Go: State championships, regular sessions and Toowoomba Tsubaki Taikai

With full rhythms slowly returning to our new normal, I’m wanting to rekindle our regular Go sessions on USQ Toowoomba campus with the aim of supporting/building numbers of regular players.

I am going to propose Thursday lunchtime 12.30–1.30 pm in the Refectory (R-block) USQ Toowoomba campus. If there is better interest for another time/day we will shift to that time slot, so do let me know either directly or in the comments.

The first major event on the Queensland Go calendar is the State Championships, set for the weekend of 5–6 February in Brisbane, with the handicapped division running Saturday and open division on Sunday. The QGS AGM will be run during lunch on Saturday.

Cost is $30/25 (full/concession) with a $5 early bird discount if you register before 30 January. This price includes full financial membership of the Queensland Go Society. The tournament will be using a Japanese rule set Horatio Davis (Horatio@go.org.au 0466 983 474) is the tournament director and can answer any specific questions you may have.

The second event we are working towards in the inaugural Toowoomba Tsubaki Taikai (Toowoomba Camellia Competition), to be held on a yet to be confirmed weekend day in September and tied in with Toowoomba’s Carnival of Flowers. It gives everyone plenty of time to practice and brush up their skills!

I hope to see a few of you on Thursdays!

Dojo housekeeping

Just a quick note on housekeeping in the dojo for the next few weeks.

First, we are still on a “monitor” setting regarding our COVID protocols for this week. This means that if you have been in the greater Brisbane area since 2 January, we would ask that for one more week you please wear a mask to, during, and from training. Many thanks to all kendoka that have gone back to mask wearing during jigeiko and kata this week past. We will hopefully get back to less restricted breathing from next week.

Second, could I again ask that everyone please give thought to where they will be storing their equipment when in the dojo. We have had some brief discussions regarding giving clear way access to where we are currently storing our mats, and to think about how we might make things as tidy as possible for when we are in the dojo. I will be giving things a bit more attention this week and see what we can come up with.

Finally, just a confirmation that I have an online class I am participating in on Tuesday night, so will be leaving may classes in the capable hands of Brady for jujutsu and Sian/Tracy for iaido. Will hope to catch up with everyone Thursday/Saturday!

And we are back to (almost) regular programming…

Our run of rainy weather appears to have broken for the moment and one of the first orders for this week is to get out into the garden and trim back the rampant growth. On the Club front, I will be continuing to chip away at small projects and bits of maintenance that will help set us up for the year ahead.

I wanted to thank everyone who contributed to the success of Keiko Hajime for this year. We had the largest number of members attending our kickoff event for the year, and some excellent still and video taken. Many thanks to Grant Vickery for forgoing training and instead offering his considerable talent at photography for the evening. Thanks too for Michael C and Daen F’s excellent sessions through the evening, to Matt G and Tamara K for making this the first beginning event to be experienced outside of Toowoomba, and of course to everyone who showed up and made the evening the success that it was.

Tomorrow marks the first full week of “normal programming”. However, with the unfolding COVID situation, please check with your relevant instructors or discipline coordinators if there are any additional or specific requirement you will need to follow in the dojo. For those who are logging in to the Club’s on-line offerings, all the Zoom links have been renewed for the new year, and ought be working as usual. Again let myself or your relevant instructor/coordinator know if you are having any difficulties logging in.

And finally, to make some comment on the year ahead of us. 2021 will no doubt throw up its own unique challenges, both in terms of stressors and opportunities at both he Club and at the individual level. Together we can rise to meet these, and make good on the promise that last week’s start to the year offered. Take care, be well, and as always, I will look forward to seeing you in the dojo!

Happy New Year! See you at keiko hajime (6 pm Tuesday 5th January)

I hope that this post finds you well rested after our two(ish) weeks away from the dojo and the enjoyable distractions of the festive season.

Tomorrow evening will be an excellent opportunity to positively kick off your training year and reconnect with the broader BBRD community as we commit to hatsugeiko (first training) and kagami biraki (breaking the barrel) with vignette training and demonstrations from most of our supported disciplines and a light supper of sushi, mochi, tea and sake to end with.

Could I ask that everyone who is intending to be be there tomorrow night reconfirm with either discipline coordinators or myself no later than 10 am Tuesday morning so that we can appropriately cater for supper afterwards. Visitors are welcome, but they will have to register so that they can be catered for, and to meet our COVID obligations.

This year, we will be broadcasting the event via Zoom, so those not physically located in Toowoomba can join in. The link for the night is:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85949564593?pwd=QXVkcW9wUjFZaHpFSnhPQk1ocldhdz09

We will be starting to set up for the night from 6 pm at the BBRD Honbu dojo, upstairs in the Clive Berghofer Recreation Centre 20 Baker Street Darling Heights. Please be there on time to help with the set up, as this is an important part of both mental and physical preparations for the year. For those observing, or beaming in via Zoom, we will be kicking off activity for the evening from 6.30 pm and will be running through till around 9.30 pm (a usual Tuesday night’s training).

I am really looking forward to seeing everyone there tomorrow night. 2020 has been such a mixed year of frustration, disruption and amazing opportunity and progress for the Club, and I want for all of us to celebrate that and commit to the year ahead.

Club Calendars and creative content for 2021

One of my usual summer projects for the past eight years has been putting together a Club calendar with photos from the previous year’s events.

Unfortunately, with the interruptions of this past year and the cancellation of many of the regular events that we would take these photos at, this year’s effort has been more relegated to a retrospective of the Club’s photographic history. While the thumbnail image for this post is the only 2020 photo in the calendar, I’m sure that you will enjoy some of the less seen photos from previous years, and as always, the calendar contains useful dates for USQ and CQU academic calendars as well as known events of interest to the Club. I have ordered a few spare copies, so if you are interested in securing one please let me know. It will be strictly first in best dressed.

I’d also like to encourage everyone to take some more pictures and video of what we do this year. Aside from an eye to the 2022 calendar, I am also wanting to create some more promotional videos in the vein of the one I’ve made for Kendo. For those that have not had a chance to see it, you can find it on our You Tube channel, or by following the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQkjDd-ICHg

I’m hoping that we can push a bit more content through our social media channels this year. The more copy we have, the better this will be. Also, for those of you interested, we have placed an updated and clarified set of policies regarding privacy and media/image rights in the Club’s policy repository on the website. You can view those statement by following this link.

New contactless sign-in procedure

With community transmission of COVID still rattling around south of the border, it is important that we remain vigilant with our established protocols. While it can seem like a chore, particularly when there have been no community cases in Queensland, we all need to continue to do our part to keep both us and the community safe.

Government regulations for registering attendance at all venues changed just before Christmas. Specifically, the paper version we have been using since July is no longer adequate to meet our obligations. In response to this, I have created a QR-code-linked database that you will be able to access from your smart phone and and input all of your relevant details.

You need register your details using the QR code regardless of whether you are training or simply being a spectator.

I will be providing an update to our COVID planning (and other policy documents) in the next fortnight to fully reflect some of the recent changes that have taken place in the past few months. However, it would still be worthwhile having a look at our existing policy documents regarding COVID precautions and indeed other aspects of the training environment too.

Remember, if you are unwell you must stay away from the dojo. If you are experiencing any COVID symptoms, even mildly, you must get a test for COVID and remain away from the dojo till you have returned a negative test.

Happy Solstice! Be well, be safe and be back in the New Year

Today is a final Budo Blog for the year. We had our last official class yesterday, with our online Flexifitters gathering for a final formal stretch, and last drinks for Kendo, Iaido and Jujutsu on Saturday afternoon. It seems fitting that today is the summer solstice, which for me always marks the beginning of the transition into a new year, and signals an opportunity for a pause from the usual hubbub of life.

We now go on a formal break for a fortnight, returning for keiko hajime on Tuesday 5 January. We are hoping that this year we will be able to beam in the wider Club diaspora on the 5th to participate in our formal start to the year. We would love to have friends and supporters join the event, and you can do so by using Zoom:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88519597219?pwd=MXgyU09kMEpYNnFteDBEUDBKaXhxQT09
Meeting ID: 885 1959 7219
Passcode: 339468

We will be kicking things off shortly after 6 pm Toowoomba time, starting with some formalities and then demonstrations of a number of the arts that the Club supports. Join from the start, or if you like, pull up with some of your own sushi, mochi, tea and/or sake and share a light meal at the end of the demonstration sessions (which ought be around 8.45 pm Toowoomba time).

I hope that everyone finds the time to rest and recharge over the next two weeks. 2020 has been a year of change, resilience, and adaption as we have all been forced to deal with the random hand presented us. The year coming will not be with out this own challenges, but i think that the enduring lesson from this year past is that individually, and with the collective support of our community, we are certainly more than capable of rising to meet it.

Take care everyone, keep up your own individual practice over the next fortnight, and I will look forward to seeing everyone in the new year!

Wrapping things up for the year

The promise of December rain has arrived with some conviction in South East Queensland, and we are looking at some big totals today and over the coming days. I would like to wish everyone a safe week when venturing outside, even if it is as short a distance as to the dojo, or longer trips around our corner of the world.

This week is going to be the last in the dojo for 2020, with Saturday 19th December the last opportunity to make it in for the year. We will also be running our last online FlexiFit class on Sunday 20th at 5 pm Toowoomba time, for those wanting to have a good stretch.

We will be restarting things on Tuesday 5 January for keiko hajime/kagami biraki to kick off our fresh new year.

I will post my usual end of year message next week, but just a a preemptive, I wanted to thank everyone for their efforts this year and forbearance in what has been both a very challenging and rewarding time.

One final thing that I will be doing tomorrow is (with Brady’s assistance) going through a thorough tidy and audit of the Club’s equipment currently stored at the CBRC. Anyone who is free and interested in giving us a hand with the task will be most welcome to lend a hand or two, so that we can properly update the Club’s asset register and assist with our strategic planning for next year. We will be having a thorough update of the Club’s policies and procedures over the summer break, and some refresh of the Club’s website and social media accounts, so do continue to watch this space!

I hope to see you in the dojo this week, but completely understand if you don’t make it in. Take care everyone!

And we are back to regular programming …

I’m sitting at my kitchen table this morning with fifteen weeks of clinical placement on the go now done for me with, as regular readers will know, the last 10 based in Brisbane. That, along with the weekend QKR seminar just passed and the heat of the past week has left me feeling a touch tired. However, the cool of this morning and the significant successes of the past weeks (and weekend) are sitting with me quite well right now, and I’m happy to look forward to the next few months where we can reestablish some regular rhythms to the dojo and more generally too.

I think that Sean’s rap up of the weekend captures them most important elements of the experience, save for a brief report on the Iaido side of things. We had five of us challenge grades this weekend, all successful. Both Sean and Lachlan blasted through their sankyu examination. Sian provided once again an excellent performance of standing kata for her Nidan exam and I was successful in my Sandan examination.

I wanted to make special mention of Tracy’s long overdue Shodan grade. To my mind she had been performing at this level for some time now, and she displays a thorough knowledge of the art. She has been taking the load in weeknight Iaido classes while I have been away, Both she and Sean ought be proud of the successes they have had in preparing students for their first grades, and of their own performances over the weekend. It has been very satisfying to see both of them step up to the plate, and I hope that this weekend builds the foundation of confidence they will need to continue to extend their practice and to contribute to teaching at the Club.

I’d also like to congratulate both Justine and Joe for their participation in the Iaido sessions over the weekend. If can be quite daunting to participate in an event like this, but they both acquitted themselves remarkably well. All of the senior sensei teaching Iaido mentioned to me that they were very impressed with all the Toowoomba practitioners.

So in a way we are now back to regular programming for the remainder of this year. I will now be able to make all weeknight classes and I’m looking forward to seeing folk train who I’ve missed over the past 10 weeks I’ve been out of town. We are of course going to break over Christmas/New Year. But for now, as always, I’ll look forward to seeing you in the dojo!

What a rush. QKR Summer Seminar seminar wrap up.

Well, what can i say? As i sit on my bed in the sweltering heat, half dazed from the energy output of the past weekend hitting all at once. This was going to be a long post in the group chat but i though “why not make it a Budo Blog?”

Needless to say the past 10 weeks have been challanging on all fronts, with COVID restrictions and Sensei being away from the Dojo leaving a hole that I don’t personally think could be entirely bridged by Zoom meeting feedback. I take my role as Kendo Coordinator seriously to almost an obsessive degree based on a shear love for the art, and as a result i really enjoy the QKR weekend seminars as a highlight in my yearly calendar Catching up with everyone from around the State, enjoying the company of those who stay with us over the weekend, the food, the drink, and the laughter.

These Seminar weekends bond those who attend them, making us not only a bunch of people who “play”with bamboo swords twice a week, but a unit, a team if you will. And I really think this particular weekend is a prime example, I think we all came together this weekend.

We had two people from Toowoomba grading in Kendo, but the few that didn’t found a passion to make sure they do next time. Our two Kenshi to grade were Lachlan and John, both double grading to 5 kyu, and as the one running classes mid week for the last 10 weeks i couldn’t be more proud.

The rest of the kendo contingent for this seminar (Kateena and Mitch) both impressed the sensei with their intensity — Mitch having not practiced much in the past few months, has returned ready to hook in.

I will admit feeling guilty being preoccupied with Iaido commitments. However Kateena did a brilliant job keeping everything together on the Kendo side.

There is not really much more that i can really say other than the whole weekend being a great success, and I feel confident in the incoming year that we can make more great weekends like this happen.

Cheers

Sean T