Recently, an English man based in Hong Kong enquired PERSISI about silat in Singapore. This is because after he had a few lessons in Malaysia he became interested in silat. He was particularly interested to learn the Tiger style. Hence PERSISI directed him to the Perguruan Harimau and Macan Pasrah. Perguruan Harimau did not reply to him but I did.

After a few emails, he told me that he would be in Singapore for 1 week every 4 to 5 weeks cycle. So we met on Thursday night after my Tarawih prayers at Bishan Gelanggang. Prior to the meeting, I told him that I will demonstrate and show him some video clips before he make any decisions to learn our art.

I hoped that this guy is not too large or muscle bound because this will make it difficult to teach him. Fortunately, he wasn't all that and I can see that he will be able to adapt quite easily. He revealed to me that he has background on martial arts particularly JKD (Jit Koon Do...Bruce Lee's style), Ninjitsu and Kali. He was really interested to learn silat because he felt that our art has its own merits. He promised me that he would abide by all our request. I told him that in order to learn our art, he had to immerse himself completely meaning he got to put aside all the martial arts that he had learnt before for the time being until he had mastered our stances and movements, if not it would all be in vain as he would readily fight using his default style.

His name is Peter Newton. He was particularly impressed by the way we compete in the olahraga and agreed that this is one of the way to sharpen our technique. He could spot our pattern easily eventhough at the video clip our pesilat was wearing the black silat attire.

Therefore we agreed to train on Tuesdays and Thursdays 8pm to 10pm at Bishan gelanggang whenever he is in Singapore. Let's hope that this association will be successful...INSYALLAH...HIDUP MACAN...