Posts on hoiboy.uk

Dancing Is for Girls? Hell No!

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 17:00:00 +0100

I wrote this on Facebook about eight years ago. I’ve been off social media for about three years now, but I logged in this week to reconnect with a few old friends before deactivating again, and this post turned up in my feed. Brought back some funny memories, and I thought it was worth sharing here on the blog, so here it is word for word, with the original video at the bottom.

Observability, You Can't Fix What You Can't See

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 13:00:00 +0100

Here is a fast way to set yourself up to fail. Build a whole system with AI, or just vibe code your way to something that runs, and never once make it tell you what it is doing inside. It will look fine. It will click and load and show you numbers. And the day something goes wrong, you will be standing there in the dark with no idea what broke, or where.

3 Types of Tests I Build for Production Systems

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 12:00:00 +0100

You can build a thing that looks finished, runs without crashing, and is still quietly wrong. That’s the part nobody warns you about when coding with AI. The code compiles, the screen shows numbers, everything feels done, and underneath, a calculation is off by a decimal or a function is sitting there never actually being called. With AI doing the typing, this happens more, not less.

So when I build something real, like my automated swing-trading system, I don’t trust “it ran.” I trust tests (lots and lots of tests). There are three types I use to cover as many edge cases as possible and get to a reliable, robust system that’s ready for production.

Dynamic Workflows and Security Guidance integration into SST3-AI-Harness

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 12:00:00 +0100

When Opus 4.8 dropped (Claude’s biggest model, the one I lean on most), I did what I always do with a new release. Read the notes. Got a bit fidgety. Two features jumped out at me: Dynamic Workflows and Security Guidance.

I’m not going to explain what they are in full. The official Claude docs do that better than I can, go read them. What I can give you is my own read on why they’re useful, and what happened when I bolted them into my own setup. Because one of them I’d basically been hand-building for six months. And the first time I really used it, it torched half my weekly token allowance in four repos.

Migrating Off Squarespace to Cloudflare

Sat, 30 May 2026 12:00:00 +0100

I had a small site sitting on Squarespace. It was the marketing site for id8u, a dating-platform side project I’ve written about before (the idea that won’t die, here). Squarespace is lovely and easy. It is also £204 a year for the Business plan, plus 20 percent VAT on top, so call it £245 a year. For a brochure site that barely changes.

I wanted it on the same stack this very blog runs on: Hugo and Cloudflare Pages. Hugo is a static site generator, which means it takes a folder of plain text files and turns them into a fast website with no database and no login page (nothing sitting there to hack). Cloudflare Pages then hosts the result for free. The only thing left to pay for is the domain name, which is under £10 a year.

My Baby Steps to Becoming a Professional Trader

Wed, 27 May 2026 12:00:00 +0100

It’s been over 3 years since I started this journey. Two years of intense learning. One year of intense building, which turned everything I’d picked up into an automated trading platform with a simple (not so simple) MVWAP strategy and a workflow that’s almost fully automated. Almost. I kept a human in the loop for the actual trade entry decisions, on purpose. If you want the build side of that story, it’s over here: Building a Production-Grade Trading System with Claude Code.

Born Different. Here's How I Learned to Learn.

Fri, 15 May 2026 12:00:00 +0100

Funny thing first. When I finally got the ADHD diagnosis I went round to my friends, “Hey guys, look, I got ADHD”, and showed them the report. They just looked at me puzzled. “Hoi, we all knew, we thought you knew?”. I was like… er what?! I never even knew what ADHD was until then. lol. Talk about lack of self-awareness (and I’m the one always preaching this). Some friends I have, right? They all thought I knew and never said a word, yet they all knew or thought it anyway. haha. Could’ve saved me £900 for the assessment! But oh well. At least I know now. Not that it changes anything.

Done With Building AI for Machines? I'm Building AI for People.

Tue, 12 May 2026 17:00:00 +0000

I had a few interviews lined up. Decent companies, decent AI roles. And then, halfway through the second one, the thing clicked.

I was about to be thrown into building AI infrastructure for things I do not really care about. Like building AI for machines. Cool work, no doubt. Smart people, big budgets, all the toys. But the actual product? Pipelines feeding pipelines feeding more pipelines, with the human bit pushed three floors away from where the AI lived.

I Built My Own Automated Meeting Notes. Three Attempts.

Tue, 12 May 2026 12:00:00 +0100

I handwrite notes during every client meeting. The notes are detailed enough to drive the work afterwards. This post is not about replacing them.

I wanted a transcript alongside, as a sanity check against my own notes. So I built my own. Two reasons.

First, I didn’t want another £9-40/month SaaS subscription forever for what’s basically Whisper plus a summariser, both open-source and free. Second, I wanted to test how accurate self-hosted transcription has actually got in 2026. Plenty of marketing copy out there. Not much “I ran a real meeting through this and here’s what came out the other side”.

Entrepreneurship in a Nutshell. 20 Years In, Still Building.

Sun, 10 May 2026 12:00:00 +0100

2005. I was 23, fresh into my first proper job as a Systems Administrator at SunGard Availability Services in London. Earning a real salary for the first time. Three months in, I had the role figured out and my brain was already drifting. The work was fine. The work was boring. I wanted something bigger.

Then a friend pitched me a karaoke bar. Then it became a karaoke restaurant, because a pure karaoke bar only really makes money on room rental and snacks and drinks, and a restaurant catches lunch trade too. That was the logic, anyway.

I Reverse-Engineered My Moju Ginger Shot Habit. £1.28 a Bottle.

Sat, 02 May 2026 12:00:00 +0100

I’ve been buying Moju ginger shots for two whole years. One shot a day, every morning, religious about it. Eight bottles every eight weeks. About £50 each time. On autopilot.

(That’s roughly £325 a year. £650 across two years. Yes, I worked it out. I should’ve worked it out sooner.)

Then one morning I’m holding the bottle, looking at the back, and my brain finally caught up. Apple. Ginger. Lemon. Ascorbic acid. That’s it.

10 AI Harnesses. One Job. Who Will Win?

Sun, 26 Apr 2026 12:00:00 +0100

The Setup

A simple question. Which AI coding harness would actually ship code I’d put in front of a live trading system? Not the one that demos best on YouTube. Not the one with the prettiest agent graph. The one that gets the job done… when getting it wrong costs me real money.

I have been building a production trading platform for the past six months. SST3-AI-Harness/framework (Single Source of Truth v3) underneath, though not the same SST3 throughout. Mine kept evolving, same as every other harness out there, as the models kept moving underneath us. What held was the shape: five-stage workflow, Ralph review trio (Haiku, Sonnet, Opus, in that order, restart from the top on any fail). It works. It ships. It runs.

I Built an eBay Harness in 15 Days. Here's What 17 Tools Look Like.

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 12:00:00 +0100

The problem I gave myself a window to fix

I run a small eBay reseller business on the side, nothing big as I never intend to scale it. Listing creation. Photos. Item specifics. Condition descriptions. Pricing checks. Inventory monitoring. Repricing when the market shifts. Watching feedback. Watching returns. Watching the active listings panel for the ones that have gone quiet.

It is manual. It is serial. It is error-prone. Multiple live listings. More in the queue. Do the maths.

Reverted code review graphs. Going back to basics

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 11:00:00 +0100

Cutting to the chase: this morning we ripped code-review-graph MCP (Model Context Protocol) out of our SST3 harness. Same day, I filed the upstream bug report. Same day, I filed the internal issue to replace the whole daemon-MCP path with request-scoped Bash scripts. The rule that pointed at the graph survived all of that. This post is about that line, why it matters more than the tool that was sitting underneath it, and why we are choosing to go back to basics on graph tooling for a while.

14 Years of Zouk. Same Dancers on the Sidelines.

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 12:00:00 +0100

Bit of a reintroduction first, for anyone who landed here fresh. This is my first dance blog since June 2019. So I’m kinda back…ish!

I’m Hoi. 14 years of Brazilian Zouk under the belt. Tango was my first dance love, well before I discovered Zouk and it completely stole the show. The last 3 years or so I’ve been focused on Hip Hop and Afrobeats (fell in love with both, different energy, similar rules, they work together). And across the last 15 years I’ve dabbled in and out of basically everything you can think of. 1 year of Tango. 9 months of Salsa. 3 months of Bachata. A couple of months of Kizomba. 3 months of West Coast Swing. Plus any random class I could get my hands on just to see what’s out there. If a school offered a taster on something odd I hadn’t tried, I’d rock up.

Shipped Ralph Review Trio, But What Is It?

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 11:00:00 +0100

There is a moment when you ship a tool and then point the tool at itself.

This afternoon, a few hours after pushing Ralph Review Trio to a public GitHub repo, I installed it into my own Claude Code session and ran it on the branch that contained the ship. Three tiers. Haiku surface. Sonnet logic. Opus deep. Ten and a half minutes, 235,000 tokens, 116 tool uses. All three came back clean. Five non-blocking observations flagged, none of them about the ship itself.

Learning AI Is Hard. Really.

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 12:00:00 +0100

I’ve been using AI for about three years now. ChatGPT from the early days. Perplexity when it got properly useful. A tiny bit of Gemini. A little poke at DeepSeek. But predominantly Claude Code via Anthropic for the last good chunk. Not playing with it. Not writing haikus about it. Using it. Every day. Real work, real shipping, real pain.

Here is the uncomfortable bit. The more I use it, the more I realise how little I actually know.

Brands Have Voices. People Do Too.

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 12:00:00 +0100

A week ago I published the SST3-AI-Harness reshapeable-knife post and closed it with “watch this space. More posts coming on the specific bits. The voice guard for writing.” This is that post. It is about a marketing trick applied to a person.

Here is what drove it. 3 years of watching AI write, from ChatGPT through to Claude. The pattern does not shift. Mechanical. Generic. Buzzword-heavy. A love for uncommon acronyms everyday readers will not understand. Same tell across every new model. This post is what I did with the observation.

Every Subject Matter Expert (SME) Needs Their Own AI Harness

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 12:00:00 +0100

You are a lawyer. A marketer. An HR lead. A financial adviser. A physiotherapist. A teacher. A recruiter. A trader. You have watched AI chew through developer jobs for eighteen months, and you have been quietly asking when it is your turn. Not if AI comes for your work. When, and in what shape.

Here is the shape. The frontier labs build one big model. They discover it is good at lots of things. They slice off the profitable slices and productise them. Developers got Claude Code. Non-devs are getting Claude Cowork. Designers are getting Claude Design. The next slice is yours.

Prompts, Agents, Harnesses. The Fourth Is Where It Gets Good.

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 12:00:00 +0100

Every twelve-to-eighteen months, AI’s “main thing” changes. ChatGPT landed late 2022. Prompt engineering was the thing. Then agents. Now harnesses. Three eras in three years. I reckon the fourth one is already underway, and it is the one that will actually matter to anyone who has to trust what an AI hands back.

Era 1. Prompt Engineering. 2023

Learn the magic words. That was the promise.

OpenAI and DeepLearning.AI launched the ChatGPT Prompt Engineering for Developers free course in April 2023 (Isa Fulford and Andrew Ng). Anthropic posted a prompt-engineer role paying up to $335K, which Fortune ran on 9 March 2023 as the “hot new job” story. Indeed search queries for “prompt engineer” went from 2 per million to 144 per million in the first four months. Sam Altman, on StrictlyVC in March 2023, said “I don’t think we’ll be doing prompt engineering in five years.” O’Reilly published a whole book on it (Berryman and Ziegler, November 2024).

Scaling Without Quality. Just Multiplying Bugs.

Sun, 19 Apr 2026 12:00:00 +0100

Every Release Has a Bug Storm After It. AI Just Made the Storms Expensive

Every big release has a bug storm after it.

New version. Ship Monday. Firefight all week. Always…

And it’s not because the team were lazy. The opposite. They scale when they genuinely think they’ve covered the edge cases, the test suite is green, everyone feels it’s good enough to go. They do their due diligence. Then real users turn up, at real scale, and edge cases that nobody could have anticipated at ten users or a hundred users start showing the cracks.

Ultrathink Mode aka Overthink Mode. Why I Keep Turning It Off.

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 12:00:00 +0100

Every time Claude ships a new model or variant, one of my first jobs is to check the effort setting. Arrow keys until I land in the middle. Used to be middle of three. Now middle of five. Every time.

Claude Code currently gives me five steps on the dial: low, medium, high, xhigh, max. There’s also an auto mode, which I never use (I’d rather not leave the setting to the UI). Across tools the top tiers go by different names. Ultrathink. Max mode. Extended thinking. Whatever the marketing team picked that week. I call them overthink mode. Because that’s what they do.

Why I Spend More Tokens Refining Scope Than Writing Code

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 12:00:00 +0100

There was a version of me, about six months back, who thought the smart move was to point an AI agent at a problem and let it rip. Five agents. Ten agents. Fire away. Maximum throughput. What could go wrong.

A lot, as it turns out.

What SST2 taught me

Before SST3-AI-Harness there was SST2. SST2 was a multi-agent setup: one orchestrator, a pool of specialist agents, coordination messages flying between them, and every agent holding a loaded write-access permission. Lots of parallel writers. My own guardrails welded on the side. I thought throughput was the answer.

Why Do We Need an AI Harness?

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 12:00:00 +0100

You paste a prompt into ChatGPT. It works. First try. You close the tab feeling smart.

You paste the same prompt tomorrow. Different answer. Completely different. Not slightly rephrased. Sometimes not even in the same direction. Same prompt. Same AI. Not the same result.

Nobody really warns you about this bit on the way in. But this is THE thing. Pretty much everything else flows from it.

SST3-AI-Harness. Why I Built a Hero Suit for AI.

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 12:00:00 +0100

Once upon a time, I was staring at stock charts 6 to 12 hours a day

Anywhere between 6 and 12 hours depending on how busy the week was. Same patterns. Same indicators. Same exhausting slog of “is this a real bounce or am I about to get slapped in the face by the market?” Constantly trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t, how it works, and why it works. Then figuring out how to test the thing that seemed to work. Then trying to work out whether it was ACTUALLY working or just overfitted nonsense that looked brilliant on paper and would fall apart the moment the stock’s personality shifted. (I didn’t have a backtest system back then, so “on paper” really meant manually reviewing charts by eye. Basically theory. Dangerous theory with no data to back it up.) The eBay side hustle was the thing I’d poke at whenever I had a little extra time. Honestly, mostly procrastination.

Every Book I've Read in 20 Years. All 127 of Them.

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 12:00:00 +0100

I thought it would be interesting to get AI to dig through 20 years of Amazon orders, Kindle downloads, and Audible listens to pull together every book I’ve ever read. All of them. The good, the bad, the ones I finished at 3am, and the ones I gave up after two chapters because I’d already got what I needed. Honestly, out of the 127… maybe 10-20% I only read the parts that were relevant. The rest I read inside out, cover to cover.

We Wanted More Properties. Then We Did the Maths.

Sat, 11 Apr 2026 12:00:00 +0100

On paper, buy-to-let looks brilliant. You buy a house, someone else pays the mortgage, the value goes up, you remortgage and buy another one. Rinse, repeat. Financial freedom by 45. That’s the pitch, anyway.

The reality in 2026? 93,000 landlords quit last year. 41% of the ones still standing are thinking about selling up. We’re not expanding our portfolio either. Let me walk you through why.

The Tax Change That Broke Everything

This is the one most people outside property don’t know about, and it’s the single biggest reason the maths stopped working.

Do We Actually Need LLM Wiki?

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 12:00:00 +0100

My mate Bear sent me a link the other day. “Have you seen this?”

It was some gist about something called LLM Wiki. Went viral apparently. I didn’t even clock who wrote it at first (turns out it was Andrej Karpathy, a fairly big deal in AI). I just skim-read what it was proposing and immediately started having questions. We were two bottles deep at this point (a Burgundy and a Chablis, pre-dinner) so naturally I had a lot of questions. By the time we’d finished dinner and worked through 2 ports each, 2 martinis each, a negroni each, and an old fashioned each… I had even more questions.

iD8u: The Idea That Won't Die

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 11:00:00 +0100

I’ve had this idea since COVID. March 2021. Sat at a friend’s kitchen table, two of us brainstorming what dating should actually look like if you stripped away all the rubbish.

No swiping. No endless chats that go nowhere. No bots. No catfishing. No “hey” messages at 2am. Just… book an adventure together and meet in person. Cooking class, bouldering, axe throwing, escape rooms, wine tasting. Both people pay equally (sorry leeches, it ends here). You show up, you do something fun together, and if there’s a spark, great. If not, at least you learned how to throw an axe.

Building a Production-Grade Trading System with Claude Code

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 12:00:00 +0100

9,437 commits. 1,419 issues. 5 months of tracked code. Half of it was fixing things I broke.

That’s the short version. The long version starts with a hacky Google spreadsheet, goes through 3 years of trading study, and ends with a production-grade autonomous trading system built with Claude Code. The 5 months is just the GitHub-tracked phase. The full journey (including about 9 months of intensive building at 12-15 hours a day, 7 days a week) is longer. Let me explain.

i r back!

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 12:00:00 +0100

Twenty-two years of writing scattered across WordPress backups, Joomla backups, loose HTML files, and Google Docs sitting in storage while collecting digital dust. Today I built its new home that pulls them all together. Hugo, a custom theme, Cloudflare Pages. The whole thing is managed by Claude Code running my SST3-AI-Harness framework and custom built AI skills, which means the commit history is half mine and half a robot’s. Suits me.

X books that will change your dating life

Sun, 25 Jul 2021 12:00:00 +0100

If you have struggled with dating, you may have tried reading “the game”? It’s about a guy called Neil Straus in the 2000s when he stumbled into a world of pick up artists. PUA got short.

A whole bunch of texting guide books which is okay but not date changing because the strategy I use evolved is minimum amount of phone calls and texting. You only use text and phone calls to set dates to meet and not really as a tool to flirt and get to know one another. I actually get bored sitting on a phone call or texting, since I like to spend time doing things I’m interested in than

3 Decisions To Change Your Dating Life, Forever

Sun, 06 Jun 2021 12:00:00 +0100

3 Decisions To Change Your Dating Life, Forever

My name is Hoi and thank you for reading my dating blog on iD8u - I Date You!

I am writing blogs based on my own male perspective and life journey. Women readers are welcome because it may give you insight about how some of us men think (and behave… badly sometimes but mostly good I hope!).

I used to be bad with women until the age of 30 when I made three decisions that changed everything, from dating success to living the life I want.

ReportaDancer.com. Why it was DOOMED to Fail

Thu, 18 Jun 2020 12:00:00 +0100

A few years ago I created a web tool called ReportaDancer.com. Yes, you’ve guessed it right what it does!

So this video just came out by Jessica Carro of Zoukology!

Things have since gotten quite messy since the @chegadeassedionadanca instagram page was created. A #metoo-type movement has male instructors turning against women and vice versa. It’s also motivated others in the scene to create new anonymous pages targeting certain artists, which can be very dangerous.

Food for Thoughts for Dance Teachers and Organisers

Thu, 28 Nov 2019 12:00:00 +0000

Structured programmes such as Zouk dance camps and boot camps are a new era and becoming widely popular and for many positive reasons. It’s amazing seeing our community heading this direction because of artists and organisers who have invested their time, blood, sweat and yes lots of money to help grow our passion for Brazilian Zouk.

I’ve recently had a very very very interesting but concerning discussion with another fellow dance camp organiser. As a fellow dance camp organiser who has risked and invested heavily, I completely understand the situation.

Zouk Dance Camps and Boot Camps 2020

Thu, 28 Nov 2019 11:00:00 +0000

Brazilian Zouk dance camps and boot camps is a new era and have become an essential learning tool and an asset contributing to the healthy growth of our beloved Brazilian Zouk community. They offer a controlled environment with a smaller number of students, teacher’s attention, progressive learning, learning structure and more; all of which help deliver a more in-depth, higher quality and effective personal dance development.

If you’ve not read my older blog posts comparing the different types of learning environments, check it out!

5 Stages of Learning Social Dance Movements

Mon, 09 Sep 2019 12:00:00 +0100

Anamé & I recently taught our concept, ‘The 3 Key Aspects of Social Dance’. During our class, we shared our thoughts about the (1) Physical Aspects which talk about how our body & mind learns movement. We’re not going to be talking about (2) Emotional Aspects or (3) Social Aspects in this blog.

As part of the (1) Physical Aspects, I want to share much deeper thoughts about learning social dance and what I think are the 5 stages we go through in learning each movement. Please note each movement you are learning simultaneously may be each be at different learning stages.

What are basic movements and why are they so important?

Tue, 03 Sep 2019 12:00:00 +0100

What are Zouk basic movements and why are they so important?

When learning social dance, I am very sure that all of us always hear repeatedly from our teachers and other experienced dancers that learning and practicing basics are so important and here is the basics blah d blah, blah blah blah. You need to learn the basics to dance Brazilian Zouk blah d blah…

However, it’s so rare anyone actually explains WHY!?

Falling in Zouk Love Again. My Russian Saga

Wed, 17 Jul 2019 12:00:00 +0100

Falling in Zouk Love Again - My Russian Saga

Brazilian Zouk have taken me (Hoi) to so many places in this World. And it continues to reshape who I am through the interaction of people and culture.

I realise my biggest growth is when I travel alone and this time for Moscow, Russia for the Zouk Non-Stop (ZNS) marathon event. It was a new event planned within 3 months and very little publication or marketing done to the rest of the world. There was around 15 international dancers who also decided to make this journey within the 165 Russian dancers of 180. Despite being a foreigner I felt so warmly welcomed and part of this family. The moments shared have found a permanent spot in my heart and will always remember this feeling of falling in love with the dancers of Russia. I feel so peaceful, so grateful and thankful. I am fulfilled.

The Clockworks of a Dance Scene

Fri, 17 Nov 2017 12:00:00 +0000

Following on from ‘Poland’s Big Bang Zouk Theory’, I am sure there are many ways to grow a healthy dance scene. but here are some of my thoughts and general thinking based on observations who are the main contributors that make a thriving and healthy dance scene.

Some contributors may play several roles, some may choose to play one role. Nonetheless, they each are important and can’t be disregarded as a lesser importance when it comes to growing a healthy and thriving dance scene.

Poland's Big Bang Zouk Theory

Sun, 12 Nov 2017 12:00:00 +0000

I am by no means an expert in growing a Zouk scene, however, one of my biggest all-time inspirations would be the city Warsaw, Poland. From there, it emanated to the rest of Poland with many upcoming and thriving Zouk scenes.

Warsaw had become the Zouk capital of Europe with many frequent weekly classes, massive international events, boot camps and weekly parties happening!

Having had the chance to spend a whole week stuck on a yacht with Michal Wysoczanski who played a key part in the Polish group’s development of the Zouk scene in Warsaw.

The Key To Effective Zouk Practice

Thu, 21 Sep 2017 12:00:00 +0100

What seems to be stopping people from practicing is “boredom”. They’ve tried practicing but gave up quickly because they got “bored”.

This is true and I would also give up if I had no idea whether it will improve my dancing or not and would prefer doing something more productive with my time.

The reason for “boredom” is because you’ve been doing it all WRONG! (hoi to do: use the quote format for this paragraph on website)

What To Practice in Zouk Solo

Thu, 21 Sep 2017 11:00:00 +0100

Now that you understand the 7 Great Reasons To Practice Zouk Solo, let’s look at what you should practice in Zouk solo.

Have a look at the illustration below, ‘Solo Practice Pyramid for Zouk’. This will give you a visual understanding of how much time I usually spend on different areas of my body during a solo practice session.

I build my dance from the bottom up, but I’ve seen many dancers and teachers who would build from the top down or just random. I don’t understand the reason for this but always open to listen and know about the logic behind?

7 Great Reasons To Practice Zouk Solo

Wed, 20 Sep 2017 12:00:00 +0100

Though leading and following are essential skills, it is often over-emphasised as the only skills you need to develop to be a great social dancer.

I’m a great believer that social dancing should be danced together, hence why the skills to lead and dance at the same time are essential to be a great lead. The same reason why a great follow can dance and follow at the same time without disrupting the flow.

Understanding Dance Growth, Plateaux and Bad Habits

Thu, 07 Sep 2017 12:00:00 +0100

Understanding Dance Growth, Plateaux and Bad Habits - Part 1

Introduction

One area that I feel has very little attention in Zouk teaching is the setting & managing of progression expectations versus time frame in learning Zouk (especially if you’ve never danced before).

I hope when you’ve finished reading this blog, it will not discourage you from taking up (or giving up Zouk if you have already started) but instead, provide you with an understanding that learning to dance is a very long and continuous journey that requires much time, effort, dedication and study.

A Guide to Different Types of Zouk Classes

Sat, 26 Aug 2017 12:00:00 +0100

A Guide to Different Types of Zouk Classes - Part 1

Introduction

Dancing has been one of my greatest investments. With the correct nurturing and guidance, it will reward you for all the time, effort and money you’ve invested into achieving your desired results.

Over the years I’ve tried many different types of Zouk classes and courses, both locally in the UK and internationally.

In this series of blogs, I’ll share my thoughts on various learning methods, comparing the different class types and who they may be most suitable for.

Will UK Dance Connexion change Zouk in London

Thu, 03 Aug 2017 12:00:00 +0100

Many of you may know that I’m not the happiest chap when it comes to dancing Zouk in London.

As an experienced international Zouk dancer, I have an extremely one sided feeling about it, but at the same time, I can see the huge potential in London.

If you’ve not read my blog post that was published last year and wish to know my thoughts then you can read it here ‘How To Avoid Becoming A Terrible Zouk Dancer In London’. – Be warned, you may not like what you read and this is actually an edited “censored” version compared my original blog post. My feelings haven’t changed much since the time of writing, but I’m starting to see some hope… and here are some of the reasons why…

Become The Dance Listener By Using The 3 Dance Approach

Mon, 29 May 2017 12:00:00 +0100

Do you want to know the secret between the average Zouk dancer and an exceptional Zouk dancer?

There are many other articles out there that talks about becoming a Light Follow or how to be a Strong Lead. Each would touch on the topic about adapting and listening to the partner. This blog builds on top of these.

For the Ladies who wish to become a Light Follow, there’s a well written blog by Stefanie at ThePerfectFollow.com called How To Be A Light Follow (original URL no longer available). She’s also written number of blogs on why you would want to become a “Pure Follow”. I would suggest spending some time browsing her blogsite. Very useful.

How To Avoid Becoming A Terrible Zouk Dancer In London (Uncensored)

Wed, 12 Oct 2016 12:00:00 +0100

Before going into the details of how to avoid becoming a terrible Zouk dancer in London, I would like you to take the time to read the next part and understand who I am, what I’m not, and the reason why I’ve written this blog.

16 Skills That Makes The Ultimate Adventurer

Fri, 06 Feb 2015 12:00:00 +0000

My childhood heroes were certainly Indiana Jones and Jackie Chan. How many times have you seen their movies and thought I want to do that!

If asked, what would make you into your real life Ultimate Adventurer? I know my answer…

Here I give you 16 Skills that would make the Ultimate Adventurer

1 Scuba Diving - Being able to explore underwater takes your experience to a whole new world. The Ocean itself covers 70% of our planet. There is so much to discover because we humans have only explored a mere five percent leaving a huge mystery yet to be learned.

The Sun Had Set For 2014. Here Rises The Sun For 2015.

Wed, 07 Jan 2015 12:00:00 +0000

The Sun Had Set For 2014. Here Rises The Sun For 2015

As 2014 reaches it’s end and 2015 coming to life, I stood there in the middle of Centenary Square Birmingham waiting for the fireworks and reminiscing all the adventures I had within this year.

The crowd of thousands chatted away when the fireworks went off. I turned around to my cousin Sang and asked him when the countdown will begin. He responded, “It’s gone! The New Year had arrived… There were no DJ’s in the square doing the countdown!”

For The Love Of Wine

Tue, 09 Dec 2014 12:00:00 +0000

For The Love Of Wine

Do you love the taste of Wine but really have no clue about it?
You drink Wine because it makes you appear more sophisticated?
All your friends have matured and drinking Wine but you?
So you went on a date and instead of ordering your usual pint of Beer, you select the Wine menu hoping to leave a good impression?
You love Food and want to know how Wine Pairing can enhance the experience?

This is my first blog of many touching on the subject “Wine”. I will share with you my journey and how you too can discover the same joy & curiosity when I popped open a bottle of Chianti Classico 2008 Reserva.

The Biggest Zouk Family Gathering in Europe - DutchZouk! International Congress 2014

Thu, 04 Dec 2014 12:00:00 +0000

With over 100+ Artists (Dance Teachers, DJ’s & Performers) and 1000+ Attendees, DutchZouk! really was the biggest Zouk Congress in Europe! We had Zoukers stretching as far as Australia and Canada.

It was an exhausting 7 days of dancing with most of the action taken place during the weekend. Having attended 5 out of the 7 days, I wished I had stayed from the very first day until the very end!

5 Common Mistakes Dance Teachers Make At Congresses

Wed, 12 Nov 2014 12:00:00 +0000

With over a hundred students in one room, Dance Teachers are challenged in their teaching skills. Most Dance Teachers are extremely talented at Dancing that made them well known for their art and mastery within this field. But when it balls down to teaching, they can fail drastically!

Being an effective Teacher will draw in Students and gain even more popularity. Failing so, can put students off forever attending another one of their classes, no matter how talented of a Dancer they may be.

Scenic Lovers must Visit Grindelwald, Switzerland

Wed, 29 Oct 2014 12:00:00 +0000

Scenic Lovers must Visit Grindelwald, Switzerland

If I had to describe this town in one sentence it probably be, “Grindelwald, the most picturesque place I have ever set my eyes upon.”

The Place to Be

Grindelwald is the sister city of a small village in Japan called Azumi which later merged with Matsumoto City. Everywhere you look, the signs were all written in English, Japanese and Chinese.

We visited between end of May through the first week of June and even though it hadn’t quite reached the peak season yet, it still felt very touristy with so many orientals and their massive SLR, posing and taking snapshots.

A Beginners Guide to Zouk Classes in UK

Sat, 04 Oct 2014 12:00:00 +0100

A Beginners Guide to Zouk Classes in UK

Here is a list of Zouk classes and socials across the United Kingdom. I will try my best to keep the list up-to-date, but it is subject to change and always best to contact the teachers/group directly to confirm.

Find Brazilian Zouk dance schools around the World whether you are visiting or looking for a local school, please visit zoukbase.com (no longer available) !!! It has the most up-to-date info

If you are a teacher/group and would like to be added to this list, please contact me via facebook or the contact form with your class details in the same format as shown below.

7 Dance Tips from Zero to Hero

Fri, 03 Oct 2014 12:00:00 +0100

7 Dance Tips from Zero to Hero

If you are impatient like me and always like the fasts track but afraid of shortcuts that can cause bad habits. Here are a few suggestions that may help speed up your learning process and get you onto the dance floor with confidence. However, like all skills, you still need to give it time before your muscle memory kicks in, so it is still true that it is down to lots of practice.

What is Zouk?

Fri, 03 Oct 2014 11:00:00 +0100

I have been asked this question a million times. Not once have I ever gotten bored explaining it to others. In fact, I still get very excited telling others what it is and what makes Zouk so awesome!

Zouk is a Brazilian dance and still very young compare to many other social dances. It was popularised in the 1980, and has grown popularity all over the world, mainly in UK, Europe, Asia and Australia.

Birmingham Bouldering Centre

Thu, 02 Oct 2014 12:00:00 +0100

Ever since started climbing about 4 months ago, I haven’t stopped. This is a sport that I would like to see more of my friends doing. It is fun, challenging and has a great sense of accomplishment when you complete a route. This kind of activity is very sociable as we can chill and chat with friends while having a good work out.

Where the

Situated under a subway near Snowhill station, we found this place while on the way to my first Capeiro Dance class. It is much smaller than Boulder Central where I usually climb, but this place has it’s own appeal.

Hen & Chickens Pub Grill

Thu, 02 Oct 2014 11:00:00 +0100

Hen & Chickens Pub Grill

I have heard of this place from TripAdvisor and the raving reviews it had. After a hard bouldering session, me and Xin decided to go for some curry. Since we were nearby, I suggested we try this place and cross it off my list.

The exterior would somewhat trouble you, giving off a very ghetto and chavvy feel to it. You can probably seat about 20 people inside place. The interior were old with mismatched furnitures. However, we wasn’t there to admire it’s beauty. So lets eat!

ZoukTime! 5th Brazilian Dance Congress

Tue, 30 Sep 2014 12:00:00 +0100

ZoukTime! 5th Brazilian Dance Congress

Published: 12 September 2014 | Author: Hoi Ung | Posted from: Brno, Czech Republic

Hundreds of dancers. Professionals, amateurs and beginners from all over the world gathered in one place! Classes during the day time, performances and social dancing throughout the night until the morning.

ZoukTime! has had the reputation for being one of the best in Europe. This being their 5th year running certainly didn’t disappoint! With world class teachers and DJ’s, ZoukTime! decided to change their class schedules extending from 6 x 1 hour classes to 4 x 1.5 hour classes each day. Personally, I’ve felt it worked well. The teachers had that little extra time needed to go into details for what’s being taught and the students aren’t overloaded with as many combinations or techniques to remember. Quality over quantity for effective learning.

Turtle Bay Restaurant

Thu, 18 Sep 2014 12:00:00 +0100

Turtle Bay Restaurant

I have been longing to visit this restaurant for some time after hearing it and seeing many friends check-in on their facebooks. I have always loved caribbean food, especially oxtail and ackee & salt fish being my favorite! Lamb pattie too! mMmm…

When entering the restaurant, it was bigger than expected. They were playing chillaxing Reggae type music and the staff appeared to be friendly. We were promptly seated by the receptionist as it wasn’t too busy at 5pm.

Woodsmoke - Woodlanders Bushcraft Course

Sun, 10 Aug 2014 12:00:00 +0100

Woodsmoke - Woodlanders Bushcraft Course

What is Bushcraft?

The first time I’ve ever heard of Bushcraft was a few years back when googling about living in the wild. Some people may have misconception of what Bushcraft really is about, as it was easily confused with the stuff that Bear Grylls does on TV. I am sure we all got a little excited when watching Bear grylls eating bugs, sleeping rough and teaching techniques on how to stay hydrated and fed. To make a clear distinction, Bear Grylls’ does what is called survival training. How to get out of a situation if you are exposed to the natural environment and no communication to civilization. To be able to survive and get yourself back to civilisation as quick as possible.