Welcome to the 21st century ....more to the point ... welcome to the complex web that makes up the lives of most people in the modern age.

My name is Chris ....I dont think i am that different from anyone else on the planet ... in fact out of the 7 odd billion people on this little overloaded globe i am but a speck in the mists of time. My aim though is to be the one speck of dust that travels so fast that it cracks the windshield of the space shuttle of mundane existence racing us from birth to death.(dramatic aye !!! )

At the same time i have come to accept the old proverb .. change the things that you can change .. dont sweat the things you cant ... but i can now add to this .. some of the things are things we couldnt change then .. but can now .. but to succeed you have to be prepared to risk failure a second time or maybe even a third time and keep trying.....

I was born a few months too late to be a pre-moon landing baby (assuming it wasnt in a hollywood basement) and wasnt old enough to enjoy woodstock on telly not to mention being a dribbling baby through the whole Jimi Hendrix - free love era ....but i do remember our old black and white telly and that computers are something that only came along when i was at college and that my 25 cents a week pocket money grew to become $10.00 a week and bought less than the 25 cents i started with.... Life has changed ... majorly changed in my lifetime ..as much change if not more than happened in my grandparents day.

They were born without electricity, telephones, japanese import cars and double flat whites at the local cafe.No planes or fast international travel .. no such thing as the internet or nuclear proliferation and the population of the Earth was a fraction of the level it is today.... gunboat diplomacy was the order of the day and if you wanted to achieve anything it was done with picks and shovels, blood sweat and tears.

In the space between their generation and ours we can send men to the moon (again..allegedly), have submarines and ships and cities powered by the splitting of atoms ..(this by the way is because we are still too primitive to have developed anything better like cold fusion or better still some supe eco-friendly solar energy collector) ...we have aircraft that can travel at 4 or 5 times the speed of sound, we can be on the internet with access to unprecedented amounts of information at our finger tips.

We have seen Vinyl and Tape come and go and be replaced by Cd and DVD and soon crystal technology and organic chips replacing sillicon chips. Life has in essence become everything all the time.. right now .. no room for delays .. no room for error. Soon warfare will be a matter of two computer terminals driving un manned vehicles much the same way as we used to play space invaders part 1 in black and white at the local fish and chip shop. change is constant .. it will not slow down ...if we dont learn to adapt to change we will be left behind.

I suppose i should backtrack a little by giving a little information about myself ... I am 38 years old...apparently dont look it (and those peoples cheques are in the mail ...you know who you are !!! )I am happily married to my beautiful wife Kim. I have 4 children ... all girls... 6 , 5, 3 ,and baby makes four.This is a 2nd marriage for both of us .. so hopefully i/we have learned our lessons from the past well.

I guess i should say that my life has been a rollercoaster (but then who's hasn't???) and i have travelled a few paths ... some sucessfull ...some disastrous but all character building !!

The biggest lessons i have learned to date could be summed up as follows :

1. There aint no such thing as a free lunch.

2. You can be on the right track .. but if all you do is sit there .. then you will eventually get run over !!!

3. What gets said is not always what was meant.. it is hardly ever heard the way it was said.. and it seldom matches what gets done in the end !

4. Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups !!!

5. Every journey has to start with a single step.what we have to hope is that we are striding in the right direction...

I have played music since i discovered a talent for playing drums when i was about 7 .. played them for about 10 years and then found guitar ... have played that ever since and dont think i will ever give it up. i have been in a few semi-sucessful / almost got famous bands around the country over the years as well as my share of backyard jobs. My musical highlight so far was playing in the Auckland battle of the bands and coming 3rd in about 1997 or 1998 and playing live to 14,000 people in the christmas in the park in the Eastern bay of plenty.  I have played in one made for tv video clip which got as far as local Tv and was recording some studio demo tracks before the band split up in 2005. oh dear - how sad - never mind ...  stay tuned for new musical projects ........

This has had the effect of re-focussing me on my main passion (next to family)...Martial Arts.

I am a 3rd Degree (3rd Dan) Black Belt in Chinese Karate, A Black Sash in Shaolin style Kung Fu with extensive experience in Qi Gung and Tai Chi "internal" arts.I am a qualified instructor in weapons and self defence also, with around 18 years experience. I recieved my first Black Belt in 1997.

Again this is a field which has had its share of changes .. some good and some not so good. In this modern world you can pick and choose what style suits you best physically and mentally. you can in some cases learn from DVD or the internet and books ..and in many documented cases you can purchase grades through offshore companies.... but there is no substitute for a good instructor and the benfit of being able to emulate those around you.  

I was undoubtedly lucky when i finally walked in the door of the school i chose all those years ago. why ? because the man i met opened my imagination (which is what any good instructor should be aiming to do).. he had not purchased grades .. he had not taken any shortcuts on his path .. he was a softly spoken, polite self effacing gentleman by the name of Robert Gemmell.

He was then already the 10th degree blackbelt grandmaster of a large school of martial arts and an accredited master of sveral more arts.. one of the true pioneers of martial arts in New Zealand. At the time i recieved my first dan there were over 1000 practicing blackbelts in the school ranging from 1st dan to the 2nd in charge of the school Master Mike Ryan in Auckland who was an 8th degree blackbelt.

what struck me is that in the time from when he trained to the time that i trained there has grown an apathy in the wider public to anything which dosent just materialise with minimal effort. Stories about running along the railway lines from Porirua to wellington before training... 1000 kicks and 1000 punches a night and maybe learning a new technique before running home again.under legendary instructors such as Mike Mccashin who trained Robert Gemmell in the 50's.were not lost on me as they apparently were on many of the students i saw come and go.

There are fewer and fewer schools and even fewer and fewer people who accept that martial arts are just that MARTIAL arts .. designed for a purpose. there is no easy path. the grade around your waist is a meaningless piece of cloth. all that matters is what you can deliver on the mat or in the street. 

Since leaving the school in 2000 i have studied many varied styles and under several instructors but have yet to meet one who could hold a candle to mr Gemmell. I consider myself lucky also that he had dedicated his life to studying the arts and so had an incredible knowlege of styles - techniques - lineage - history and releveance as i was able to take this knowlege as my base without having to sift through the fakes.

I am now running my own school here in christchurch - having started with self defence courses last year we are launching into our first Kung Fu classes around march this year.  I am searching for a few dedicated people who want to learn an art form. I am not prepared to teach watered down anything. a little knowlege and too much confidence in a guitar student could get you a bad solo and some wincing faces staring....a little knowlege and too much confidence in the martial arts could get you killed.  

What attracted me the most was that it was an ART ... not only did i learn to fight .. i learned to think .. i learned philisophical ideals .. i learned the art of war ... i learned to appreciate peace and above all ... justice.

i continue my journey ... and maybe i will cross paths with you...

my goals have expanded now .. i want to run a sucessful school and pass on what i have learened to a new generation of people, properly , in the old fashioned way... hard work .. discipline ...having fun and enjoying what i do..giving a sense of achievement.....i want to do all all the while proving that it can be done without having to sacrifice family and other goals .. all it takes is visualisation .. determination and a dream.

if you want to contact me i can be reached at   meganinja@xtra.co.nz       

remember this   " There is no such thing as a bad style ....merely bad instructors !! "

Chris Hall- Chief instructor - Si Tiao Lung Four Dragons Gung Fu School.