# Salutations from Winchester, UK



## Flint (Jun 14, 2015)

Hi all,

My name's Tom and I'm an Australian living in the UK since 2011.

The martial arts didn't really interest me as a lad and aside from a brief brush with tae kwon do when I was 15, I didn't dabble again till I was 21 when I was introduced to Yue Jia Quan (other names Yet Chia, Ngok Gar Kuen, Yue Fei Quan) by a friend. That was in 2004 and despite some breaks here and there, I haven't looked back. For anyone who may not have heard of it, it's a basically a 'hard internal' style loosely related to xing yi, and my (late as of earlier this year) Sifu was GM Lau Yoke Lian of Kuala Lumpur, 9th generation keeper of the art in his family.

Since moving to the UK, all my training has been at home alone due to the fact there are no classes (of Sifu's lineage) outside Malaysia and South Australia, and this hasn't always been conducive to progressing smoothly or staying motivated! I miss a class environment so I've been keeping my eyes peeled for arts local to Winchester that are taught well, and there seems to be a good wing chun school nearby that I'd like to try.

Looking forward to learning and (hopefully) contributing here!

Tom


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## Dirty Dog (Jun 14, 2015)

Welcome to MartialTalk. Hope you enjoy it.


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## Transk53 (Jun 14, 2015)

Welcome along. Hope you manage to find something. A fair amount of options in you're area.


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## Jenna (Jun 14, 2015)

Flint said:


> Hi all,
> 
> My name's Tom and I'm an Australian living in the UK since 2011.
> 
> ...


That cannot be easy Tom being so far removed from the lineage and teaching of your Sifu.. It would be interesting to hear how do you manage to keep motivated? Wishes, Jxxx


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## Buka (Jun 14, 2015)

Welcome to MT, Flint, nice to have you.

I hope you find a place to train. The whole class environment feel is terrific IMO. Even if it's different from what you know, you can still practice on your own at home with what you already love.

Good luck in your search, bro.


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## seasoned (Jun 14, 2015)

Welcome to Martial Talk. Glad you found us, enjoy the site.


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## Flint (Jun 20, 2015)

Thanks for the welcomes - nice to meet you!

I'm really glad I found this site but I find it so strange that, even after participating in various martial arts forums during the last ten years, it took me all this time to realise Martial Talk existed - and it's so much more comprehensive than the others!

Staying motivated on my own has proven to be extremely challenging, and during the last couple of years I've not trained more than I've trained. I didn't lose the passion per se but it started to feel futile when I had one of my seniors demonstrate a form on video for me to try to teach myself over here. While I had the general idea down, on having it checked when I went back to Australia for a visit it turned out I'd trained some of transitions in wrong and I'd missed the finer point - that was a really depressing moment for me. Still, it's my chosen art and I'll keep trying to train on my own as long as I can! Heading back to Aus for a visit in a few weeks so it'll be a great relief to get back to a couple of classes.


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## Chrisoro (Aug 10, 2015)

Welcome!


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## sfs982000 (Aug 10, 2015)

Welcome to the forums!


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## Brian R. VanCise (Aug 10, 2015)

Welcome to MartialTalk!


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## Razor (Aug 10, 2015)

Hello from London Tom and welcome to Martial Talk! I haven't been to Winchester in a while, how's it doing these days?


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