him out, like that but he’s that person.

Jeremy Lesniak:

That’s great.

Clark Tang: So, my vision is, in a way, and I had this vision so I want to tell people that hey, the world’s going to have problems and that’s normal. There’s a way to be out. You don’t have to buy into certain things and with martial art, when you practice, you have the will to free yourself and to make a certain decision or to say something back and give you that permission to say hey, you know what? I don’t need to do that. It’s what I hold. We call it virtue ethics. Virtue ethics. You got to do what’s right even though nobody’s watching and being a martial artist, I feel that we in the warrior world, that we have to embrace that. Now, if we share that, imagine share that with the world and the world is going to be a better place.

Jeremy Lesniak:

I agree.

Clark Tang: I see family fighting over stupid things and when you look at it, oh my God, because, again, it’s about managing the emotion. They are temporary emotion, made them suffer or permanently in their lifetime and that doesn’t make sense at all.

Jeremy Lesniak:

No. I don’t agree.

Clark Tang: A certain thing that you do, well, three things that we can control also. We can control other…first, start with our thinking. Always our thinking. Second, what we say, we can control that. Third, what we do, control that. So not only that…so, what you think, people can…my workplace, people oh man, I don’t like that guy and I could’ve go with oh yeah, I don’t like that guy too but I always think wait a minute, that’s some other point of view. I don’t have to say that . See, in other word, starting martial art gave you that power to say hey, hey, I’m making my own decision, not what you said. So that’s the freedom of that and then, you only look at the good thing about them. I don’t care, unless it’s evil, take any bad people or whatever, you always see good thing in them and when you see good thing in them, you tell them that hey, that what they’re doing is good, you bring that goodness out. You don’t care about the bad stuff. you want to bring the good out, all the bad stuff will leave because again, our spirit is like a cup. A cup only contain a certain volume or space and you fill it with something good and that stuff will leave by itself so, yeah, and what you do with it. To me, I feel like we should have as much as we should have compassion with ourselves, we have to have compassion for other people because again, we are them, them are we, we are the same. Even though we are different person, different nationality but I’m telling you we have the same heart, the same feeling, we eat the same in order to survive, you know what I mean? You got to look at it that way. You don’t want to look at it like black or he’s white, he must be [01:22:16], people is people. You got to start that pace. So, my hope, the future, I want Wing Chun Temple to have a place for education like people can educate the public school, again [01:22:41] they don’t care about that, it’s all about funding and all that. Only a few that take initiative and talk about that. Now, as our modern move to the future, we’re losing all these stuff. Nowadays, they don’t care about respect, they don’t care about whatever. In Wing Chun temple, no, we’re going to take that back. We care about this. We do care about you. We care about your feelings. We care about…it will…you will be okay.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Great. You’re not alone. You’re not alone. There are a lot of listeners who are nodding their head and saying yeah. So, if people want to learn more about you or Wing Chun temple, where would they go online to do that?

Clark Tang:

They can go on a website, http://www.wingchuntemple.com and then I guess, I’m on Facebook, Sifu Clark Tang, Clark Tang there and yes, I do love to talk about Wing Chun. I talk to a lot of people. It’s so funny Wing Chun community and most martial arts know that we have a lot of problems with politics which is internal conflicts. It’s been like that for years and I think right now and I came over, I said, no, because you guys, because everybody think they’re good and I tell people, you look at the world, if I’m here like for example you’re in Vermont. Right now, you’re about almost 3 PM right now and we’re here in California, it’s almost 12. You’re both right but you’re in a different place, come on, you look the same and I tell people, you’re doing Wing Chun the same way and you’re good, you’re both good, you don’t need to be…no! This is how I look at it, look at the world, you win, I win. There’s no loser. If you lose, I lose like for example, if I help you, later you’re going to help me, it’s a win. If you don’t help other people, it’s hard to offer help. Should be a shift in the paradigm. You win, I win.

Jeremy Lesniak:

That’s the perfect way.

Clark Tang: And that’s why I travel and I know a lot of Wing Chun Grand Master and my sifu tell me, man, you’re the first person that ever bring Wing Chun people come in a room and they start talking and I say, yeah, because we’re talking something that they can relate to. Wing Chun is just a customized art because when they get Wing Chun, they form formula like if you look at it, Wing Chun practitioner look at it, not a member thing. Because it’s almost like a formula like mc2. You apply to this person, you came for this person because the reason why because our body size, our personality, our stature is different and how we apply is different because again, Wing Chun is not technique, it’s about physics behind it. If I’m taller, I want to hit down, if you’re shorter than me, you want to hit up because that give you that leverage to overpower so that’s true physics there and I think people to…and also, I think, people said, oh, maybe you’re big Asian so that’s why they’re scared of you as an Asian, you practice martial art like Wing Chun because they’re small and I said maybe or just…I don’t know. I just tell people, I just love people! Even though all my friend know, if they hate me, I said, I still love you, man. If you hate me because I’m sorry, hate is too heavy. Love is lighter.

Jeremy Lesniak:

And that, that’s what we’re going to start to wind down. That is the perfect…I’ve been looking for it. I’ve been looking for the perfect spot for us to take the transition. So of course, listeners, if you’re new to the show, those links that Sifu dropped just a little bit ago, we’ll have all those linked at the show notes, whistlekickmartialartsradio.com. I’ve got a feeling you’ll get some folks reaching out to you because this has been a very unique conversation, at least as far as where our show goes and as listeners know we ask all our guests to kind of send us off in a similar fashion at the same time, and not that you haven’t been providing this sort of information the entire conversation, but what parting words would you give to the folks listening today?

Clark Tang:

I’ll tell people, I said, religion will fail you, politics will fail you, but not martial art. Put your kid in martial art. The earlier, plan a good seat so when they go shoot off even though for a short time, I will say, they always remember, oh my God, and I tell, I meet people all the time, I remember my parents put me in martial arts school, we learned this, we learned so much and those people that talk to me, they are something…they’re not a bum. They don’t turn out to be a bum. They turn out to be something so I have to tell people, you know, yes, martial art is the way. I mean, stop living in the environment and adapting to the environment and social media, how we, oh yeah, it’s called domestication. If you…I’m only to the full agreement if anybody that know about the full agreement that we grow up, we’re domesticated. Even our language, our environment, our way of living. I’m telling you, learn martial arts, put on a warrior, you can live the way your life.

Jeremy Lesniak:

One of the aspects of this show that listeners don’t get to see is the feedback and when we have an episode like this where a guest is this open, this honest and really lays it out there for everyone, I get a lot of feedback. People who identify with episodes, with the guest and with their experiences and I have no doubt that there are people typing away right now. Thank you so much, Sifu, for sharing of yourself today. I really appreciate it. You can find a lot more about Sifu Tang over at whistlekickmartialartsradio.com, a bunch of photos, links to everything he has going on and even a photo with him and a very recent past guest. Don’t forget whistlekick.com and the code PODCAST15 to get 15% off everything that we make whether it’s sparring gear or maybe you’re in the market for some fun new shirts, cozy sweatpants, hoodies, sneakers, we got a lot of great stuff. check it out if you haven’t. we have new stuff all the time. You can find all of our social media with the handle @whistlekick. Facebook, twitter, YouTube and Instagram are our primary accounts and you can email me directly, [email protected]. We keep it easy. Thanks for coming by today, I appreciate your support but that’s all I have until next time so train hard, smile and have a great day!

Episode 388 – Sifu Clark Tang Sifu Clark Tang is a martial arts instructor and practitioner. He is the founder of the Wing Chun Temple in California.

#California #Wing Chun

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jayfurr · 5 years

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You may recall that I’ve been working on my plans for brutal world domination in my spare time, and lately, those plans took another step forward! I got to exercise my status as member of the Richmond, Vermont “Board of Civil Authority” and help run Town Meeting! Next stop, THE WORLD!

Okay, I guess I should back up a bit there. Town Meeting?

Okay, see, in Vermont, the first Tuesday after the first Monday in March is “Town Meeting Day“. The voters of each town come together to meet, discuss, and vote on important matters like the town budget … and occasionally, on some rather strange not-so-important matters as well.

This was my first Town Meeting Day as a Vermont justice of the peace. The assembled JPs for each town (my town is allotted 12) make up a body called the “Board of Civil Authority”, which basically works out to “the folks who run the elections and maintain the voter list” and “the folks who hear petitions for tax abatements”. We didn’t have to do much to actually organize the voting; our town clerk took care of that. But I helped set up the gym and the voting machines the day before and I spent pretty much the whole day of Town Meeting proper sitting at a table with a stack of town ballots and a stack of school board budget ballots looking voters up in a notebook and checking ’em off and then handing them ballots. (We had it down to a science — one table for people with last names starting with letters A through L, and another table for the M through Z people. Two people at each table; one looks the name up, and the other hands the voter their ballots. We were a well-oiled machine.)

Polls are open all day on Town Meeting Day from 7 am to 7 pm for residents to vote via Australian ballot for town offices (selectboard, town constable, moderator, library trustee, stuff like that) and for the school board and school budget… but that’s not what really makes town meeting day Town Meeting Day. The Australian ballot is for the boring stuff — town offices and the school budget. The really fun stuff gets hashed out at a 9 am mass meeting where anyone who’s a) registered to vote and b) has enough free time to hang out in a gym for hours on a Tuesday morning, gets to discuss weighty matters of town business and ultimately vote on whether to adopt the town budget. You don’t necessarily get a representative sampling of the town’s electorate… but that’s understood and kind of expected. Town Meeting Day wouldn’t be the same without the quirkiness.

Most towns hold their meeting at the local school; for example, our town meeting takes place in the gym at Camel’s Hump Middle School We also use the school cafeteria; most towns hold town meeting in the morning, get the budget taken care of, and then break for lunch before resuming in the afternoon for any remaining business. I have a feeling that the “town potluck” aspect of Town Meeting Day is what some people like best. You hear stories waxing lyrical about the macaroni and cheese Mrs. Johnson used to make each year before she passed… and stuff like that. In Richmond, the ladies of the town grange sell baked beans, sandwiches, donuts, cookies, and what have you; their baked beans are semi-legendary. Then after that, we come back together for anything else people want to bring up. If someone wants to introduce a motion to declare war on North Dakota, they can do that. If they vote to declare the town a nuclear-weapons-free zone, they can do that too. This year a lot of towns passed resolutions taking a stance against climate change.

It’s a day for democracy on a very local level.

My duties as name-checker and ballot-hander-outer kept on going during the meeting proper; I had my back to the rows and rows of chairs facing the stage where the moderator and selectboard were seated, but I could hear everything just fine. It was sort of amusing watching voters — the ones who came by just to cast their ballot for town offices and the school board budget — blanch as they realized they were going to have to cross in front of everyone to get to the voting booths.

The town budget presentation was pretty straightforward and nothing strange happened during the ensuing discussion … which kind of disappointed me.

See, I’ve rarely made it to Town Meeting in the past; I’m one of the working stiffs whose job just doesn’t lend itself to taking a day off midweek to hang out with my fellow voters at the school. But this one time that I did go — probably about fifteen years or so ago — the discussion relating to the school budget was absolutely hilarious. (This was back when the school budget was discussed and voted on in the town meeting proper; they subsequently changed it to Australian ballot because it was getting voted down in open meeting too often.) It’s not unusual for people whose kids are grown and gone, or who never had kids in the first place, to question the need for “spending so much” on the schools. And so that one time, people kept trying to amend the budget to remove this line item or that line item in the name of saving a token few thousand dollars. The poor town moderator had to keep explaining that the content of the budget was not up for vote; the school board is entrusted with that. The only thing the town voters were legally entitled to do was vote on the total amount to be spent. Voters who objected to a teacher’s aide being funded could move to strike exactly that much money from the budget, and their motion, if passed, would accomplish … pretty much nothing. The school board could still fund that position and reduce a different line item by the amount of the voter-demanded adjustment. (It’s like saying “I object to you spending $15 of your salary on that punk rock CD, son, so I’m reducing your allowance by $15.” Son’s still going to buy the CD.)

But anyway, since the school budget was moved to Australian ballot a few years ago, the 2019 town meeting budget discussion focused entirely on the town budget — highways and roads, police, stuff like that. And while there were a few questions, it wasn’t really a controversial issue. We didn’t even count the votes; it was just one big “ALL IN FAVOR: AYE ALL OPPOSED nay THE BUDGET PASSES” thing.

And then the meeting broke for lunch in the cafeteria. I stayed put, because I was so into my “HEY LOOKA ME I’M A JUSTICE OF THE PEACE AND TOWN ELECTIONS OFFICIAL” thing and wanted to keep on looking names up and handing out ballots.

After an hour or so for lunch, about half the crowd that had been there in the morning trooped back in and attended to “new business”. .. which mostly consisted of random complaining about this and that (parking in the “downtown” area, such as it is, especially). No motions were introduced and there was nothing to vote on. So we wrapped it up and all the attendees went home or off to work … and my fellow election officials and I got back down to the important business of … looking voters’ names up in the book and handing them ballots.

Voters kept coming by all afternoon, but it was pretty slow. We had more than enough bodies on hand to do the work of the ballot-handing-out, so I excused myself and went home and fed the cats and came back around 5:00 to be there for the after-work voting rush, such as it was. That was when Carole came by to vote; I got her to take several photos of me being all Mister Important and stuff, but alas, the volunteer working with me at the table for the people with last names starting with letters A through L told me she did not like having her picture taken and did not want me posting photos of her, so this is what you get — cropped (see below). I’m sure, though, that the excitement and drama still comes through.[spacer height=”20px”]

At seven pm, we closed the doors and wrapped up. It took about ten seconds to find out the results — the tabulation machine spat out a tape with the total votes for each office and ballot question. (We only had two contested offices — one Selectboard seat and one seat on the Library Trustees. Neither wound up being especially close.)

But then came the real fun — the school budget. Richmond is part of a consolidated school district with four other towns — Huntington, Bolton, Jericho, and Underhill. Two JPs from each of those towns had to take their locked school board ballot box and bring it to our voting location, since we’re central. And two of us Richmond election officials had to stay as well (I, of course, had volunteered). We had to open the boxes, take out the big pink cards with “shall the budget blah blah blah be adopted YES NO” on it, and “commingle” them. Meaning, we had to dump them all on a table – over 2,000 of them – and sort of mix them around with our hands before gathering them back into stacks to feed manually into the tabulators. The idea was that by mixing the ballots up we wouldn’t know how the vote had gone in any given town, even though the ballots had no town-of-origin mark on ’em. (I honestly didn’t see the point, but who am I to argue with tradition?)

With two tabulators and three humans feeding the ballots into each, one by one, it took us about an hour to feed them all in.

SHEER EXCITEMENT.

And then when all was said and done, the budget passed by a wide margin. I was very glad about that, because frankly, it drives me crazy how some towns’ voters seem to take an infantile joy voting down their school budget over and over. I’ve seen towns have to hold follow-up budget votes three times before they finally manage to pass a revised budget. After each failure, the school board has to go and meet and issue a revised, lower, budget proposal. And, of course, a lot fewer people come out for the subsequent votes, so typically it’s the people with a real axe to grind who show up to cast a ballot. No wonder it can take multiple tries to get a school budget passed. So, like I said, I was very glad our budget passed; thrilling as the exercise of my official responsibilities was, I don’t want to have to do it again for a year or so.

People always ask “Why don’t we hold town meeting on a weekend, or in the evening, or just do away with it entirely and have everything, including the town budget, get voted on by Australian ballot?” The answer? Tradition. No matter what alternate time of day or day of the week you propose, there are always people who object based on various imaginary or real conflicts they’d have. Some towns have moved their meetings, and others have switched to all-Australian-ballot voting, but the vast majority of Vermont towns still do things the old-fashioned way. (If you’re curious, there’s a map that breaks it down.)

I guess it’s those baked beans that the Ladies of the Grange sell. No one wants to miss out on those, right?

Town Meeting Day 2019 You may recall that I've been working on my plans for brutal world domination in my spare time, and lately, those plans took another step forward!

#justice of the peace #politics #vermont

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mobileappdevelopmentservice · 5 years

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The team had an opportunity to speak with Tim, the Founder and CEO at Bookipi about Bookipi – Invoice Maker

Please share with us the backstory of what motivated you to create this app.

I was working in the construction industry around Sydney, and I had up to 14 employees working. I realized that I couldn’t scale my business as much as I wanted to. So I decided to make a change to the tech start-up world. The tech start-up venture seemed scalable, had the potential to make a global impact, and so I made the decision to learn how to design and code. I made websites and other digital products which all ended up failing. In 2016 I started building websites for clients and needed to create invoices. I looked in the mobile app stores and only found bulky, slow, expensive invoice generators. So I decided to build a lightweight free version for myself. By this time I had learned to code in multiple languages: HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL, Javascript, Node.js, AngularJS, React Native, and MongoDB. A few months after releasing the app on Android we received over 50,000 downloads around the world. We received M&A offer from one of the companies in Silicon Valley 2 months after we released the production version. I wasn’t the only one who needed this app.

What features do you hope to roll out to your app in the future?

AI and Machine Learning to help aid our users to save even more time.

Bookipi is currently an Invoice Maker and you can also use it to report your income with professional reports. We’re working on a free Bookipi Expense app (separate app) that can log all your expense data. The reason for separating the apps is so that the apps can stay lightweight. Sign in with your Bookipi login and sync your expenses and income in the reports. We’re not aiming to innovate twice as much as our competitors, but we’re striving to innovate ten times as much. We are recruiting more smart creatives and AI specialists from around the globe to accomplish this.

What has been the most rewarding aspect of the creation of this app?

Daily praise on our support live chat. We filmed stories where we empowered business mums to do their passion business and bring in income for the family through the use of smart technologies ‘Bookipi’ being a big part of their success.

What is the coolest or most innovative feature of your app?

Get paid faster through the use of AI (still in beta testing and not available to market yet). This is the worlds first for an app and we’re very proud of the small team to be developing this feature for our users. Once you create an invoice the AI will learn the best times to send an invoice to get them paid faster and will automatically send them for you at the most optimal times.

What surprised you most in your journey to create this app?

How difficult it was to make an app that appeals to over 179 countries. There are so many currencies, tax regulations, laws and of course languages we needed to cater for. we had to translate Bookipi into 12 most common languages on my own.

Which other mobile apps or technology have inspired you?

Tools like Trello have inspired us to create a modular feature system where our customers can add in the features they need, which further simplifies the app. Most apps have all the features baked into the UI and it could be overwhelming especially if you don’t need 90% of those features. Intercom has also inspired us. There are so many chat services out there, yet Intercom blew this out of the water. They set themselves apart with a game-changing product in their space. We want to make a service like Intercom in the accounting software market.

Do you have any recommendations or advice for others wanting to create a mobile app?

I was working in the construction industry with zero knowledge of IT, Design, Marketing. Through the use of free resources online, Youtube etc. I’ve managed to design, develop and market a successful app competing against multi-billion dollar companies. It’s never too late. I’m currently writing this on a cruise in Europe with my family.

How did you decide which platforms to release your app on and do you plan on releasing your app to other platforms?

We released the first app on Android because that was the phone I had at the time. In order for everyone to experience the best invoice maker app, we eventually developed the app for iOS, Android, Windows, MacOS, Chrome extension, Gmail Addon and even the browser.

Simple Invoice Maker Bookipi (Free, App Store) →

How is your app different than the rest of the market? Which unique need does it fill?

UX, speed, and simplicity of the app. Bookipi is the only invoice generator with a modular feature system where users can add in the features they need, which keeps the UI much more simple. Other applications have 100% of the features in the menu which can be overwhelming.

The major difference between Bookipi and the rest of the market is that we’re very focused on who we’re serving, we specifically targeted the small businesses and freelancers who just need to send invoices on the go, get paid on the go and do easy accounting with a press of a button. Due to having a clear target market, we have little to no overheads. If we compare our app feature to feature and usability, we can stand against the much larger invoice maker apps yet have a complete freemium model.

Some of these competitors have over 100 employees, their customers are paying to sustain these company overheads. We’ve got plans to bring the most innovative features for small businesses. We also have plans to integrate AI technology into our product to help our user receive their payment faster and efficiently. We are looking for more talented people who can accomplish this. Only once we master this app for our users, we will look at expanding for a bigger market.

The unique need Bookipi fills is ‘it saves small businesses time and makes them money even quicker’.

For more information, visit: https://bookipi.com

Free Invoice Maker - Billing & Estimate generator (Free, Google Play) →

Posted in Mobile App Spotlight on November 10, 2018, You can view Bookipi here

The post Bookipi – Invoice Maker – App Spotlight Interview appeared first on AppStory - App Story and Review and CEO Interview.

via AppStory – App Story and Review and CEO Interview

#IFTTT #AppStory – App Story and Review and CEO Interview

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outspokenfan · 6 years

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Home economics …. You remember that course in school? The course that taught young adults a certain set of life skills. Mention “Home Economics” and people have to google it to find out what it is. The word almost sounds like a foreign language.

I remember having this course in middle school and my freshman year in high school although I already did these things at home. Well, Home economics really needs to make a comeback for today’s youth and young adults.

Home Ec. It’s starts at home first. Schools should be teaching this course. I tried to get a home economics course implemented and not a lot of people signed. It didn’t interest them one bit. I actually got laughed at? It bothered me and hurt me because everything is being outsourced now.

I go into people homes and the house is a mess. It’s not organized, nobody is cleaning or cooking. Beds are not made. There’s no discipline. Home economics teaches you how to be creative and resourceful. My mom had me in the kitchen when I was a baby.

I had toy cleaning appliances (I guess that’s why I fell in love with vacuuming lol), books and writing material as a kid. I had chores. Kids today you tell them to clean and cook they look at you like you’re crazy. They rather be on social media. People think I’m crazy for caring so much about domestic life. I wish more people cared because it spells neglect when your home is out-of-order. Parents today can’t get their kids to clean or cook for nothing.

But they reward them with everything. Kids want so much but do so little. They don’t earn anything and they are spoiled. Can’t put down their phones and have a real conversation. So many people spend time on social media and can’t make a meal to save their life. How do you burn water? Todays youth All they care about is likes, having the latest gadgets, clothes, money, make up, being naked, gossiping.

You have relationships goals…. What about time management goals and washing dishes, doing laundry and cooking goals? I’ve had some women in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and above tell me “I was too busy getting my college education to learn how to cook.” “Or my mom didn’t teach me.”

Some men say the same thing. But as women we give life, the first person a child comes to is their mother. But some women rather watch a cooking video instead of actually cooking. That’s their excuse for not cooking for themselves or their family. But thats their excuse for not knowing how to keep house and cook and I see these bad habits trickle over to their kids.

I know it’s not the 80s and 90s anymore. Oh how I wish it was…

Parents today are not teaching their kids important life skills that will take them further in life. They’re not thinking that their child is going to leave home one day and have to fend for themselves or their family. You don’t have to be a great cook but one should know how to do basic things in the kitchen. One should know what proper cookware, dinnerware, silverware is. One should know what a paring knife is and how to do measurements.

How to slice and dice, how to sauté, know how to store perishable and non perishable items. One should know how to bake and make things from scratch. They might actually enjoy it. I hear I don’t have time… Well my answer to that is…. we make time for what’s important to us. Maybe I’m dreaming and fantasizing about going back to these simpler times because I’m a domesticated and I’m a minimalist. I’m too nurturing (I am a cancer lol)😏.

Agree with me or not you can be independent, but both men and women should have these sets of skills. When people leave their kids with me. If their homework and chores are not done, no TV, no social media, no going outside to play. I’m not your mother, I will have your child quiet and helping around the house and learning something and reading and writing. They will know how to make their bed, do dishes, do laundry and know how to help with food prepped.

I will have them in bed at a decent time. Thats because this is what my mom taught me before she suddenly passed. Me being this way used to annoy me in my adult life with conversations with men, because men kept wanting to marry me in a few minutes because I’m domesticated. Never taking the time to get to know me as a person. I had to hide it and not talk about it. Because to them it’s hard to find women who are like this.

But I embrace it I take pride in it. I don’t judge myself because I guess excited over household appliance instead of shoes and make up LOL. It’s not my thing as a woman. My face doesn’t need to be BEAT or on FLEEK, lol (damn the terminology people use today😐) I don’t need to post selfies 24/7 and have the world see what I’m up to. I’d rather be in the kitchen creating art. Being nurturing, cooking and cleaning this spells love to me.

This pleases God. It makes you feel better at the end of the day. Your home is where you spend the most time. This tells me that you care for your loved ones enough to make them a meal. I just feels the wrong values are being taught in today’s world. Home economics is so much more than just knowing how to cook and sew. When you learn important life skills at home and in the classroom it helps you become a better adult in society.

Home economics really needs to make a comeback. What do you think? I would love to know.

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Home Economics….. Where Did It Go And How Do We Bring It Back? Home economics .... You remember that course in school? The course that taught young adults a certain set of life skills.

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sobeardtastemaker-blog · 6 years

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12 Priceless Mini-Lessons from John Reese

New Post has been published on https://www.elimarketing.org/12-priceless-mini-lessons-from-john-reese/

12 Priceless Mini-Lessons from John Reese

In light of my upcoming 40th birthday, I want to share 12 valuable mini-lessons that I’ve learned so far as an entrepreneur… These range from mistakes to avoid, to making strategic decisions, of how to get cash flow to come in the fastest, etc. They are in no particular order…

1. ALWAYS DO MORE THAN IS EXPECTED OF YOU

I learned this at an early age from my Dad. He had a very successful career as a business executive and engineer, and this the core principle that created his success. You can apply this to your business in many ways… over-delivering to your customers, giving unexpected bonuses to your employees or outsourced workers, and more. Most people do just the bare minimum. Do more than is expected of you and it will do amazing things for your business.

2. STOP DREAMING AND START DOING

Too many entrepreneurs get caught up in the big dreams of how they will one day be rich and how their life will be amazing… …but they never end up doing anything. They buy courses, read all they can, jot down little notes and ideas in a notebook, but nothing ever actually gets created. A web site doesn’t get made. Advertising isn’t run. Markets aren’t tested. Nothing. If you want to make a lot of money the only way that happens is getting stuff done. Period.

3. DON’T LET LEARNING DELAY ACTIVITY

Most people that have studied Internet Marketing much already have the basic skills that are needed to build a million-dollar business. That’s worth REPEATING… Most people that have studied IM much ALREADY HAVE the basic skills that are needed to build a million-dollar business. You can get stuck learning new stuff FOREVER. There will always be new methods and techniques that get discovered. The Internet changes on a DAILY BASIS. This is a given. Don’t get caught in the trap of “I’m going to start building my business right after I go through this next course…” You can start building your business TODAY while you are studying and learning new things that you can easily apply TOMORROW. Things will NEVER perfectly align for you and your business. There’s no such thing. So don’t wait. Get started NOW and take action. Get some stuff going and go from there.

4. MULTIPLE IDEAS CAN BE THE KISS OF DEATH

It’s okay to work on multiple projects and ideas. It’s almost impossible to stop entrepreneurs from having tons of new ideas at the same time. BUT… No new money comes in the door until you get ONE project launched and making money. Something has to be launched FIRST.

5. MAKE JUST ONE DOLLAR FIRST

No one has ever made a million dollars in sales without generating $1 first. ALL successful businesses start with that first sale and then grow from there. It doesn’t matter what your income goals are. The faster you make your first dollar, the faster you will reach your goals. PERIOD.

6. DO THE IMMEDIATE CASH PROJECT FIRST

What should you work on next? Whatever will bring in cash the fastest for your business — and of course, I mean that in a moral/legal/ethical way. If you analyze all the great ideas you are probably sitting on, I bet you can realistically prioritize them in the order of which ones would actually make money come in the fastest (if it succeeds.) THAT is the project you need to focus on. Cash is the lifeblood of your business (and your life.) Save some of those “big” ideas for the future. Focus on the ones that stand the best chance of getting new money to come in right away. Once you have some stable ongoing cash flow in your business, then you can take a chance on that project that may take longer to pay off.

7. EMAIL MARKETING KICKS THE CRAP OUT OF EVERYTHING ELSE

When it comes to growing a business online, nothing generates long-term cash flow like an email list of engaged subscribers & customers. Email marketing is the best way to generate traffic. It’s the best way to ‘recycle’ the same visitors again and again to any of your projects. It’s also the best way to convert prospects into buyers. RSS, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, BLAH BLAH BLAH Yes, those methods can generate leads. Yes, those methods can generate some sales. But time and time again little old email marketing kicks their butts — by a long shot. So make building a list, and a solid relationship with it, a top priority in your business.

8. RUN A LEAN OVERHEAD MACHINE

I can’t stress this one enough. When you start growing a successful business it’s really easy for your overhead to get out of hand. It’s easy to start hiring a bunch of people and committing to a bunch of expenses. Take it from me, when you have months where your fixed expenses (doesn’t include advertising, etc.) are well over $100,000/MONTH (and growing) it can put you in a tough position to make healthy profits. I used to have fixed overhead that high but never again. I realized there were smarter ways to do things. What you need to realize is that REVENUE doesn’t mean jack squat. It’s your profit (income) that matters. So while running a $10,000,000/year business (sales) is impressive, I know people running a $1,000,000/year business that nets MORE than the person that owns the $10MM/year business. It all comes down to your expenses. Sometimes it certainly DOES take heavy expenses in order to make a lot of money. But that’s not my point… My point is, your overhead can really get away from you. If your sales experience some dips, and it’s almost guaranteed they will at some point, then you can LOSE YOUR BUTT very quickly. So add to your overhead as a last resort.

9. MAKE ACCOUNTING A PRIORITY

This is a big mistake that most entrepreneurs make — and I’ve been guilty of it as well. Keeping the books and doing accounting work is the LAST thing that most entrepreneurs want to mess with. We have more fun by coming up with new ideas and trying to make them grow — not spending hours of our time inputting receipts and figures into QuickBooks. If you don’t like accounting, immediately pay someone a few bucks to handle it for you. Just make sure your accounting is always up to date. It’s very important. As an extension of this, make paying your taxes a priority — even if you pay them in advance. I have paid a small fortune in tax penalties because of being lazy and filing late. And it’s too easy to let one delay turn into another and for the problem to get worse. So make it a priority. Don’t “rob Peter to pay Paul.” This is a trap most entrepreneurs fall into — again, I’ve been guilty of it in the past myself. It’s easy to start making a bunch of money and think “I’ll just use this money to make more money instead of paying my taxes on it now and I’ll just pay the taxes later after I’ve made even more money.” Or the same thinking is applied towards delaying payments to a vendor, or some other expense that needs to get paid. This is probably the #1 mistake entrepreneurs make that can create problems and a lot of wasted money in paying penalties and interest. So make sure your accounting is taken care of and your taxes get paid on-time for you.

10. DON’T LEASE OFFICE SPACE

(If possible.) As tempting as this might become if your business starts to grow, avoid it at all costs. If you’re like me, what will happen is that you will eventually stop going to the office and just work from home where you always were more comfortable anyway. And/or you will end up realizing you really didn’t need it. Having an “office” is not required to have a successful business. We live in a Digital World now and it’s just not important anymore. Even if your business grows and you need employees, you still don’t necessarily need an office. There are people out there running $20MM+/year businesses with no office; the employees all just work virtually. This is becoming more and more common. * There certainly are exceptions to this. My team in the Philippines works out of an office I leased. But they are collaborating on software projects and NEED to work in the same location. And, of course, it’s also very inexpensive. Most office leases are thousands of dollars per month and usually don’t turn out to be a good use of cash.

11. ALMOST EVERYTHING TAKES LONGER

When creating new projects, or having some software made for you, or having an ebook ghostwritten, or anything else, know that things almost always take more time than originally expected. This is the #1 reason why you need to act TODAY to start putting things in motion to grow your business. The longer you wait, the more into the future you push your potential of getting money to come in the door.

12. THE MONEY IS IN THE MARKETING

Don’t get caught up in trying to make Web pages and learn HTML, or studying how to create javascript, or learning to master Linux so you can administer your own server, or how to use Photoshop to create little logos, etc. You can certainly do that stuff if you want, but know that it will most likely just be a HOBBY. It’s no surprise that some of the most successful entrepreneurs I know are also some of the LEAST TECHNICAL people I know. The main thing they do right is to simply pay others to do all the “nuts & bolts” stuff that makes online business work. It allows them to spend all their time on the marketing — which is where the money comes from. *** BONUS LESSON *** * See how I’m over-delivering as mentioned in the first lesson? SPENDING TIME ONLINE ISN’T NECESSARILY WORKING ON YOUR BUSINESS Just because you spend hours a day online doesn’t mean you’re working on your business. You can do ‘research’ forever and never make a cent. You need to be spending most of your time on: — Generating Traffic — Communicating With Your Customers (i.e. blog, list, etc.) — Creating Content Don’t fall into the trap of reading blogs & forums, chatting on Facebook or Twitter, checking stats, reading news, etc. for hours upon hours. Just know that almost all of that stuff (with rare exception) is LOSING YOU MONEY more than making you money. — I hope you enjoyed these mini-lessons. Hopefully, you can apply them to your business and be a lot more successful! Yours For Online Profits, John Reese

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msblue-books-blog · 6 years

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As I mentioned in my last post, I was planning on visiting the Isle of Wight. I booked my ticket in advance, since I understand traveling on a ferry is not like hotels; where you can get a discount if you rock up late.

It is not cheap to move a van to the Isle of Wight. Why anyone goes there is beyond me. If I didn’t have friends there I probably would have just said sod to the whole thing. What didn’t help was that I got the return trip for 80 quid, only to have my session time out and have the price go up to 150. Sneaky internet. Of course I didn’t pay that much, I went down to the Red Funnel office and made nice with the receptionist who helped me out and got my tickets back down to 100. Although such a price came with a 5:15AM ferry (Having spent a lot of my life working night shifts I’m at least used to such a horrible wake up time, although the ordeal was still painful).

On top of that, I have to admit, I was a bit nervous about taking the ferry. I haven’t taken a ferry since I was about ten and at the time I, obviously, was not responsible for driving, or anything much beyond nagging my parents to feed me. This time was rather different, having to drive onto the ferry in Enid; the fantastic gear dropping camper van.

I am pleased to report it was quite uneventful, although rather exciting, since, Enid being so tall, I got put right in the belly of the boat with all the lorry’s and some heavy duty crane equipment that was being moved.

I collected the animals, got myself an absurdly overpriced coffee and enjoyed watching the sun rise as I sailed across with some very unhappy pets.

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First impression; that there is a weird high vis vest trend on the Isle of Wight.

I thought at first it was just because I was seeing dock workers, but no, people out walking their dogs early, kids on their way to school. I met up with my friend in McDonalds for a coffee and everyone except us was wearing a high vis vest. I rather felt that I should get one to blend in.

My friend met me in McD’s near the port because they were heading out (to return in the evening) as I was coming in. We parted ways after a disgusting McD’s breakfast, him giving me directions to his place on the very south of the island in a village called Ventna.

I did not realize how small the Isle of Wight actually is.

Took me half an hour to get there.

Of course, the first thing I did was take Caspian and try to find the beach. It was an easy task accomplished in ten minutes and, although the sand beach is quite small, it is very nice, clean sand with a variety of places to eat and drink along the front, and a costal path running up the cliffs either side.

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I found a dinosaur maze, which I had to go in because it was advertised as both free and amazing, and how often do you find something like that?

Me and Caspian spent our first afternoon running up and down the hills and enjoying the sea air, and that night we were taken out (because Ventna is one of those place where dogs are welcome everywhere, which gets it a tick from me) to experience a night out in the village.

Now, for those not in the know (like I wasn’t before I rocked up) but the Isle of Wight, being situated where it is, i.e. directly between Brazil and the rest of the UK, is quite a cheap place to go and find drugs, are you so inclined.

It’s personally not to my tastes, but it apparently is to…. Pretty much everyone on the Isle of Wight. It makes for a slightly more relaxed atmosphere than you might find in the average pub, which was nice, although the flip side of it is it’s very difficult to understand a large portion of the people in there.

But still, the evening was nice, we grabbed some Indian food and I met some of the locals; an absurdly rude man and his lovely son, a woman known to most people because she refuses to move on from the 80’s and take her thigh high sparkly boots off, and a girl who, don’t get me wrong was lovely to talk to, but unusual to me in that she had not only never left the Isle of Wight, but was reluctant to even leave the town of Ventna.

I actually found this reluctance to be a recurring theme the longer I stayed. I started to suspect the residents of Ventna were under the influence of some sophoriphic drug, perhaps something in the water, as no one seemed willing to leave, the main town of Newport being “such a long way” (remember my comment earlier on how tiny the island is) , and I was worried about my leaving early Friday morning as I started to wonder if, in true horror move fashion, I would wake to find my tires gone and a note on my windscreen saying “It’s such a long way, now you can stay.”

This lethargy wasn’t just in people’s personal attitudes though, it was also in their professional outlook. It baffles me how anything ever gets done out there. Everyone is late for everything, shops just don’t open if they don’t feel like it, my friend openly admitted to having gone through near ten tradesman before he found one even willing to turn up. One day there I ventured into Newport (despite the apparent distance) with the aim of getting my laptop repaired. Of the four IT repair shops in Newport only one of them would take it, the rest shrugged and yawned and one of the guys was obviously so off his face I’m not 100% sure he thought I was real.

I’m sure the last man I spoke to only deigned to look at my laptop because I got quite upset, “I will pay literally anything for you to fix this,” I begged him. It was true enough, it is difficult to write and blog with no laptop after all.

He took it for an hour, inspected it and then gave it back to me, still sodding broken!! Refusing to do anything else because he “can’t figure what’s wrong. It’s broken though.” How foolish of me, to have brought my broken laptop into a computer repair shop!

Calm now.

In all fairness he didn’t charge me at least, but I’m very confused as to how Island businesses make money if this is how they all function.

But, laptop frustration aside, the Isle of Wight is actually very nice for a holiday or if you’re getting to that stage of your life when you don’t mind things moving infuriatingly slowly.

Because it is beautiful and, even though my friends have only been living there four months, they can’t go into town without getting caught up in conversation with someone else because there’s this great community feel. The weather is lovely. I’m here in the middle of October and it’s been sunny five days out of seven.

I had quite a fitness week, went on a few runs along the beach, went to my friends Pilate’s class. I almost joined in a senior’s dance event with 50s/60s music, but I left before things really picked up so I missed the best bits (like my friend realizing her knickers were too loose and dancing the whole event commando, because she’s a classy girl).

We did have another night out where we went to see live music, from a guitarist who was a session guitarist for Pink Floyd back in the day. He was really good. Although I will admit I had to leave half way through, since I had been up

since about 4 looking for a certain dog, who decided to take herself for a walk.

Now, I don’t want you guys to think I’m a bad owner. But the first evening when we went out my friend offered to let me sleep in their spare bed, exhausted from Southampton and a little sniffley with possibly the beginnings of a cold, I was quite keen on a warm night’s sleep in a real bed.

However, the catch was Caspian could not come in the house, because the resident cats were frightened of her.

It would be fine, I reasoned, for one night, as long as I checked on her first and last thing, and made sure Enid was secure and out the way.

I woke up at four in the morning feeling terrible, wracked with quilt, and ran out the house to see her.

And Caspian had escaped.

This is why we can’t have nice things.

I’ll save you the worry and assure you I did find her, or, more accurately, the dog warden did. So that was our (expensive) drama for the week.

One more thing worth mentioning about the Isle of Wight that doesn’t really fit well into this story was my friend’s ring. I didn’t realize but there are a few pearl farms on the Isle of Wight and she’d been hoping to get a ring from one for a while, and did so while I was visiting, I’d like to share it here because it was actually very pretty.

Drama and professional frustrations aside, the week was nice, sea air is always a mood lifter, and it was nice to catch up with the friend I’ve not seen in a few months.

Next time; a flying trip to London.

#travelblog I visit the most relaxed place in the whole of England and nearly get trapped there #isleofwight #animalblog As I mentioned in my last post, I was planning on visiting the Isle of Wight. I booked my ticket in advance, since I understand traveling on a ferry is not like hotels; where you can get a discount if you rock up late.

#Animals #Beach #Camper Full Of Animals #Dog #Ferry #Isle of Wight #Photos

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topicprinter · 6 years

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Hi, I’m Manny. After going back to school, a few failed attempts and finally learning how to code myself, I’m finally officially launching Pocketcoach today: A chatbot for people who struggle with stress and anxiety. 🎉 Here’s how I did it and the lessons I’ve learned.For a long time, it bothered me that a topic as important as mental health isn’t getting the attention it should. It’s not taught in schools, not on the job, and only the luckiest among us learn from their parents what it takes to live a happy life.But mental health is a huge issue. Everybody on this planet is trying to live a happy life — one way or another. Nobody chooses to suffer. But so many of us are struggling with our mental health. It’s not as obvious as other problems because it can often be hard to see what’s going on inside a person. But it’s everywhere — whether we acknowledge it or not.I wanted to do something about that. It became clear, the only way to do this is going back to school again and get some psychology training. Specifically, I enrolled in the most fascinating course imaginable. Applied Positive Psychology. Instead of mainly focusing on what’s wrong with people, positive psychology is an umbrella term for research that wants to figure out what’s right with people, what makes them happy and what we can do to become happier. Learning all that was great and I really loved it but there’s this strange problem: All these interesting insights that could really help people in their daily lives didn’t really make it out of academia. Many academic papers are never even read by anyone except for their authors and journal editors. That’s what I wanted to change; I wanted to make all those fascinating insights and tools to live a better life available to as many people as possible. And the best way to do this, I thought, was to use technologyStep 1: Goal-coaching via WhatsApp. I started off with WhatsApp-based coaching to help people reach their goals. The idea was to text people twice a day — once in the morning and once in the evening — to help them set goals, check in with their progress, help overcome obstacles and everything else that’s important for reaching one’s goals. (There’s quite a bit of scientific research on this topic, and that can be really useful if you want to make a change in your life.) The goal was to learn about text-based coaching and then automate it. A nice idea but I ended up with a lot of conversations but no way to automate them at all.Messaging with each user twice a day cost me a lot of time. I also had to create graphics and gifs along the way, do marketing and go over old conversations to improve them. My early adopters were happy but this simply wasn’t a scalable solution. I couldn’t go on texting people every day for little money. It was a hard decision but I realized it was time to move on.Step 2: Typeforms to the rescue. I had also learned that you can’t just guide people through the same process regardless of whether they’re starting a business or want to lose weight. The obstacles, the timeframe and almost every other aspect of a conversation will be quite different. It might seem obvious, it wasn’t back then. At least not for me. Anyway, I decided to focus on the one goal that matters most: living a happy life. And where better to start than with those of us who are currently stressed, anxious and unhappy. From that point on, my focus was to help people build the skills to better cope with anxiety. There are scientifically-validated therapy approaches out there, but how could I make people learn the skills they’d learn in therapy if there was no therapist? I knew I had to make it both simple and engaging. And ideally, add a bit of fun. So here’s how that went: I created a series of lessons and exercises and wanted to bring them into an interactive format. Typeform was the perfect tool for this. In case you don’t know, Typeform is a form-building tool, probably the most elegant and beautiful solution out there. I had to re-purpose it but it worked. Was it interactive and fun? Well, kind of. Could have been better, that's for sure. All kinds of people tried it though— some even kept using it for a long time. But without the technical skills to take this to the next level (and without finding a co-founder who’d go along), I eventually hit the same road block as before. I had developed something that a handful of people liked — but nothing more. And I lacked the skills to improve what I had.Step 3: Do it yourself. At around the same time, Facebook opened its Messenger API for chatbots. I wanted to make use of this new platform but stick to the same concept (small but daily interactive lessons and exercises). That’s when Jemil, a friend in San Francisco who had just gone through a few months of training as a software engineer, agreed to help me get Pocketcoach off the ground. Next to his part-time job, he spent his free time building an initial version of the chatbot. He soon got a full-time job and was out of time but this really made me (finally!) realize: I needed to learn to code if I wanted to create something that really works! And that’s what I did. As Jemil’s version was built in JavaScript, that’s what I started with. I began to learn with freeCodeCamp. It’s simple and free, which was exactly what I wanted. I also started to go through online courses (mostly on Udemy), some of which are truly helpful. And yea, you can also find great videos on Youtube, for free obviously. Reading books on Python helped me the least, I think. What worked best was getting my hands dirty and struggling with real code from day one. After a while, I switched to Python and built Pocketcoach from scratch again. If that was such a smart move or not, I can’t really say. At that time, it seemed like the right decision. Along the way, AWS (Amazon Web Services) really gave me a hard time. Jemil had built the bot on a serverless architecture and I tried to stick with that for as long as I could. AWS really isn’t made for programmers who just get started and there are lots of things that can make it feel overwhelming. Not least their terrible documentation. I eventually decided to abandon the serverless architecture in favor of Python’s popular Django framework. In hindsight, I can say this: I’ve spent way too much time optimizing things that turned out to be irrelevant and I was much too willing to start from scratch just because it seemed like I had run into unsurmountable problems. But the one positive lesson I have learned is that it’s so much easier to learn how to code if you have a project that you truly believe in. I don’t want to bore you with much more detail but this much needs to be said: Along the way, I had help from some of the most amazing people without whom this would have probably been impossible. Just to name the most important ones: Thank you Alex, Ashwin, Gabe, Jemil and Johannes.How Pocketcoach works. So today, I’m finally officially launching Pocketcoach: A chatbot for people who struggle with stress and anxiety. Pocketcoach ‘lives’ in Facebook Messenger and it will message its users once a day. Just like a friend that wants to check in.In small, daily conversations, Pocketcoach users learn to deal with repetitive thoughts and uncomfortable feelings. Step by step and through a combination of exercises, background information and some fun, users build the skills to cope by themselves. And in the end, they will have the tools to live a bit more happily. That’s basically it.Is it going to make a difference? I’m confident it will. No single approach is going to be right for everyone but Pocketcoach clearly does its job. While some people really need the help of a therapist, not everyone wants, needs or has access to professional help. I’ve been testing the beta version for a long time and the most motivating moments were when beta users shared genuinely encouraging feedback.During the last months, this message from a user has been featured on my personal victory board. A place where I save little and big wins to cheer me up when I feel down and need something to get back on my feet again: “I also want to thank you for putting your time and effort into creating Pocketcoach; your help is more valuable than you may realize. I think it’s important to let you know how much it means to have someone be there to help you fight the anxiety. Even if it’s a bot, there’s a team of caring people behind it — so thank you.”Where do things go from here? Truth be told, things are still not perfect. I’ve been working on Pocketcoach for so long that I’m even kind of embarrassed to admit it. I’ve failed before and part of me is scared I might fail again. But I’m doing my best and I keep working towards my goal. I’m truly happy I finally have something to show to the world. But in a way, that’s just the start. My hope is that today’s launch is the next step in making Pocketcoach into something that really makes a difference in some people’s lives.Originally published here: https://medium.com/@pocketcoach/how-i-struggled-failed-then-learned-how-to-code-and-now-finally-launch-on-producthunt-4cbf728c9220

#/r/entrepreneur #reddit

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lewiskdavid90 · 7 years

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95% off #The Complete Web Developer Course 2.0 – $10

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Beginner Level, – 30.5 hours, 297 lectures

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Reviews:

“This is an excellent course that provides in-depth tuition from the very basics to quite advanced concepts. The extras that come with the course are very useful in putting the skills learned to practice, and I feel that I have learned a huge amount from this. Thank you Rob!” (Rebecca Seamer)

“I give it 4 stars because it is great to learn if you are an absolute beginner and being introduced to Web Development for the first time as it covers a great deal of languages. However the only downside is setting up your system for a true workflow of web development. such as integrating in Node.js and github. I’m still a newbie in the world of web development, but learnt early on its important to be familiar with industry standards as a bare minimum and build confidence.” (Gerard Ho)

“I am giving Rob Percival’s Web Development 2.0 course on Udemy 5 stars, if only for the huge amount of content in this course. There is a ton of information (and a lot of good bonuses) with this course that will provide students that are new to Web Development with a good foundation on the topic. As a noob myself, I considered this my 101 Web Development course. After taking this course, I am able to understand the differences between many of the most popular languages and libraries. I can read and recognize these languages and libraries, but I can only code in html and CSS and a little Javascript on my own. So despite the 5-star rating and my overall recommendation of this course, the rest of this review is going to be pretty critical. The intent of this criticism is (1) so save future students frustration by encouraging an approach to the course that will make the experience feel better, and (2) the hope that some of the things I write will encourage the teacher to tweak the course content to make it easier for beginner students to digest. The most frustrating thing about this course were the exercises because they are not easy enough for a beginner to figure out on his or her own, yet he says every time, “I hope you did most of that on your own,” which implies that people who DON’T complete the exercise on their own are falling behind and not absorbing the information well. In the beginning, this made me feel like I was pretty bad at learning the material, and I was especially critical of myself because I have a background in HTML and WordPress. As I got toward the end of the course (I am writing this after finishing everything) I realized that Rob believing everyone should be able to do most of the exercises on their own is a ridiculous notion. Even if a student tries to Google everything, a lot of the time as a beginner I didn’t even know what to search for, so that limited my ability to complete the exercise on my own. My advice to the beginner is to give yourself a time limit to complete each exercise you come to (like an hour or two) or just go ahead and code along with the video. And don’t feel bad about not being able to do it on your own. Additionally, I did one of the exercises at the end of the course but I could not get the code to do what I wanted it to do. I asked for help in the Q&A and the response I got was, “just compare your code to my [Rob’s] code”. I thought that was a bit of a brush off. Of course I compared the code before posting a question. If you think I hadn’t compared the code several times before posting a question,then that’s crazy. After watching 30 hours of video and spending many additional hours working to complete the advanced exercises, that response to my question has the subtext of, “You are lazy and you want me to solve this for you rather than figure it out yourself.” Actually, I compared his and my code multiple times, but sometimes when you’ve stared at your own code next to almost identical code for 2 hours, you don’t see the one semicolon (or whatever) that someone else (especially an expert) will find immediately. In the next section of the course I couldn’t get another page to work (Mastermind exercise). I looked over the code 8 times, comparing mine to his, and couldn’t find what was different. I didn’t bother to submit that one to the Q&A. I guess I’ll never know what went wrong… Also, I don’t know why the bonus section is there. That part is definitely way beyond what is taught in this course, but I suppose he can say it is there and pitch it as part of the course. CONCLUSION: Yes, take this course if you are a beginner because it is a great value and will give you a good foundation, but if you get frustrated and feel that the exercises are beyond the foundation material in each section, then you are probably right. Just keep plugging away, don’t believe him when he says, “You should have been able to do a lot of this yourself,” and have faith that some” (Leslie Lello)

About Instructor:

Rob Percival

Hi! I’m Rob. I have a degree in Mathematics from Cambridge University and you might call me a bit of coding geek. After building websites for friends and family for fun, I soon learned that web development was a very lucrative career choice. I gave up my successful (and sometimes stressful) job as a teacher to work part time and today, couldn’t be happier. I’m passionate about teaching kids to code, so every summer I run Code School in the beautiful city of Cambridge. I also run the popular web hosting and design service, Eco Web Hosting which leaves me free to share my secrets with people like you. You wouldn’t believe the freedom that being a web developer offers. Sign up and find out for yourself why so many people are taking and recommending this course. I genuinely believe it’s the best on the market and if you don’t agree, I’ll happily refund your money. Sign up to my courses and join me in this amazing adventure today.

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The post 95% off #The Complete Web Developer Course 2.0 – $10 appeared first on Udemy Cupón/ Udemy Coupon/.

from Udemy Cupón/ Udemy Coupon/ http://coursetag.com/udemy/coupon/95-off-the-complete-web-developer-course-2-0-10/ from Course Tag https://coursetagcom.tumblr.com/post/155346203373

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topicprinter · 6 years

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#/r/startups #reddit

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