Voor dit moment neem ik nog even de engelstalige teksten over van mijn oude website. Ik zal deze op een later moment nog naar het nederlands overzetten!

I live in Deventer, the Netherlands, was born on the 12th of february 1971, and live togheter with Sandra my girlfriend and our beatiful son, Lucas, who was born the 18th of October 2006.

Right now I take care of things at home with Lucas being my main point of attention during the day (which is the best job of the world). I have been self employed for about a decade in new media before, mainly 2D and 3D animation for video productions, with occasional sidetracks to other media such as the Internet (with Flash video and PHP coding). For the rest the day time of mostly filled up training kungfu, my other passion in life. Finally, recently (January 2009) I started a natureguide course which will take 1,5 years to complete.

Since my childhood I've been interested in martial arts. Started with Judo I later became interested in something with a little more punch =D
I found a school doing Chuan Fa in Apeldoorn, a city not too far from here. It was mostly a self-made style, like so many back in those days (80's). From there I moved to Kun Tao, normally an Indonesian art with Chinese roots, but in this case Moluccan (dont tell them they're part of Indonesia) with a flair of Pukulan Ama Laka. At the same time I trained with a guy interested in Ninjutsu, and another who had roots in Karate and Wing Chun. With the last guy was mainly sweating and sparring. All in the motto, screw techniques, hitting others will learn you how to fight. In many ways he was spot on.

Still not yet satisfied however I later moved to Arnhem where there was a Shaolin Kungfu school, which later became clear was yet another mostly self-made style.

Argh...

By that time I had enough of yet moving to another school, and with my business taking up more and more time I gave it all up. Till about 2004, sitting all this time behind a computer got me close to 100kg, at which point I thought that was enough, so I started looking around again. I found that a Hung Gar school was available in my city! Finally an established style which is so famous you can easily check on the Internet wether the forms and techniques are real. I then started training with Sifu Hans Huisman in my homecity Deventer. In the year 2009 I decided to switch from the Chiu family over to Ng family kungfu. It was not a descision I took lightly, taking me more then a year to make, but I ultimately felt it was necessray for my path chosen to do so.

Hung Gar has a long history and is said to trace back to the Southern Shaolin temple in China. It has been used by the Ming rebels who tried to fight the Ching dynasty in order to restore the Ming dynasty. Its moves are based on 5 animals and 5 elements (dragon, tiger, crane, snake and leopard & metal, water, wood, earth and fire) but has a slight focus on the tiger and crane, and is because of that often called Fu Hok Pai (the school of tiger and crane).

Aside from the "normal training" in Hung Gar I've practiced iron palm for about three years. Which sound esoteric but is really far from it. It involves a lot of determination, and standing in horsestance in front of a bag filled with a medium (first mungbeans, then gravel and ultimately iron fillings) for up to a hour a day and slapping it with a series of palm formations. Doing this accomplishes several things: it thoughens your hand, increases bone density, perfects your hitting technique and gives you the accomplishment of achieving something that took quite some determination to achieve (and that is actually what "kungfu" mean. Skill earned by hard work). I have been doing that on a daily basis for 3 years untill Lucas was born, and now its impossible to keep doing it on a daily basis unfortunally. Once Lucas goes to school daily I will try and see if I can pick this up again as I value this art highly. I kept the first brick I broke, its on the photo to the left.

I train Hung Gar as an art, so personally I don't see it as a sport, and I don't like participating too much in sporting events. Sparring contests are complete nonsense when it comes to Hung Gar. In a fighting art made for the battlefield everything is allowed, form poking the eyes to grabbing the family jewels. In sports techniques are limited to those that do not leave permanent damage. We do sparring as part of our training of course, as training with an unwilling partner with his own idea's of the outcome of a fight is vital if you practice martial arts.
Yet I did participate in a few taolu (forms) contest under the Chiu family. Some results:

• Int. kuo Shu Cup 2006 Nue Ulm Germany, 5th (handform, 19 and older advanced)
• Dutch Wushu Federation 2007 Championships, 2nd (handform, 19 years and older advanced)
• Int. kuo Shu Cup 2007 Nue Ulm Germany 2nd (handform, 30 and older)
• (Open) German Championships Gevelsberg 2008 1st (handform, 30 and older)
• (Open) German Championships Gevelsberg 2008 1st (long weapons (stick), 35 and older)
• Dutch Traditional Kung Fu Team Competition 2nd (handform)

Still yet, I'm not focussing on taolu and sparring alone, it might take about 30% of my total training. I think chigong, iron palm, strenght & conditioning, studying tactics and all the other training is very necessary to become a true martial artist. I doubt many still follow that path, and focus on making their taolu look good, or take away a lot of technique and become kickboxers for sparring contests.

In 2008 a long time dream became true. I finally visitted Hong Kong & China. It included an 10 day trip through China organised by my former sigung Chiu Chi Ling. On this trip we visitted many places linked to our martial art including 2 of the three Southern Shaolin temples, Foshan Chinwoo, Wong Fei Hung museum and Wong Fei Hung Ancestral Temple and much more. A small collection of photos I took can be found in my photo album.