| Since I cannot start a new thread due to my low post number, i think i have no choice but to continue with my review here.
Having hardly done any approaches for quite a long while, due to crippling AA, I decided to take a bootcamp with Sarge School. Hailing from Dundee, the quite economical pricing of the company made me consider the trip, which would make it worth it in spite of the soaring fuel costs and hotel expenses. After all, how wrong can I go with a company with a caption that says “You don’t need a mortgage for a bootcamp”?
Train trips never appealed to me due to the several changes in stations and my knack for only picking trains that often has spectacular delays and tend to leave me in the middle of nowhere, frustrated and entangling me in long battles to get a refund, made me turn to my trusted jalopy for the endeavor. So, armed with the Google map information, which put my trip at approximately 8 hours one way, I set off on the 26th for doing my first serious practical step towards handling my AA once and for good.
Admittedly, I have had some doubts about the decision to take the bootcamp right after they decided to ask us to change the date that I had primarily booked in for, i.e. the 5th of June, just about a week before I was scheduled to take it. Having had my holidays and accommodation sorted for the weekend, it was partly out of cheekiness that I asked for a coach to crash on, if I was to change the date to the new weekend. When they soon replied positively to the request, I knew that I had I had to sort my holidays out again with my increasingly grumpy workmates, which I managed to do even with half of them being away on their holidays.
As soon as I hit Glasgow, I knew that the 8 hours was going to be pure fiction as traffic had other plans for me that Google conveniently forgot to foresee. However, even the 2 hour margin I had given myself which looked like a good idea then, could not make up for the longer pockets of resistance along the M6 at near Manchester/Birmingham and London junctions pushed the grand total of the journey time to about 12.5 hours!.
In spite of the delay of an hour in meeting up with TonyT at about 5.30pm, I found the guy pretty chilled out and we soon headed off to meet up with the rest of the students with whom we soon arrived at the venue. The 3 other students were all very pleasant, which was very important as they were going to be my wingmen for the night- ‘B’ who had travelled from Brussels to take the course; ‘A’ who seemed to be bend on collecting certificates in obtaining as much coaching from as many different companies as possible and ‘O’ who, like me also apparently suffered from AA. There was also an intern instructor, John who was someone with this huge likeability factor about him and looking into his big eyes it was hard to believe that someone as cute as him needed to work on his game to be attractive to the opposite sex.
Jimmy, soon arrived with his laptop and our classes started in which they taught the basics of what was expected of us and halfway through the classes we were joined by another student who introduced himself as JP. Jimmy had a very relaxed type of a personality and teaching the classes was the last time we were to see Jimmy as he had other issues to tend to later.
We also met Mark, an ex-military, whose rough voice was easily projected seemingly from somewhere else deep in his body other than his throat, with the sole use of his mouth being to shape this voice into words. Being someone whose voice sounds like it emulated from somewhere after my tongue, I asked for his secret. “Please don’t tell me to start smoking!” I thought to myself before asking. He was kind enough to offer me the choice of either being born with great genetics or joining the army to pick from. I wished I could pick the former.
Soon after the food was served, and the tabs were cleared we set off to the bar where we were supposed to get on with our infield practice. The only thing I took note was to make sure that I steer clear of any main course in that restaurant which probably could be the only one which has perfected the art of cooking the most insipid Chinese food in the whole of London.
After paying a ransom as ‘Congestion Charge’ at the behest of the cab driver I befriended, for following the enticing voice of my Sat-nav into the congestion zone, we met Perry at the night club, who always seemed to have this smile on his face and always was in an upbeat state, thanks to an Antony Robbins type of state control that he had effectively incorporated into his daily grind. He was to later teach this to us the next day, which I think would be useful to people for whom NLP and the sort seem to work, and was in fact seemly useful to the other students when he attempted to pump up their state. I, for one, could not only locate where the AA was in my body, assign any colours to it, tear it off my body or make it into a basketball etc, but also failed in seeing myself as the 3rd person in a dissociative state when John tried to teach me or picture myself as the successful ‘Ladies man’ in the second part of Ace’s Inner game. Some people, I guess, are blessed with the imagination of a tired mule at the end of its lifespan waiting for someone to put it out of its misery.
“Don’t worry!” John was to comfort me later after conducting an exercise with me “Just practice and it will soon come to you.” He apparently is so much into NLP and dissociative state, it was as if he was walking around with a personal CCTV so that he can see himself and make the changes required in his body movements at will.
Getting back to the first day and the night club scene, while waiting outside the club, Perry took me and tried to push me to open my first set. I froze! But bounced back quickly to ask him to show me how it was done. As the set had moved on, he took me to another set nearby which consisted of about 7 people of which only 2 were girls. Planting himself right into the group, he asked “Hey Guys! Which one do you think is Michael Jackson’s best song?”
“That was it? No time constraint? He is going to get blown off in record time” I thought.
In a matter of minutes he started teasing the girls and befriending the guys. Whether he did a good of befriending the guys is debatable as some more minutes into the interaction all the guys went into the bar and left the 2 girls with us. One of them however came back for them as soon as he saw Perry dancing with the cuter one of the girls and they soon after shut down and left us after politely bidding us good bye. Perry did not seem interested in escalating it further.
Having seen better performances on Youtube by other PUAs, I wasn’t too impressed but it was good being reinforced that it can be done in real life. We soon met with John and looking back it is hard to remember who spotted and pushed me into a 3set walk by with a HB7 and 2 more HB(-1)s. I remember looking into the eyes of the HB7 and somehow muttered “Michael Jackson”. She said something back which I did not hear. It is hard to hear when your heart is beating in your head. I grimaced and put an ear forward as if to imply that I couldn’t hear due to her low voice.
“What about him?” she repeated. Damn! I forgot my opener.
‘Do you think that he was such a great musician after all? I mean, the guy may have had a few OK songs a few lifetimes ago, but he’s surely past his prime has contributed nothing at all except nuisance in the past few years!’
‘In fact’ I continued to her HB-1 friends ‘He still continues to be a nuisance to me after his death, with me getting about 18 sms over yesterday night from my friends crying about his death. If the guy is dead, fine! Let’s whine about it in the morning… when I am not around!’
“You are just jealous that when you are gone, no one’s going to miss you. That’s why you are so jealous” the HB retorted with a beaming smile. I couldn’t believe it. They had not walked away. In fact they were all hooked.
‘I bet she will’ I said putting my arm around one of her HB-1 friends. I took the opportunity to take her name. I was still afraid to kino the HB7.
2 minutes went by. 5 minutes went by! And this group of strangers showed no signs of leaving me. Somewhere along the banter, the HB7 started to kino me and I hadn’t even realized. I glanced at where my instructors were and realized that they were gone. My focus shifted to joining them and wished the girls goodbye. Just as I was about to eject, the HB7 hugged and asked “Hey! I don’t even know your name. How will I miss you when you are dead if I don’t know it?”
I glanced over my shoulder and replied with a smirk ‘Rumpelstiltskin’
Getting back to my instructors, I was asked if I got her digits. It was only then I realized- I could have N-closed! After I got the ‘how-can-I-work-with-this-retard’ look from my instructor, we again headed off to open other sets. I also met Damien and Ace at this point.
I opened a couple of other sets none of which went memorably well. Towards the end of the day, I was pushed into a seated 3-set by Ace and almost hooked when the Alpha female of the group did her bit to AMOG me and closed her group to me. It was here I realized my first sticking point- I did not know how to handle AMOGing. It did not make sense to my logical brain. Even if I ended up looking embarrassed in front of 3 strangers, shouldn’t I be not bothered by it all? Why did this hurt as much as it did? Since I was flying well this far, this really broke my state.
I left with Perry and ‘O’ to the tube as I was crashing at Perry’s and ‘O’ was headed in the same direction as well. We recapped the whole day and while waiting for the tube, Perry spotted a HB8 with long tapered legs waiting for the tube all by herself and asked us “Who wants to open her?” I chickened. ‘O’ rose to the occasion and scampered off to add her to his tally. This was a guy whose AA was supposed to be just as strong as mine and yet took the arrival of the tube to tear him off her.
When he came to us, we wondered out loud if he could successfully N-close her. She apparently was apprehensive about parting with that info, which nonetheless did not seem to dampen his mood. While exiting the tube, I looked at her and couldn’t help scream at myself thinking ‘This girl was gorgeous! I should have opened her!’
I don’t what possessed me but I found myself turning and telling her “I can’t believe that my friend had the balls to come and talk to you! I can’t even IMAGINE doing that!”
‘Great work, Dude!’ I thought, ‘You successfully DLVed yourself and placed her on a pedestal’
“That’s because your friend has read ‘The Game’” she replied. “Haven’t you read it as well?”
‘What is this ‘The Game’ book? Something that gives you balls or teaches you how to talk to girls?’ I lied. I was already cursing myself for the catalogue of errors that I seem to be committing with this girl.
“You must ask him for the book. He has an arsenal under him which he does not want to share with you. Not much of a friend if he does that to you, is he?”
“Nah! I still wouldn’t have the patience to put in the effort to wind up all my courage to talk to some stranger only based on her looks only to find out that she isn’t worth my time.”
‘Worth your time?’ She laughed ‘What else would you rather do while waiting for the tube alone?’ I can’t believe it. She wasn’t AMOGing me, she was teasing me.
“Anything else but being hit on by stranger girls. I think I have to practice on my bitching abilities to repel them away. Way easier to be a bitch than engaging them in an intelligent conversation with them. Do you think you can give me some classes?”
She smiled just as we reached the elevator to the main entrance. I saw Perry at the door of a fully packed elevator and urged us to get in. The HB looked at me at said ‘Let’s take the next one.’
Not wanting to end my catalogue of errors there, I jumped in watching the door close on her wondering when I am going to grow a brain, if I ever do.
(Just saw this report and realized that I am getting carried away! This is after all only supposed to be 2-3 Paragraphs at most.) Day 2 started at 1.30 pm. I met ‘JP’ and another student ‘R’ at 1 and waited for Ace and Damien to turn up. They apologized for being late and we soon started the Daygame section.
It is important to note that ‘Sarge School’ sadly does not have a Daygame section in their bootcamps currently and I signed up for both the ‘Basic’ and the ‘Advanced’ at the same time as only the ‘Advanced’ had some Daygame on its 3rd day. This has since been cut down to 2 days with the Daygame section being taken off its ‘Advanced’ Bootcamp.
When I informed that I will be coming all the way from Dundee, Tony was kind enough to squeeze the ‘Advanced’ course in for me during my stay so that I would not have to undertake the journey again. This effectively meant that they would have to do it 1on1 for me even though they would be running an ‘Advanced’ the following week. This is what resulted in me getting the Daygame.
I was pleasantly surprised to be joined by other ‘Basic’ students at the Daygame and suggest that anyone joining look out for such opportunities if Daygame is your forte. To cut the entire story short, we headed off to Leicester Square where we ran our Daygame up until 4 30 pm. Damien was a really cool guy who made us approach one set after the other and seemed to be blessed with a natural smoothness that goes far into endearing him to anyone who crosses path with him. He broke down our mistakes, drilled us time after time so that we feel comfortable approaching and broke down how to add DHVs into our stories.
Ace too is not without his charms. He has cultivated the ‘Bad boy’ persona into him to perfection and of the lot seems to be the only one who has extensively researched and made the jerk personality his own. It is hard to determine if lines like “I’ll rest when I die” or the typical Cocky Funny response of “You love me” of PUAs to any tease is scripted or plain cheesy, but he pulls it off with great authenticity. It may be great to pull girls, and AMOG easy targets, but I would consider it a greater achievement for him if he were to survive into his late twenties with all his teeth intact. He does admittedly have great insight into the various techniques and psychology of getting you into opening a set and would really recommend him if AA is your sticking point. He may need to work more on his teaching skills as I always found myself heading back to Damien every time I wanted a feedback as I found Damien to be more genuine as a teacher. We also ran into ‘A’ who this time was collecting the honours from a ‘Lovesystems’ instructor to add to his ‘PUAT’ and other training certificates.
We headed back to our venue for further ‘Basic’ training and Ace did some ‘Inner game’ exercises. We did skip on his ‘Douche bag Game’ which I recalled him saying would suit me perfectly due to time constraints. TonyT was up next with his Body Language seminar and exercise but did not have the necessary situation for the Vocal Training and so was missed out as well. Perry’s ‘State control’ method was also taught which I will be practicing even though how much it is going to help me remains to be seen.
In between the seminars, TonyT came over and offered the students to take part in the upcoming week’s ‘Advanced’ bootcamp at a discounted price which was much lesser than what I had already paid. I was informed that since I was getting my ‘Advanced’ as 1on1, they did not deem the discount appropriate for me. In practice, the only 1on1 I will be getting are the ones I was scheduled to get with TonyT and Lauren on Sunday. The tiredness of the trip, the aggravation of an existing knee injury on the way to the venue and missing out on the discount made me request TonyT to release me off the ‘Advanced’ part of the bootcamp.
I forsake the Night game part of the ‘Basic’ having attended the Daygame and asked for a refund for the ‘Advanced’ as no ‘Advanced’ material has been taught thus far. In hindsight, I may not have been so cranky if I had not realized that I was only getting a few extra hours compared to some other ‘Basic’ students under the pretext of an entire ‘Advanced’.
Being clever as I always am, I headed back to Dundee at the same night to beat the traffic. Soon, I ran into a delightful foggy patch along the M6 which was so heavy that the only way one could read the ‘Fog warning’ display board was if one ran into it. I soon parked my car and fell asleep somewhere near Northampton. Some guys have all the luck.
I received a mail from TonyT yesterday with an undertone that seemed very hesitant in refunding me the ‘Advanced’ bootcamp’s amount. As I was preparing to prepare a reply refuting some of the excuses used, I received another email from him informing me that he will be refunding it after having had discussed it with Jimmy. Apparently the happiness of the students is paramount to them and has factored heavily into the equation.
I feel bad. These guys really need to get organized very well and soon. But, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I took back such a reluctant refund. After all, they had gone way out of their way to make sure that I benefitted from the whole experience. I should feel lucky that had they been employed rather than being self-employed and were to break down the hours, I could get sued for not paying the minimum wages.
To anyone who is one the fence about taking any bootcamp, I figure that the only questions you should be asking yourself should be- Do I really need a bootcamp or will a really good group of wingmen do? If I really do need a bootcamp, will I get the personalized attention that I need amongst loads of other students in one of the free trainings here? Do I really need to pay a heap to get the equivalent of Andy Murray to teach me tennis when I do not even know how to serve properly?
If you have answered ‘No’ to all of the above questions, I suggest that you try these guys out. Judging by their prices, what do you have to lose?
Please feel free to PM me as post any questions that you may have, if you are interested.
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CHAT
