Tuesday, March 30th, 2021
After nine months of work with the Jo tonight’s instructor sprang a surprise on us, suggesting we work with the Bokken for a change.
Of course, I had not brought my weapons bag, but only the Jo. Sensei had an extra so between that and the instructor’s the two of us without our own weapons paired up. I have not held a Bokken for close to a year now and it felt so alien, despite it having been my second favorite weapon in the past. The Tanto is the one I enjoy the most, but with social distancing knife work is clearly not an option.
The main difference between Bokken and Jo work is the switching of hands or rather the lack thereof with the Bokken as traditional Japanese sword work did not know or rather recognize left handedness as an option. So, the Bokken is always held in the same way which makes it not only less diverse, but also less agile and simpler to learn, hence my previous preference for it.
Also, for the first time in over a year I partnered with one of our Aikidoka of Japanese origins, which turned out to be a frustrating experience as he only attacks even when as Uke he is meant to block and defend. I know vanity has no place in Aikido, but over the past year I have had far more practice, so even if he outranks me by a rank, I take offense in his correcting me, when he is practicing something different entirely to what we are meant to do. Hence forth I shall just avoid partnering with him as I want to focus on the technics and not some arbitrary attack, the latter I enjoy when everyone is freestyling it. Then it is fun to react to the unexpected and remember how to apply different technics we have now practiced for so long that even I can come up with a spontaneous reaction.
Overall class was fun, and it was nice that things got mixed up a little.
Work was fun too. The day turned out busier than expected as a call scheduled for thirty minutes ended up taking two and a half hours. As a result, some of what I had planned to focus on today is pushed to tomorrow.
Media is all about fears of another surge caused by the variants and vaccinations as the country races to get people vaccinated before the feared surge with cases increasing by roughly 62k day on day at the moment to bring todays total to 31 million. Three main reasons for new rise in infections are: travel, reopening and more infectious variants. Dr Fauci recommends maintaining mask mandates and social distancing until there is a significant drop in new infections, but of course people in this country are incapable of any form of solidarity, so his will not happen.
A recent study shows that both the BioNTech and the Moderna vaccines are highly effective in preventing transmission.
AstraZeneca was my vaccine front runner. Now the manufacturer of the Oxford vaccine makes headlines for all the wrong reasons. They are the only Pharma company not making enormous profits of the vaccine, selling it at cost in an effort to help the world. The tug of war played between the UK and the EU is damaging for the company as are reports about overreactive immune systems in some cases causing blood clotting.
As more and more people can receive shots and vaccine development is largely under way the focus shifts to how long immunity will last. Scientists expect at least six to eight months if not a year. This would mean millions of people may need booster shots between Christmas and Easter.
For pharma this means they can milk this money pit for years to come.