Another year is coming to its end. Once more it was time for celebrations. With nearly 20 people around the table mixing novices with senior ranks and instructors, excellent food and great company it was surely an event not to missed and we are sorry for those of you that did.
Here are a few of the many pictures (courtesy and Copyright Duncan Grisby 2008) taken during the night: please refer to Duncan Grisby’s web site for the whole collection.
Another successful grading for CARISMA: 5 yellow belts, 5 orange, 2 orange second, 2 green and one blue were awarded. The technical levels keeps growing so the club it self keeps improving. Well done to everyone for the effort put in it!
Other pictures about the grading are available on Duncan Grisby’s web site.
Grading Dec 2008
We would like to inform everybody that the last lesson of 2008 will be on Tuesday 23 December at Kelsey Kerridge. The first session of 2009 will be on Sunday 4 December at Kelsey Kerridge.
CARISMA, its instructors and the committee wish Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all members in the hope to see you all back for a fantastic beginning in 2009.
The committee has been reviewing the club’s finances recently, and Carisma is overall doing very well. We are growing, slowly but steadily, and each beginners’ course brings new regular members. The existing members have been progressing well by regularly grading to higher belts and we have now 5 black belts, 2 brown, several blue and an interesting number of other medium and beginners ranks.
Our main cost centres, Kelsey Kerridge and Manor Community College, increase their rental fees on an annual basis and since October we increased the training schedule by extending our Monday lesson by an hour. In order to face these raising costs, we are pushed to increase our monthly fees by £2, starting from February 1st 2009:
We would like to invite everybody who pays by standing order to adjust their payment, starting from February, and to ensure that the payment is made on the first day of the month so it reaches us within a few days.
We thank all of our members for the continuous effort and support given to the club that keeps growing stronger, year after year.
Looking forward to start 2009 in a different way? For those who have been delaying exercise and dieting until the New Year here is the opportunity you were waiting for. CARISMA is running a new beginners course, starting on the 20th of January to run for 4 consecutives Tuesday and Thursday classes (e.g. 20, 22, 27 and 29).
If you would like to join (or you know somebody who would like to) please do it on the 20th of January: the club is very close to its full capacity and we might not run another beginners course for a while after this date.
There is no need for booking: please just turn up at 6pm at Kelsey Kerridge Sports Hall, Queen Anne terrace, Cambridge.
To celebrate the completion of another successful beginners course we are going ice skating on Thursday 27 November. We will go straight after training at around 8:30pm and we expect, at the end of it, to have a drink in a place to be agreed on the day.
Bring videos and photo cameras: there will be plenty of photography and filming to do 🙂
Please join us for a night of extra fun!
The CARISMA Chrismas dinner will be held on Sunday 7 December 2008 at the Wok and Grill Restaurant, 18 High Street, Cambridge, CB2 2LP. View Larger Map
Wok and Grill is a Chinese restaurant running a rich buffet, with the option of choosing your own ingredients and having them freshly cooked for you. You can eat as much as you like for a total price of £15.80, with drinks charged on top.
Please book your place by paying a non refundable deposit of £10 to the money collector. We must confirm with the restaurant and paying the deposit by 30 November so please hurry.
The dinner will start at 7:30pm therefore the lesson and grading session will be running between 4 and 6pm.
The next beginners course will start on 18 November 2008 to run for 4 consecutive Tuesday and Thursday lessons (e.g. 18, 20, 25, 27).
As we are currently very close to a saturation point the above date could be the last beginners course we run for a while: if you are interested in joining please make sure to do so on that date.
There is no need for booking, just turn up on the day and please make sure to be there at 6pm.
CARISMA is launching today its new site/blog, based on WordPress. The new site replaces its predecessor that holds over nine years of news, events and pictures from various events that the club has organized.
The new technology used allows members of the public to browse information in a variety of ways and to leave comments to any of the posts: “the main point” – explains Massimo Gaetani, president of CARISMA and project manager of the development – “is to establish conversations with our audience, in line with Web 2.0”. He also added: “the club committee liked the new design since the first draft and the various tools available under WordPress allow us to keep the site up to date and in continuous evolution”.
The new site is organized by keeping the essential number of static pages for non changing content and streaming all news, events and other articles by grouping them in categories and tagging them: this way any user can seach information by date, category or tag.
Many thanks to Andrea Cristofaro for the graphic design and Luca Leonardi for technical assistance with WordPress, php and CSS.
Please leave your comments!!!
11 fighters, between CARISMA and CUKBS, participated in a Light Contact Competition organized by Pete Dunnet and the Combat Academy Kickboxing in Thurston (near Bury St. Edmund, Suffolk).
The overall results are extremely encouraging:
Chris Webb: winner
Luca Senatore: second (due to a penalty, excess contact)
Robin Turner: second
Aaron Lewis: second
Ollie Osunkunle (*): winner (opponent had to stop)
Rupert Goodway: second
Andrew Gillham: winner
Richard Kirkland (*): draw (one penalty)
Rosie Snajdr (*): draw
Josh Genkins (*): second
Chris Wilson (*): second
(*) indicates first time at a competition
CARISMA as usual displayed good technique, respect for the rules and professionalism. A number of coaches and masters from various clubs complimented Massimo Gaetani, head coach for CARISMA, about these qualities.
CARISMA fighters showed to have a distinct style, good technique and all those qualities that a martial artist should have by definition: even those at their first experience entered competently the tournament and stood their ground with good performance.
Follow the available videos of the fights:
