.: ShaolinTiger - Kung-Fu Geekery :.

So the party was a blast! Loads of people turned up and the outfits were fantastic, all different kinds, self made, cobbled together from existing stuff and the more flashy rented outfits (gorillas and cows were popular).

Liang was a great emcee as usual and it was a good night all in all, nice food, good company, loads of bloggers and free beer (yay!).

I was keeping it real in my mad tiger skin.

I didn't wear it all the time as it was hot inside and out...and the jacket was quite thick.

Firdy doesn't need the monkey mask, Nicholas doesn't look too impressed.

The hawt nuffies before one of them had to cover up..

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A while back I asked for open questions on this blog and got some interesting ones, I'll start out with the most frequently asked questions.

The most common of course is "Why ShaolinTiger? - Where did the name come from" and other similar questions of how did I choose it, do I like martial arts and so on.

I chose this name when I first joined the monkeys and tubes that make up the Interwebnets back in 1996 when I went to University in Liverpool.

Before that I didn't own a computer, didn't need a nickname and knew virtually nothing about the net. When I first got to uni they were still using Windows 3.11 and Yahoo! was king of search (makes me feel kinda old)..

And I'd heard about this thing called Internet Chat, so I chucked it into Yahoo! and out came mIRC, so I downloaded it and connected to DALnet #chatzone...that's the start of a whole other story.

Anyway, the point is to chat you need a nick, preferably a cool one...so I knocked my head trying to think up something.

At the time I was studying Kung Fu at the local univeristy club, Hung Gar Kuen to be exact - yes the same style from the family of Wong Fei Hung.

It's known as a style based on Tiger and Crane forms - Character Taming the Tiger Fist and Tiger Crane Paired Form Fist.

It also has some stuff on 5 elements and iron wire fist, it's a style very much based on stance. My sifu was second generation Shaolin and spent 2 years just doing horse stance before he even did any basic moves. Sadly in the Western World such slow learning wouldn't stick so things were rapidly accelerated.

I used to really enjoy sparring hard and the blood rushing to your head as the adrenaline kicks in.

Hung Gar was good, and was my second favourite training experience after Wing Chun.

I've always meant to talk more about martial arts..but I never have, is anyone even interested?

So back to my nick..... ShaolinCrane didn't sound very cool, so I went for ShaolinTiger seen as though I was studying Shaolin Kung-Fu and it was Tiger and Crane style.

And that was that...let's not talk about the Yahoo! e-mail address I ended up with as shaolintiger was taken even back then in 1996.

..would you be worried?

I was.

(And no I didn't put it there)

It's two years since I've been filling the Internet with my bullshit, amazing eh?

It was October 19th 2004 when I wrote my first proper post on bBlog, time flies eh?

I e-mailed a few people and got comments on my first post, teh awesome!

I got deep into bBlog and even did some development for them, the whole thing was setup with Textpad, Paintshop Pro and hard work!

I moved to Wordpress January 1st 2006, earlier this year, so it's been about 10 months with Wordpress.

I do suggest going back through my archives and reading my earlier posts as I was a bit crazy then so it was interesting, you can see how varied my posts are aswell and how inconsistent they were, I used to write a lot about my personal life and about 5-6 different things in one post a-la-lainie style.

Of course I also wrote some great posts, but not all the time Some memorable ones from the first two months would be...

• The Asian education mindset..and how it worries me
• Ah Lians Lian, Ah Bengs Beng, Lala's and aLtErNaTiNg cApItAlS
• Inconsiderate Drivers & Road Hogs.

Anyway happy birthday to me blog, it's getting older..and hopefully better!

This year has loads of good posts, but you've probably read em all so no point linking those You can check them out on the archives page or just look at the most popular posts page for an idea on what people like.

I hope you all enjoy my blog as much as I enjoy writing it, even though I kinda run out of things to say sometimes, I thank you muchos all my commenters and readers for giving me the incentive to write.

Even if you are a silent violet just drop a comment on this post so I know you are there.

I forgot to post this earlier in the day, I'm having some kinda flu thing because of my dust allergy and the haze so I sleep most the time and the rest I feel like I'm gonna itch my eyes out and put them in the fridge.

Nice!

Last years blog birthday post here.