Out for a ride

Ouch! I banged my toe at Liam's wedding, on the dance floor.



It was great to see Jon and Liam in particular, but also Joe. Remember, we did the Three Peaks together, couple of years back.

Joe must have been keeping up with some of my recent escapades on Flickr, because his girlfriend came straight out with:

She: So, Matt, are you actually a naturist then?
Me: Well, yes, I suppose so, in a free range sort of way.

Anyway, that's not the point (though it was a rather amusing conversation, and as usual led to all sorts of confessions and philosophical ramblings), I banged it again in Oxford, and my nice hemp and recycled rubber loafers couldn't cushion it enough to stop me swearing at the top my voice and throwing my hat at strangers (the floppy peak stopped me from seeing the kerb). I got a new hat, and a very bruised toe.

A week later, I don't think I'll be losing the nail, but I did notice soreness after running. So instead of a long run today I went round the block (12 miles, via some nice hills) on the old tourer, trying out some new clipless shoes. btw, new folder now has clipless pedals, which are to bikes as indoor plumbing or electricity is to houses. As in, essential if you want to get anywhere without messing about.

Glimmers of understanding

Hey groovy, someone just sent me an email in Mandarin that didn't take me more than a day to understand.

不知道你是否还记得我。我是你以前在UCL语言中心的汉语老师， X XX。你现在还在UCL学习汉语吗？还是你转道SOAS学习去了？。

我刚刚在flickr找找关于UCL的照片，没想到看见好多你拍的照片，句话我们以前去中国成吃饭的照片，还有很多我的照片！你的照片都拍的很好。

你还在UCL工作吗？你有个好消息, 我要回来ucl工作了！！我8月初开始工作。希望能在跟你见面。我想你现在中文一定很棒！

I only had to look up about 5 words, but I got the gist straight away. I just spent half an hour re-typing it (this means I have to know what the pinyin is for each character) and I'm well on my way to composing a reply (我当然记得你, 我汉语水平还可以 。。。） turn-around time a fortnight. I'm starting to feel borderline literate.

Poking around with the sword

At James' class today, bumbled through the lao jia and the Chen sword. Good crew there, about 8 students in all. Nice day for once, so we cracked open the doors for a bit of breeze. Off to youtube now to look for Chen Zheng Lei performing the sword form for reference.

Probably shopping tomorrow (a wedding next weekend, so want to look decent), so I put in a longish run (1:20) this evening. Then back to HQ to catch the last of Wimbledon in between cooking operations.

Cycling in London

I've been waiting for ages for my folding bike to arrive. At last, here it is:



I'm really pleased with this. It can be folded in under a minute, and I can carry it round the block without my fingers going numb. The purpose of this is to whizz up from my mainline station in town to where I work. This could be a 25 minute tube journey or a fairly random amount of time on the bus. It's 10-15 minutes on the new toy.

I've found cycling in London perversely a lot easier than in Surrey. There are more paths and stop areas, and most drivers have by now seen a cyclist, and understand why we sometimes do odd things. We like to keep moving, and out of harm's way, so we don't always keep to the left where we can get squashed. So the taxis and buses all nod me through. Contrast this to leafy Surrey, where the 4x4 crowd think they have every right to blare their horns if I so much as think about using the road creatively.

Although Mayor Bozza is (was?) a cyclist, I fear that we have to fight for our space. So I was up there again for the weekend's naked bike ride, as reported in Londonist. This is partly a pro-cycle jamboree, but also somewhat an anti-petrol patrol and a little bit plain old naturist party. At least a couple of my hobbies represented then.



I took a small number of photos, but not as much as the gleeful spectators or some of the other riders. Have a look at the other Flickr WNBR groups (e.g. here and here) if you want confirmation of just how beautiful and funny the human race can be when it gets naked on a bike!

Obvious warning: depictions of nudity, blah, blah.

Back to it

Quick report on last week. Lots of gym, a run OUTSIDE, bit of swimming.

James' saturday tai chi. Great to be back in class. Bumbled through the lao jia (manageable with others. totally impossible on my tod). Bit of push hands. No I don't remember any of the two-hand push hands patterns. Got introduced to Chen style sword (jian). Interesting!

Mandarin classes started up again. The momentum seems to be building there, more conversations. I think our teacher should force us to speak autonomously a bit more, we can handle it. I've tried to be systematic in the week, in terms of pushing the vocab and han zi (i.e. characters). Lost track of cpod though.

This week wasn't so great. Missed lots of gym "slots" due to random social gatherings and late working. I should just have a Rule. Six o clock, down tools, phones, pens, mice.