It was May 1996, and my whole family was in America for my sister’s convocation. It was a jam-packed trip with lots of places to go and even distant relatives in the States to meet up with. Being a total music nut at that time (with a Yamaha electone competition waiting for me when I came back to Singapore) I spent my days there thinking more about music, checking out really cool jazz instructional materials and looking for electones to practice on for my competition.

But one day in particular stands out. It was a day when I was out with my mum and sis, and we were in Los Angeles. I don’t know how it happened, but we somehow or other wandered into downtown Los Angeles. I was caught up and absorbed in my thoughts, but gradually I realized that all the windows we walked past with fitted with external security bars. Then I noticed that there was no one else on the streets except us.

My mind fully woke up when my sis gleefully pointed out a large sign on the wall. It said “No Sleeping On the Streets Between —-” As she ran forward to the sign and started posing with it, saying “Ma! Take picture! Take picture!” I suddenly realized that

1. we were in the part of the city where the poor people lived;
2. we were total sitting ducks to any muggers or gang members who wanted to add us to American crime statistics; AND
3. my mum and my sis were totally oblivious to the danger!

Now my spoken Chinese standard was only marginally higher than my written Chinese standard (almost totally non-existent) but suddenly I found myself able to speak to my mum and sis in fluent Chinese, telling them with a forced smile on my face (no point alerting any muggers that I, at least, was on to them – they might just decide to shoot me first) that we were in danger and ought to just get out of there. But my mum and sis insisted on taking their tourist kind of pictures before starting to walk out of there.

Problem was, we were lost, or how else would we have ended up in the wrong part of L.A.? So as we walked down the streets (with windows that were either seriously barred or already broken), my darling sis proceeded to take out a MAP, spread it open WIDE and start pointing and staring at it. I thought I would faint. We were already doing a very good job of hanging a sign on our backs, saying “We are blur tourists from Singapore, with a lot more money than good sense. Please rob us!” But the map really took the cake!

“Don’t look at the map, if we keep walking straight we’d get somewhere! Try to look like we know where we’re going and what we are here for…” I spoke to my sis in Chinese again. And again she happily answered in English “How can we not use the map? I don’t know where we are!” I honestly could imagine all the hordes of muggers, swarming behind us, just out of sight, licking their lips and rubbing their hands in glee…

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As you can guess, I didn’t die that day.

I’ll not give you a story of how I overcame numerous knife-and-gun-wielding assailants with my super-human martial arts skills, since no one is paying me to write a TV or movie script. Since in the end nothing happened, my mum and sis probably thought I was paranoid that afternoon; I prefer to think of it as being able to change channels when necessary!

For most of us in Singapore, violent crime is something that happens on a TV screen, in a movie theatre or to other people. Someone else (the police, bouncers at nightclubs, security guards, etc) has to handle all the nasty people. If we live in a well-ordered environment (like most of Singapore) don’t even notice them doing their job unless things go drastically wrong.

In my talks I explain about Bad People, people we ought to avoid if we want to stay out of trouble. But two problems arise. First, Bad People may pretend not to be Bad People, so that we would let down our guard around them. Second, even if we know they are Bad People, we may HAVE to associate with them anyway. For example, if you are a school teacher and the Bad People are students in your class, or if the Bad People are your relatives and your parents don’t recognize them as problems and let them into your house.

If you want to keep these two problems from making you vulnerable to violent crime, you need to be able to change the channel quickly. By that I mean being mentally ready to defend yourself, knowing when you stop thinking of someone as an office colleague, misunderstood teenager with serious family issues or weird uncle who always made you feel uncomfortable, and start assessing them as a potential threat to your physical safety.

Going back to my L.A. experience, if anyone approached us in the streets, my guard would already be up. It was the middle of the day, why was there no one else around? Did the locals know something we didn’t? The whole street fit in my criteria of a Bad Place, we were more than 30 seconds away from viable help.

And when that happens, that’s when you have to change channels. A teacher alone in a class, surrounded by 3 burly teenage students who seem to be upset or just don’t have a good reason to be there at that time ought to be wary. Another time you ought to be wary when someone is upset and shouting away in public, like if you accidentally hit his car. If you are a civilized person, you won’t resort to violence that easily. But just because you are civilized doesn’t mean that the other person is too. While the two of you are yelling at each other and commenting on each other’s parents, grandparents and other ancestors, don’t be surprised if the other person suddenly launches a punch at you!

What keeps people from being mentally prepared to defend themselves when it is necessary?

• Unawareness – that was how I ended up in the wrong part of L.A. before I knew it. Don’t let your mind be occupied by music (like me), work or any distraction Bad People may use to catch you off guard.
• Denial – “This can’t be happening to me, this can’t be happening to me, this can’t be happening to me, this can’t be happening to me, this can’t be happening to me…”
• Anger – if you are too outraged by the other person’s comments on your ancestry or some other offence and your mind is frantically trying to come up with insults to throw back, you may not notice him or her winding up to clout you in the face.

So give these factors a look-over. First ask yourself if you are prone to any of them (unawareness, denial and anger), then, to be doubly sure, go ask your spouse and promise you won’t lose your temper, whatever they say. If you are prone to them, then make it a resolution to remove them from your life.
That way you are better able to change channels when necessary!

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I will not be conducting any group classes for this period of time. I am still available, however, for the Crime Prevention Talks and for one-on-one lessons and coaching.

So if you are interested in booking me for coaching or for the talks, email me at walkinsafety@gmail.com and I will get back to you with more info. Thanks!

In Woodlands I used to live with my operators.. 8 of us. The sly guy chose to attack the slimmest and the weakest among us .. Freak(ed) her out . No one was home, not even the neighbors. She just stood there facing the door being touched by the guy .. The only thing we could do later was to make a police report and cry. He even had a scissors pointing at her back .. I cant remember how she got out of the situation but it was sure freaky.. I think she gave him money and asked him to go ..

… this happened in 2003.. Also, we suspect this guy has been watching . And also there’s a very long corridor separating us from the other neighbors.. So yeah.. It would have been hard to run unless we exercise self defence “kung-fu” ..

A couple of points from this incident I would like to highlight:

1) Freezing

As my friend related, the victim just stood still and allowed herself to be molested. If you find that surprising, and think that any woman would have been able to scream, run or try to clobber the guy, chances are that you have never encountered a genuinely predatory person.

I’m not talking about an angry customer yelling and screaming at your company’s service personnel, or the obnoxious jerk who raced into the parking lot even though your car was already heading in. Those are triggers for Personality Based Violence, which is very different from Criminal Violence. Don’t harbour the illusion that just because you dared to face up to some loud-mouthed jerk, talk down an irate customer or overcome a difficult opponent in a martial arts match, you will not freeze if you encounter a predator.

There’s something different, very chilling about a person who sees you as prey, who looks upon you the same way the Chinese consume sharks-fin soup, or as a breathing sex-doll or a walking ATM. Unless you encounter such people regularly (working in a prison perhaps) the odds are that you will freeze if you are unprepared.

Why would most people freeze? Freezing makes sense in a very primal way. In the days when the predators we were most worried about were sabre-toothed tigers, wolves or other carnivorous animals, freezing could allow us to escape an animal’s notice (if it hasn’t spotted us yet). It could also allow us to escape being eaten immediately, because if we freeze and the lion thinks we are dead, it might think it could come back and eat us later, and so give us a chance to escape. Most people who freeze find themselves feeling that because what they were doing (nothing) hasn’t killed them yet, so it must be working.

It may sound ridiculous to you, but don’t dismiss it until you have encountered genuine criminal violence!

So how can we overcome this tendency to freeze? The only way is by training, by scenario-based training. Such training has two objectives;

• First, to get you to move, just move. Moving may just be what it takes to break the freeze and then allow you to take necessary action.
• Second, to take a very alien situation and make it more familiar. The attack or the threat may be delivered by a stranger, but at least the form of the attack/threat (say, a knife pointed at your back) is familiar, and your body has drilled some form of response. This helps give you a better chance of making it through this encounter with criminal violence.

This, of course, assumes that you have been trained in scenario situations, not bouncing around in a boxing ring or performing empty movements to the air…

2) Secondary location

Notice that the lady was molested at her doorstep, with a long corridor separating her from her neighbours (potential witnesses and help). That made it an ideal location for the attacker to strike. However, things could have been worse. If he had somehow gotten her housekeys and moved her inside her flat, that would have been much, much worse.

You see, when a criminal closes the distance to the chosen victim (as I described in my talks), the location is still far from ideal. The criminal runs the risk of being interrupted by other people passing by, potential witnesses and help. What some criminals may try to do (if they think ahead far enough) is to try and move the victim to another location where they can give their victim undivided, uninterrupted attention.

And that’s the last thing you’d ever want!

So if you ever run into a criminal, fight like nuts to avoid being taken to another location. Nothing good can happen to you there. This applies even if the criminal has taken your kids hostage and is threatening to kill them unless you follow him to another place. Based on actual cases in other countries, the odds are that you are better off running away immediately. He may still kill your children, but he may think it safer to try to escape first. But if you do follow the criminal to the secondary location (the place of his choosing), he will most likely torture and kill your children right in front of your eyes, forcing you to watch, before he starts on you…

Having said all that, the example I described above is a very extreme situation, and you would have to make many, many idiotic mistakes to get to that point. The best way to keep yourself and your family far away from ending up in such a situation is to just live in safety. Don’t do things that can turn around and bite you later on (like doing the wrong kind of things with the wrong kind of people) and always be aware of your environment, the dangers and opportunities therein.

In the above account, for example, the fact that her neighbours were far away was seen as a problem. It is, but on the other hand, it takes away the confusion. Simply out, any stranger at the end of a long corridor, at your doorstep, is not up to any good. You should have already begun reacting to the situation way before the person closed in to put any bladed or sharp instrument at your back or neck. You can be sure it’s not your neighbour. And even if it is, that doesn’t mean that your neighbour isn’t a criminal. After all, in urbanized Singapore, every criminal has to live next to someone, right?

So that’s my take on my friend’s story. What’s yours? Does it bring any thoughts to mind or raise any questions for you?

Now I would be the first to say that some people (not just women) live in denial of the possible dangers around them. In fact, I even wrote about it here.  But this is not the only reason women may avoid self-defence classes.

Here are some other reasons:

1)      False advertising – the class is advertised as a self-defence class but it is actually a martial arts class. If it is a traditional martial art (such as Karate or Taiji) there will be a strong emphasis on personal development. You will have to spend a long time (months or years) on mastering certain movements, to get them exactly just right. The process itself is valuable, and I’d be the first to argue for its benefits. However, if the women come in for self-defence, that’s what they are looking for. They don’t want something that CAN be used for self-defence three years down the road if they practice it for hours every day. They want something that they can use NOW.

If they join a sport-based art (such as Judo) that has been advertised for self-defence, then they will spend time in physical conditioning (which is a good thing, don’t get me wrong) and then training in competitive techniques. As a gender, women are more cooperative and less competitive, so they will be uncomfortable with that. Also, they may not be comfortable with violence for the sake of winning a competition.

On the other hand, women may find themselves in a class that combines fitness, meditation, weight-loss and martial arts training. This is appealing to women because of the one-stop-shopping concept, that they only need attend one class to get all these benefits, but unless the students are taught the common attacks they may face and how to deal with them, it’s not self-defence. And the students have been misled by false advertising!

2)      Uncomfortable with Violence – most people are uncomfortable with physical violence, but women on the whole are even more so. To make things worse, what is often advertised as self-defence is often violence for the sake of sport (competition) or violence for its own sake, characterized by savage techniques that are more suitable for a soldier in the battle field than a civilian in normal society.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe any criminal who attacks a woman deserves whatever he or she gets (remember, there are violent women around!) but it is very hard to justify teaching anyone how to break another person’s neck, or how to sneak up behind people to cut their throats with a knife. That’s violence for violence’s sake. Self-defence should be violence for the sake of escape, to get out of the very dangerous situation that you foolishly got yourself into, either by bad decisions or inattention.

3)      The Lessons Take Too Long – As I said earlier, if it takes years for people to learn to get to a useable level of skill, people get discouraged and drop out. Martial arts are intricate, multi-faceted and deep. Of course it will take a long time to acquire martial arts skills. However, self-defence skills should be something people can use without having to train hours a day for years.

It’s like the difference between learning stunt driving and the driving that gets your kids to school and yourself to work safely. Many women who try out self-defence classes find themselves signed up for the stunt driving version when all they want is what gets them and their loved ones home safely. Of course they’d drop out! But what frustrates me is the realization that these women may then get the impression that they can’t learn self-defence skills within a reasonable period of time and therefore not try anymore. And that would be a shame, wouldn’t it?

With all these reasons, it is unfair to say that “self-defence awareness hasn’t caught on with women yet”. It sounds very patronizing to me, like a businessman claiming that people don’t buy his products just because they aren’t aware how wonderful his products are…

So if you have any disappointing experiences with attending self-defence classes, do email me about it and share your story with me!

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Quick announcement: because of some difficulty in finding a good venue for group classes, I will not be conducting any group classes for this period of time. I am still available, however, for the Crime Prevention Talks and for one-on-one lessons and coaching.

So if you are interested in booking me for coaching or for the talks, email me at walkinsafety@gmail.com and I will get back to you with more info. Thanks!

http://sg.theasianparent.com/articles/teen-slashed-to-death-at-downtown-east

I don’t have any special insider information on what REALLY happened that day, so I’ll have to wait for the results of the official investigations to be released. But in the meantime, here are some thoughts I’d like to share with you.

1)    Staring Incidents – Some people, especially ladies, cannot understand how a staring incident can lead to a fight, much less a killing. At the very root of it all, staring amongst us males is a very primitive way to establish dominance and hierarchy. The lesser is supposed to look away first, and if he doesn’t, it’s a challenge to the other guy.

The drive to be the top dog, or at least fend off anyone challenging our position in the ranking, is a very primal force within us guys. So don’t be surprised if it makes us do things that are very stupid. You can tell that you (or any guy you are hanging out with) have gone stupid when you have the option to walk away from a dangerous conflict but choose not to because you think it causes you to lose face, and so you ‘cannot’ back down.

Back down. Your pride isn’t worth getting into that much trouble!

Sometimes, however, the bad guys will use staring as part of the interview, to see if the guy they have selected is a safe victim. They’d go up to a lone guy, accuse him of staring at one of them and trying to pick a fight, and watch his reaction. If he shows any sign of fear (cringing, bluster or other forms of nervous behavior) they take it that it’s safe for them to attack this person. Then they’d usually ramp up the intensity (to feed off the person’s fear) until they finally attack physically.

One way you can tell the difference between the two is to look out for witnesses. If there are many other people around (for example, in a pub or a public place), then it’s a face-issue. If there aren’t, chances are that it is a criminal, predatory attack.

2)    Groups – In my crime prevention talks, I mention that one of the danger signs to watch out for will be guys in a group. I’m not saying that every single group of guys will give problems; what I AM saying is that if you see a group of guys together, watch out for the other danger signs as well.

It doesn’t have to be from an ‘official’ gang. Any group of closely knit people may be guarded towards outsiders, and also try to demonstrate their loyalty for the group by putting down or being hostile towards outsiders. And don’t forget the face issue. Losing face is bad, but losing face in front of your ‘gang’ is even worse. So the members may end up feeding off each other’s aggressiveness and getting even more belligerent than they would have been if they were by themselves.

What can make things even worse will be the fact that if you have a group of 10 guys, and if the top dog starts acting stupid, those who know better may be too intimidated to speak out, or if they do speak out they get brushed aside. It’s not unknown to have an entire group of guys dragged into a fight, and later discover that almost all of them wanted to walk away but they were all too afraid to speak out. So they ALL end up in trouble together…

3)    Weapons – The police have classified this case as murder, and I suspect that the fact that weapons were used was a large factor in their decision. Let’s face it, unless you are in a large group of trainee chefs on the way to work, you have no good reason to be going around carrying choppers at Downtown East. The fact that those people armed themselves with choppers showed that they had the intent to commit violent crime. That makes it quite straightforward, in my opinion.

And that is what you need to think about before you leave home armed. If you have some official weapon, like a combat knife, chemical spray or the like, and if you ever end up using it, you are going to have to prove to the police that you did not go out with the pre-meditated decision to cause harm.  That is not going to be easy to prove, so carrying a recognized weapon will be a legal risk to you. Think carefully before you make that decision.

About the only situations you MIGHT be able to justify using a weapon may be if you were attacked at home (you grabbed whatever was nearby to defend yourself, and it just happened to be your mummy’s Japanese sword, for example) or if you used some makeshift weapon to buy yourself time and space to escape. I remember discussing this topic with some ladies who worked at Cold Storage Supermarket. They had a pretty long list of creative (and nasty) options that look very innocent, but could effectively buy them time to escape if they ever needed it. I’m not going to give away any secrets here, but let me just say that I pity any robber who tries to rob any of those ladies armed with their grocery concoctions!

Conclusion: these are my thoughts and musings on the Downtown East killing. As I said before, I don’t have any special insider information on it, but I am looking at it from the angle of what lessons we can gleam from it. Think through carefully, are there any changes to your habits or lifestyle you ought to make now in the light of these lessons?

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I will not be conducting any group classes for this period of time. I am still available, however, for the Crime Prevention Talks and for one-on-one lessons and coaching.

So if you are interested in booking me for coaching or for the talks, email me at walkinsafety@gmail.com and I will get back to you with more info. Thanks!

I am a Tom Clancy fan.

If you are unfamiliar with his works, he is known for writing military-related fiction. In other words, his books will involve people beating each other, shooting at each other or blowing each other up with increasing levels of explosive power. The rest of the book will be about giving the heroes good reason to do all these nasty things to the bad guys.

I know, this makes me sound like a totally Neanderthal guy, sitting and staring blankly at the walls of my cave and saying “Oog hungry! Oog want eat now! Now!” while pounding on my chest!

Anyway, what struck me recently was a plot detail from his book Patriot Games. The bad guys were going to attack the good guys at the home of the hero. So they arranged for a power failure at the home and got past all the security details by dressing up as the repairmen from the electrical company. What they were counting on was the fact that people usually let down their guard when they are around the hired help, the machine-people.

This is a very common tendency in Singapore. We tend to divide people into three categories:

• People-people: those we acknowledge as people. We have a relationship with them, they are our friends, family, colleagues, church (or temple or mosque) associates and so on.
• Machine-people: they are there to do things for us, to serve us. We don’t acknowledge that they are people like us, with real feelings, a family and their own struggles, dreams and hopes. People in this category include people at the fast food counter, maids, cleaners at the HDB estates, airport counter staff and repairmen.
• Non-people: those we don’t want to acknowledge at all. These include the chronically drunk, the mentally disturbed and the poor and homeless. I read in passing that the ninja of ancient Japan could easily infiltrate enemy territory by disguising themselves as non-people, because many are revulsed by them and would rather ignore them totally (thus rendering the ninja effectively invisible).

Some things don’t change, do they?

For us in Singapore, we encounter what I call the machine-people often. Sometimes we even give them entry into our homes to repair our plumbing, our air-cons or to do renovation work. When we let them into our homes, how often do we stop to consider if that is safe?

The two dangers I see are:

1. We are rude and offensive to them because we choose not to respect them. That can provoke violent retaliation from them. Some people think they can be verbally violent with repairmen or service staff, and forget that they may react with physical violence.  And odds are that they are better at physical violence than we are…
2. We are unaware, not paying careful attention to any signs that they may be planning violent crime against us. This lack of alertness on our part means we are in deep trouble if those people deliberately enter our homes with violence planned.

Some time back I was talking with some teachers about the personality traits criminals tend to share. One of them mentioned “That sounds like around 40% of my class.” Soon after that I had the opportunity to actually interact with such students. It was very disturbing, because:

• They showed a defiant, rebellious attitude towards authority (teachers, parents and, possibly later on, the police).
• They were totally addicted to immediate gratification. For them there was no such thing as waiting until after class before they got on Facebook or Counterstrike. They would get on it even as the teacher was teaching, and regardless of how much work they were supposed to do in class at that time. This also means they usually had poor impulse control, they would do what they feel like doing with little (or no) regard for the consequences.
• They truly believed they were entitled to their behavior. Woe betide any teacher who tries to stop them from their Counterstrike games! They had no compunctions about mocking and provoking teachers and authority figures who try to rein in their behavior. One of my friends, a school teacher with a genuine heart for kids and the gentlest soul I ever met, was so provoked by such kids that he actually laid hands on them and as a result had to leave the teaching profession. A career ruined just because of such kids.
• Group Dynamics – they would egg each other on to see who could provoke the teachers more, or come up with meaner pranks to play on their better-behaved classmates. Sometimes they would ‘prey’ on each other too, with mean pranks, racist insults and physical violence, and as a result you can never really be sure when any of the students will suddenly lose his temper and go violent.

And here’s the part that worries me: how can you be sure that the repairman or renovation contractor you allow into your house is not like one of those kids I described above? The honest fact is, you can’t. As I said earlier, people tend to make two big mistakes with those they consider machine-people, provoking them or letting down their guard. So:

1. Don’t provoke them. If their service is bad or they make a mistake, speak to them assertively but not aggressively. “This is lousy work, I insist on speaking to your supervisor about this” is assertive, “You’re an idiot! You’d better watch out or I’ll…” is aggressive. Don’t be surprised if they react to verbal violence with physical violence. They may go to jail for it later, but the damage is already done.
2. Don’t let your guard down. Watch for all the signs of impending trouble, like unusual eye contact, moving into a dangerous range (as I showed in the talks), suspicious behavior such as unexplained nervousness and all that. Basically trust your intuition and don’t try to prove how brave you are by staying in a situation you suspect is going bad.

I know of some husbands who do not leave their wives alone at home to deal with any visiting repairmen. They would make sure there are friends, neighbors or relatives present at home with their wives. Let’s face it, having your mother-in-law around may not be able to prevent an attack by determined criminals, but it will add one more layer of complication, one more thing that might go wrong for the criminals. And if that comes on top of a number of other security measures (such as basic alertness) the criminals may just decide to look for easier victims instead.

Yes, I know I sound paranoid. There are many honest, hardworking people around in Singapore, even amongst those we see as machine people. But we lose nothing by making basic common sense a lifestyle and habit. As I said before in the last newsletter, we should not wait for problems to arise before we start taking smart precautions. Make them a habit now, teach them to our friends and children, and become the sort of people criminals ignore because we would be too much hard work to handle!

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Quick announcement: because of some difficulty in finding a good venue for group classes, I will not be conducting any group classes for this period of time. I am still available, however, for the Crime Prevention Talks and for one-on-one lessons and coaching.

So if you are interested in booking me for coaching or for the talks, email me at walkinsafety@gmail.com and I will get back to you with more info. Thanks!

Here’s a sneak peek into the typical mindset of gambler who has already crossed the line into criminal behavior.

http://singaporeseen.stomp.com.sg/stomp/sgseen/in_the_heartlands/449398/gambler_smashes_relatives_car_for_not.html

What made this gambler cross the line?

Like most other criminals, the gambler probably feels that his brother IS obligated to help him with his gambling debts. He may be thinking “He has so much money / He has more money than me, so he ought to lend me the money.” This is the same reasoning as a mugger thinking that it is OK to rob someone because the mugger is broke and the victim has the money the mugger wants.

I also suspect that this gambler just assumes that because he wants the money, his brother WILL lend it to him. So in his mind, he has already planned where he will spend the $2500 he wanted his brother to lend him, maybe $X to Loanshark A, $Y to Loanshark B, $Z to convince someone else to loan him money, and God knows how much to gamble on a big bet that will not only cause him to win big, but also allow him to pay off everything and be filthy rich for life.

(It’s easy to look at this assumption and think the gamblers are stupid. But if we interact with bad people and assume that they will not prey on us only because we don’t want them to, we are just as deluded as they are!)

Pay attention to what I call the Next Big Win phenomenon, when gamblers manage to convince themselves they WILL win that next big bet, they can just feel it, that their luck is just about to change. In their mind they are already counting the hundreds of thousands they are going to win with the $2500 you HAVE to lend them. So if you do not lend them that money, you are not depriving them of only $2500. In their mind you are robbing them of the hundreds of thousands of dollars that they will win in the next bet.

And their rage (and corresponding violence) will be scaled up accordingly!

In other words, the potential for violence so much greater from a gambler because of the Next Big Win fever, that fervent belief (hope) that his BIG win is just around the corner.

Recognizing the Next Big Win phenomenon explains a lot of the stupid things this gambler has done. He has embezzled company funds (he will certainly be caught sooner or later) as well as borrowed money from loansharks (illegal moneylenders who WILL get their money back in some way or other). And now he has gotten the attention of the police because of smashing his brother’s car and issuing death threats.

All of these are very unattractive options to sensible people in their right minds, because we know that the consequences will hit us hard sooner or later. But to a gambler caught up in the Next Big Win fever, he or she believes that he/she will be able to collect the prize winnings quickly and return the funds to the company before detection or pay off the illegal moneylenders before they start harassing him and his family.

(And he has justified his violence to his brother by thinking the brother has robbed him of hundreds of thousands of dollars, so in his perverse mind it was self-defence…)

What does this mean for you?

This means that you have to be extremely careful when dealing with a gambler. If you are an employer, recognize that you should as far as possible keep this person away from your company funds. If you are a friend, remember that someone infected with Next Big Win fever cannot think rationally. Please be careful when around him or her, especially when he or she starts trying to borrow money.

And if a gambler has already started threatening violence to you (such as in this case), then do EVERYTHING you can to make sure you are not an easy target.

1. Always keep your guard up when you are out of the house, especially when coming out of the lift or going to your car in a carpark,
2. Make sure that your home locks and doors are sturdy and secure – no point having the best locks on your door if an enraged person can kick your door down without much trouble.
3. If you are face to face with a gambler threatening you with immediate violence, don’t count on the police coming to the rescue within a few minutes of you calling for help. Be prepared to take immediate action (running away is probably your best bet if you are not trained to handle extreme violence).

I know, all that sounds like really bad news. But frankly, all these things are what you should do in the first place. Don’t wait for someone to start threatening you or your family before you start taking smart precautions. Here’s the good news: if you are the sort who is aware of your surroundings, watch your home safety seriously and you are mentally and emotionally prepared to face someone like the gambler in this case, chances are that the gambler will go find some other victim and leave you and your family alone.

And that’s always good!

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Quick announcement: because of some difficulty in finding a good venue for group classes, I will not be conducting any group classes for this period of time. I am still available, however, for the Crime Prevention Talks and for one-on-one lessons and coaching.

So if you are interested in booking me for coaching or for the talks, email me at walkinsafety@gmail.com and I will get back to you with more info. Thanks!

This question has been running around the martial arts world for ages. One day I saw Wade Meyers reply to this question, and that started me thinking. You can read his reply here:

http://rsdefense.wordpress.com/2010/07/10/how-to-choose-a-martial-art/

Now for me, I personally feel that asking “What is the best martial art for self-defence?”is like asking “what’s the best language for me to learn if I want to speak Japanese?” Just as if you want to speak Japanese you should learn Japanese, if you want self-defence you should learn self-defence.

And just as it would be easier to learn Japanese if you already know some other language, it might be easier to pick up specific self-defence moves if you have some training in martial arts. But if you are pressed for time and you have other priorities in life, you ought to learn what you want to learn, not spend time trying to learn all the various parts of the puzzle and piece them together yourself.

In other words, martial arts are not self-defence. Some may have more of the components of what you need to know for self-defence, but that does not make it self-defence. Two different languages may have similarities in grammar but that doesn’t make them the same language, right?

So what ARE martial arts?

Some martial arts are battle-field arts. For example, within the Bujinkan (what I am most familiar with) there are techniques and methods that are meant for the battle-field. They are meant for training soldiers in as short a time as possible and to be as deadly as possible. There are also modern day close-quarter combat arts available, arts that are developed and taught to people in the military.

If you want to use them for self-defence, please consider that:

1)      Soldiers are trained to operate in groups, so what you are taught may not be ideal if you are alone;

2)      Generals are willing to accept a certain causality rate amongst the troops, i.e. they are OK with sacrificing the lives of 100 soldiers if it results in the enemy losing 1,000 or more. So the techniques and tactics may not be that effective on keeping yourself safe while dealing with an opponent;

3)      The techniques and tactics tend to be crippling or lethal. While that may tickle the ego of insecure people with a fetish for violence, what if you need to deal with a situation without killing your adversaries? Or what if you are just an average civilian who has the usual qualms against taking a human life?

Some martial arts are sports-arts, such as Judo or Brazilian jujitsu. These arts will generally have controlled scenarios (everything takes place in a sports setting), number of opponents (only one person at a time), hidden weapons are not addressed, and they’ll emphasize more on physical fitness. Let’s face it, an average person will be more likely to face a heart attack than a knife attack, so the physical benefits of such arts are invaluable. But they are not self-defence.

Some martial arts are for personal development, such as Tai-Chi or some of the other Chinese internal arts. They are characterized by a lot of time required to get things right (Tai Chi practitioners often say they should train for 10 years before venturing out) and the ability to do really frightening things like cover huge stretches of distance with a step or deliver very powerful strikes effortlessly. Again, these are not self-defence, unless you live in a society where killing or seriously injuring people is seen as the norm.

And if you do live in such a dangerous society, the best self-defence tactic you can use is to move out!

So what IS self-defence then?

Self-defence ought to include:

1)      The Legal Aspect – Self-defence is a legal term, so you can never call anything self-defence unless you address the legalities. And it’s not just a question of what the law of the land says, it’s also what that means for us in a practical sense. At the very least, it must include how to interact with the police.

2)      The Problem – the problems self-defence tries to address are divided into two broad groups – criminal violence and personality-based violence. Therefore, anyone who claims to teach self-defence MUST address this. They must teach you what kind of people commit each kind of violence and how to recognize the warning signs.

3)      The Self – In a TV show about fraud in the martial arts business, Marc MacYoung points out that many martial arts teachers assume that their students are always in the right, that they are never at fault in starting the violence or making it worse. That is a very dangerous assumption. Personality-based violence is much more common than criminal violence, and therefore in self-defence we need to teach people how to not let their own personalities create the violence or make it worse.

4)      The Techniques – These can never be left out. But I list them last because they are affected by everything else. The techniques taught should always be filtered through the context of what is legally acceptable in that society. They must address genuine attacks used in criminal and personality-based violence. And being skilled in them gives the student the confidence they need to keep themselves controlled under pressure and not escalate violence further than necessary.

Conclusion:

I love martial arts. And so do other martial arts instructors, I’m certain. And when you love martial arts it is easy to see everything in the light of martial arts (“Everything is Kung-Fu!” proclaimed Jackie Chan’s character in the latest Karate Kid movie). But when it comes to self-defence, there is so much more at stake if things go wrong (the physical, legal and emotional consequences).  So we owe it to ourselves to as clear as possible about what self-defence is, what it isn’t, how to recognize if you know self-defence and, if you don’t, what are the gaps you need to fix.

So the next time you see some advertisement or informercial about the next latest, greatest martial arts fad to hit our shores, and how this or that art is the best for self-defence, remember my four features of self-defence given above. If you love martial arts, good for you! But if you just want to learn self-defence, then make sure that is what you are getting!

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Like what you get in this newsletter? Learn how to recognize more dangerous situations and how to deal with them in the Walk in Safety ™ Primer Module!

Location:

Wellness Infinity Health & Recreation Club
55 Newton Road
#05-02 Revenue House
Singapore 307987

Class Times available:

Tues: 8.00 pm
Sat: 3.00 pm, 3.45 pm

For example, did you know that if you throw a stone at a container of water held by someone else, and because of your stone the water splashes up on that person, that is classified as criminal force under Singapore law? (Scroll down to 350 at http://statutes.agc.gov.sg/non_version/cgi-bin/cgi_getdata.pl?actno=1872-REVED-224&segid=888373002-001939) You can guess that many other things martial artists advocate doing are likely to cause them even more trouble with the law then!

But the Statutes of Singapore give only a legal perspective on the matter. For us, if we want to prevent or deal with violence, it helps us if we understand that there are primarily two types of violence that we are concerned with. Both can be quite different and therefore require different types of preparation. They are what I call:

1) Criminal Violence; and

2) Personality-Based Violence (PBV).

For Criminal Violence, one person or group chooses the victim(s). No choice is offered to the chosen victim(s). Surprise and ambush is a very key element. If weapons are involved, they are brought in very early and they are immediately used to hurt/injure or to force the victim(s) to do what the attacker(s) want.

In Personality-Based Violence, both parties involved can choose to walk away (but usually don’t, because pride and ego are involved). There usually isn’t surprise at all (except for the really stupid people). If weapons are involved, they are used to get attention and to warn people off. (“Back off, shut up, get out of my face! Or I’ll…”)

Here’s a video that shows Criminal Force quite clearly. For those of you who have attended my talks, you will see in this video the three elements needed for violent crime to take place, as well as how things MIGHT unfold.

Personality-Based Violence is much more varied, but I’ll give you some examples anyway. The first is the lift beating case I emailed about some time back (http://www.asiaone.com/static/education/gallery/0510_lift/) and the second is this video of a policeman punching a woman.

Don’t get caught up in the question of whether what the policeman did was justified. Pay attention to how there was:

1)      The option for the woman to walk away in the first place (but she didn’t take it);

2)      Lots of shouting of vulgarities, creating anger and fear in all the people involved;

3)      Ineffective violence to start the ball rolling. The woman who was punched initiated the violence by pushing the policeman. She was probably expecting that the pushing/shoving and yelling, which probably worked before when she was dealing with belligerent boyfriends or talking with family members, would ALSO work on a policeman.

If you have already attended my talks, this is an example of why you should not try obnoxious ah-lian behaviour to deal with violence. It’s a bad habit, it damages your relationships with other people, and if you encounter someone more practiced in violence than you are, you are only escalating the fight even further, and to a point you aren’t ready to deal with.

The difference between these two forms of violence is quite large. So if you want to know if a martial arts or self-defence program will prepare you for dealing with both of these, you need to know:

1)      The common attacks used in Criminal Violence and Personality-Based Violence – yes, they are different! And the attacks in Personality-Based Violence can also be divided into two types, the attacks commonly used against anyone and the ones that are used specifically against women;

2)      How your body responds to both types of violence – and in this men and women react very differently!

3)      The types of techniques you can use for dealing with both types of violence. Again, they are different.

For example, if you are walking home alone and you are suddenly attacked by a few robbers wielding knives (like in the Kallang stabbing case), you are quite justified in crippling them if necessary to protect yourself. But if you are a nurse working in a hospital and a patient’s enraged relative tries to slap you, you cannot justify breaking his/her arm deliberately. Or if you are a school teacher trying to break up a fight between two teenagers with poor impulse control, you might prefer to be able to settle things without seriously injuring any of your students.

The main reason why I bring up the difference between these two forms of violence is because many martial arts only prepare you to deal with one of the two. If you are trained to deal out deadly strikes to any problem, you will probably end up facing murder charges when you encounter Personality-Based Violence. And if you train only to deal with Personality-Based Violence, you will most likely be caught flatfooted when you face a criminal attack.

So if you want to know more about the difference between the two kinds of violence or you have any questions about them, email me at walkinsafety@gmail.com. And of course do feel free to email me any other questions on self-defence, so that I can know what you’d like to know and can write my newsletters accordingly!

______

Like what you get in this newsletter? Learn how to recognize more situations and how to deal with them in the Walk in Safety ™ Primer Module!

Location:

Wellness Infinity Health & Recreation Club
55 Newton Road
#05-02 Revenue House
Singapore 307987

Class Times available:

Tues: 7.30 pm
Sat: 2.00 pm, 2.45 pm

Do let your friends know about it and sign up for your classes together! I’ll start a class only if there are at least 4 people who sign up, and registration for a class will be closed once 8 people sign up. First-come-first-served, so register quickly!

Registration: email your name, handphone number and desired class time to walkinsafety@gmail.com or SMS your name, email address and desired class time to 94230900.

One thing some people tell me often: they say that it’s hard to sell self-defence training in Singapore. “Maybe you can mix it in with weight loss, or fitness, or dance! Make it easier to sell…”

I want to sell, not to sell-out!

I’ll talk about my reasons for not mixing self-defence training with all those other things in some future issue. For now here’s a story from my Junior College (JC) days.

—

One day in my second year of JC, my seniors came back to collect their ‘A’-level exam results. Before the results were released I was in the canteen with one of my seniors and she was telling me how anxious she was about her results. One of her former classmates overheard her and told her “Don’t worry, I just asked the teachers about the scores. They told me that for X-subject only one student in the entire cohort failed, and for XX-subject only one student in our cohort did not get the full passing grade. Don’t worry!”

After I returned to class, the results were released and I later met my senior again in the canteen. She showed me her results, and it turns out that SHE was the one student in the entire group that failed X-subject, and the ONLY one who did not get a full passing grade for XX-subject.

Do you think the fact that she was a rare case, in fact, the ONLY case, made her feel any better?

—

One of the reasons it’s harder to sell self-defence training in Singapore is because we generally have a low crime rate. That’s why the Kallang stabbings are getting so much attention. But even in countries with a higher crime rate, women tend to think that violent crime will never happen to them. And so they engage in risky behaviour (like associating with criminal-type people, getting drunk in public, leave their keys in the car) with their guard down.

And they are terrified, horrified and shocked to the utter core of their beings when something goes wrong, like when they get robbed, raped or physically beaten. They rationalize (i.e. tell themselves lies that are rational, but are still lies none the less) with “that wouldn’t happen to me” before anything bad happens, and after something bad happens, they keep asking “how could that have happened to ME???”

So much easier to learn REAL self-defence, which ought to include how to recognize and avoid danger in the first place, than to go through such situations. At that point of time, trying to console yourself by looking at Singapore’s low crime rates just does not work at all…

Anyway, Alvin (Eastpaw) a fellow martial artist and thinker did a blog post on a carjacking in Singapore. You can read it over here at http://eastpaw.blogspot.com/2006/08/crimes-happen-to-complacent.html and check out how the victim tries to rational-lies to herself both before and after the crime. But before you go, here’s a final thought from my Junior College story.

—

Later that day, my senior went out with her friends from other JCs. And they sat down at a fast food place and started moaning about how lousy their results were, how one of them should have got an A grade for a subject and only got a B,  how could they possibly get into the popular courses in University with the grades they received, and all that. The usual elite students’ kind of griping.

And in the midst of them all, sitting quietly and keeping to herself, was my friend who had failed a major examination for the first time in her life. It’s obvious that all the worries and complaints from her friends would look so meaningless to her at that moment. They were worried about not getting into their coveted courses in university or how the B grade they got for one subject messed up their track record of getting all As, while she was suddenly plunged into a sea of worry about her next step, how to tell her parents, if there was anything really wrong with her, was she really incapable, and other issues and questions of that sort.

—

Take what my friend felt that day, multiply it enough times to traumatise you into needing counselling, and that will give you a sense of what experiencing criminal violence is like. You will feel as alienated from your regular life as my friend did that day she discovered she failed a major examination, only many times worse. Even if you escaped unhurt, just knowing that you were so near to harm, that your lifestyle was so much more vulnerable than you thought, is enough to send most people into emotional shock and upheaval.

Far better to approach the entire issue with a clear mind now, to study the subject enough to understand your strengths and weaknesses, and prepare yourself way before any problems arise. Personally, I would urge you to learn everything you can learn about staying safe, changing your lifestyle if necessary, so that you have good reasons to expect that you will never have to use the physical techniques that I have taught you in my classes.

So if you haven’t done so yet, head over to Alvin’s blogpost at http://eastpaw.blogspot.com/2006/08/crimes-happen-to-complacent.html and read his account of the carjacking. Pay careful attention to the victim’s reaction to the entire incident and ask yourself if you are doing anything equally stupid in your own life. And if you need any help about what to look out for and pay attention to, that’s what my talks and classes are all about. What are you waiting for?

JJ Huang
Founder
Walk In Safety ™

Like what you get in this newsletter? Learn how to recognize dangerous situations and how to deal with them in the Walk in Safety ™ Primer Module!

Location:

Wellness Infinity Health & Recreation Club
55 Newton Road
#05-02 Revenue House
Singapore 307987

Class Times available:

Tues: 7.30 pm
Sat: 2.00 pm, 2.45 pm

Do let your friends know about it and sign up for your classes together! I’ll start a class only if there are at least 4 people who sign up, and registration for a class will be closed once 8 people sign up. First-come-first-served, so register quickly!

Registration: email your name, handphone number and desired class time to walkinsafety@gmail.com or SMS your name, email address and desired class time to 94230900.

I don’t understand why such women would believe that since negotiation works for them in daily life, it ought to work when dealing with a criminal also!

You may think that most women are too clever to try negotiating with a criminal, but when women are facing a criminal assault from someone they already know, many of them don’t recognize that these people are dangerous and should be avoided. So they will still go on trying to talk their way out of trouble. Remember also that some criminals enjoy the process of making the victim try to beg and plead their way out of trouble. It tickles their ego.

But first, let’s look at what negotiation REALLY is.

Genuine negotiation is when what you want and what the other person wants intersect to some degree. For example, if you are willing to buy something for a maximum of $250 and the other party is willing to sell that object for a minimum of $200, you have room to negotiate, and that room is the $50 difference between the price you are willing to pay and what the other person is willing to accept.

THAT is negotiation.

And, by the way, applies even to when policemen negotiate with unruly people. Policemen have to enforce the peace and they don’t want extra admin work. Unruly people usually don’t want to make a trip to the police station. So if the unruly people start behaving and the police don’t need to arrest them, everyone is happy. This intersection of what both parties want is what allows negotiation to take place even in this situation.

Now what if what the criminal wants has no intersection with what YOU want? What if he wants to rape you and torture your children, and you don’t want that at all? Then there is totally NO room for negotiation, and you better be ready to take appropriate and firm action to deal with the threat, rather than hope to talk your way out of it somehow.

If at that point of time you are still trying to plead and beg your way out of trouble when you have nothing to offer the criminal, you are only feeding his ego trip or irritating him, which may make the violence that follows even worse.

Most of the women I know think that negotiation is a trade; for example, I want A & B & C and you want D & E & F. So if I give up my A you are obliged to give up your D, for example. This is how many women see negotiation. Others just keep repeating their ‘requests’ and call that ‘discussion’. Nope, ladies, be honest and call it what it is – nagging! And nagging irritates ALL men, whether they are criminals or not!

Why Look At This Topic?

Remember, in the most cases violent crimes are not committed by strangers, but by people you recognize. And one of the ways criminals will see if you are a suitable victim is to test your boundaries by doing things that are more and more extreme to see if you will tell them “No!” and enforce your boundaries. And if you do not they will eventually attack.

I can’t give you very specific examples because what criminals do to try your boundaries can change. But what will stay the same is the feeling you get – that things were OK, they started getting bad out of nowhere and they are getting worse. And they want you feeling confused, scrambling to try to get things under control, thinking that it’s your fault somehow.

Once you start feeling this way, something has gone wrong. Get out of that situation as soon as possible. Whether it is a violent crime or a commercial cheating, it can’t happen to you if you are not there in the first place!

—–

Like what you get in this newsletter? Learn how to recognize more dangerous situations and how to deal with them in the Walk in Safety ™ Primer Module!

Location:

Wellness Infinity Health & Recreation Club
55 Newton Road
#05-02 Revenue House
Singapore 307987

Class Times available:

Tues: 7.30 pm
Sat: 2.00 pm, 2.45 pm

Do let your friends know about it and sign up for your classes together! I’ll start a class only if there are at least 4 people who sign up, and registration for a class will be closed once 8 people sign up. First-come-first-served, so register quickly!

Registration: email your name, handphone number and desired class time to walkinsafety@gmail.com or SMS your name, email address and desired class time to 94230900.