Repulsive Monkey

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Outdoor swimming

2009-05-30T14:34:00.002+01:00

Inspired by Kate Rew's book (Wild Swim, which is VG by the way) arriving from Amazon, I ploshed bodily into the local river today. It's broken my UK outdoor swimming duck this year. Here's that diary entry in full.

Cycled to sinuous bend in the Wey, just downstream of Godalming. Recce'd the scene at first : bright, sunny, nice breeze, occasional towpath users and the odd boat. Various fowl splashing about, cows on opposite bank being cows. Checked out the getting in and out place. Got down to shorts and read the paper for a bit, to gauge traffic, and to see how hot it was (quite, but not summer of 76 exactly). Stowed all keys, phones and things of economic significance away from casual fingers.

Waited for a quiet gap. Sunnies off. Hat off. Kit off. Walked in. It! Was! Cold!

Did a length or two. Didn't feel like dunking the head, given the (perfectly natural) detritus on the surface. Fingers gettting numbbbb. Quick get out.

Back to the towel. Sit there for a bit. Dried off. Waved to passing boats : oh look, a shivering naked person, titter titter. Cycled home.

五月二十一号

2009-05-22T08:32:00.003+01:00

昨天晚上，我喝太多啤酒。不是有意地。

我有头疼从早晨到晚上。几个开会。

五月二十二号

2009-05-22T08:24:00.005+01:00

起床很早。吃早饭了以后，上自行车到了邮局拿包裹。

Dear Diary and List Anxiety

2009-05-20T10:44:00.006+01:00

So, last week, our long-suffering Mandarin teacher let us have an easy-to-do homework, since we were all so bad at producing anything like a regular series of essays for the last lot. So, "why not just do a diary?" Fine, that's easy then!

I did actually Think About It for a little bit, but nothing actually got done. Poor teacher! Worst class that she's ever had, I expect. This week, a new, hopefully easier to use, variant of the task.

Write whatever diary entry you want and send it to me.

I will interpret this rather liberally, and start plugging basic diary entries in this blog, in Mandarin. If I want to actually talk about something in more than a sedated toddler way then I may drop into English.

五月二十号

天气更好一点儿。上自行车到火车站。有很多人排队着。没有时间买车票、咖啡、报纸。

担心一点儿，因为工作前进得不太流利。因为我有许多的设计，所以我慢慢进步。今天下午有再一个会议，是e-learning的。太无聊了。我真忙，可能不去。

See, so many things to do. I have the usual trouble of being distracted by things off-stage, that is, projects other than the one I'm supposed to be working on. To-do list anxiety. Probably exacerbated by remembering the many times when tasks I'd forgotten about have suddenly become super-urgent.

At one time, I was using OmniOutliner to list everything, and to total the Number of Things. This got into the 300's quite easily, and was plainly ridiculous. It doesn't help that I've got about 5 jobs.

For the last month or two, I've switched to OmniFocus, and I'm trying to implement a Getting Things Done approach. This doesn't seem to be capable of adding up the number of open tasks, but I'm taking that as a Good Thing.

You can't drink the whole river, why should you know how many cups there are?

Monkey Monday

2008-12-09T10:09:00.004Z

Flickr blog talks about personal projects as a way of keeping going. They're talking about photo creativity, but given this is a blog, then let's stuff it into a metaphor shaped sock with motivation on the side.

I think I've having an extended Monkey Monday myself. Except it's been going on for weeks now.

No running. No practice. Missing classes of all types. Stress. Not much laughing.

I was intending to post this as a gee ain't that funny cheer up post but it's gone the other way. Hmm.

To Monkey, the opera

2008-12-01T10:14:00.004Z

so I finally saw Monkey the Opera!

Proper title Monkey: Journey to the West. The west here is India, to the west of the western desert, but it could also been construed as here in London. Based on the pillar of Chinese literature, the Monkey King whatever whatever. For those not familiar, think of a cross between Don Quixote, Buffy (only with more actual sex), the Young Ones and the Gospel according to Luke. The famous novel is thoroughly comi-serious. Mallory and Python in one sprawling package.

How could I not be a fan? This first came to my notice before its premiere in Manchester in 2007. Fascinated! Why? let's see : arrrt (Hewlitt), martial and otherwise, cheeky monkeys, Chinese culture, Blur-y musical wildness, Mandarin.

Organisational crapness, and not wanting to sit in a crowded Pendolino all the way to Manc, prevented me from joining in. If my monkey-brain is right, I was probably tragically over-involved in the usual tussles, so come the weekend, phuh!

The show has now productionised itself, and is in the middle of a stint at the do.. er O2. Well not quite, a shaky tent just outside. So think circus-style wobbly bleachers and slightly dodgy canvas walls. All black though, to set off Jamie Hewlitt's art and the red lanterns, emblazoned with the ever-present monkey glyph.

en passant, I quite liked the whole Brit-cit 2000 AD scenario of train, tube, dome. More or less what I had imagined aged 12, less any flying cars.

What we saw then, was quite brilliant, though not the totally immersive spectacle that I'd imagined. Each of the set-pieces was great, and there was music and action and emotion in each one. The various scenes followed the genesis of each character, drawing on various elements and forces as a result. The Dalian circus performers were marvellous, spinning and flipping and posing, either in specific characters or fighters or as part of a background fantastic world. Costumes and props were clever, witty and stunning.

The music was weird and jangly (Damon Albarn does this very well), just how I like it. We had a good view of the band, which was a nice bonus.

Sung, yelped, growled and shouted in Mandarin, the words were probably incomprehensible to most (though maybe not, lots of Chinese faces in the audience) but I managed to grasp the odd word, e.g. DA SI NI MEN !! Quite encouraging really.

The main linking device between scenes was a closing of the screens and a chance to drool over a Hewlitt animation. These were often delightfully linked to the live-action through lighting effects. Maybe the links were a bit long, there was obviously quite a bit of scene shifting and re-costuming to be done, but somehow it felt like 9 lumps (of course, 9! the final scene being in heaven) and not a single great story all wound together as one, like.

Why was that? Limits of the medium? Not being in the front? Monkey's numb bum?

Still, there was so much to look at and think about, that the normally rip-off program was a bargain, stuffed as it was it gorgeous illustrations and nerdy details. Even a proper bibliography.

The soundtrack, which I've had for a few months now without making sense of, linguistically or otherwise, is now going to get a good rummage.

Out for a ride

2008-07-13T19:15:00.003+01:00

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

2008-07-13T19:03:00.004+01:00

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

2008-06-28T22:33:00.001+01:00

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

2008-06-19T11:51:00.006+01:00

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.

And now for something completely different ...

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

2008-04-26T08:59:00.004+01:00

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.

Ploddy re-start

2008-04-13T12:29:00.002+01:00

I'm quite glad not to be running London today. Just saw the finish of the elite Women and elite men, and sure enough, it was chucking it down. Same thing 30 miles away, rain, hail everything.

An hour before, during the day's spell of nice weather, I went out for what, in the usual scheme of things, would be my 1-2 hour easy run. This time it was 45 minutes of slow stiff plodding. My legs felt unwilling and the shoes felt tired too. Effects of yesterday's gym? Unused to the feel of pavement? I tried to remember last time I did any outdoor running. The scenery was beautiful though. Along the Wey path, I was chased along by a pair of geese being chased by a swan. So the birds are getting their routines together too.

Gym card useful at last

2008-03-17T17:39:00.007Z

Two visits to local exercise facilities this weekend, but no running, and only reading about tai chi rather than doing it.

Along with doing fiddly painting jobs around the house, and sporadic bass-playing (both good for knotting up muscles) I managed to get two uses out of my scandalously expensive gym membership card.

To the local leisure centre for some weights/rowing/treadmill on Saturday. Pretty good, but no heroic achievements.

Yesterday evening, I went along to Alton Leisure centre's weekly naturist swim (handy for sauna, steam room and jacuzzi too). (Every Sunday, 730 - 930 pm, GU34 1ST, Tel: 01420 540040). Both these leisure centres are run by the same company, so I got a little discount on entry to Alton, which offset the travel costs.

I've been meaning to go along to this session for some time. To date, I've been a naturist on beaches (UK and foreign) and open spaces only, and haven't been to clubs or swims. I'm glad I did, but regret not being able to persuade Mrs. Monkey on this occasion. It was relatively quiet by all accounts, less than twenty users I'd guess, and only a couple of women. Because it was uncrowded, and people seemed to know each other, there was a nice village pump vibe.

In my ideal world, every swimming pool would be clothing optional, all the time, not to mention all the beaches. As it is, it's increasingly hard, i.e. they are being discontinued, to find an open (not club-based) session in the UK (Netherlands, Germany, Austria are more like the ideal) so this session is worth supporting.

I put in about half an hour of solid swimming, and a few iterations of the hot stuff. Result: Mentally energised by the occasion of being an official UK naturist facility user for the first time, and bodily de-knotted.

Trying to keep up

2008-02-04T22:33:00.001Z

I've got this sensation of falling off the back of the treadmill. Metaphorically of course, my running is comparatively fine.

Troublesome day at work (not enough time!! MSc administrators panicking!! Both of them!!) then felt exhausted, so planned to drift back to the sofa. Mrs Monkey rang up, with troubling developments on the Felix front. A card from the RSPCA (danmn, they're out, must call first thing tomorrow) and explanatory voicemail from the (helpful, understanding) vets. Message to irritatingly anonymous worried neighbours : No, we. are. not. neglecting. our. cat. OK??

She was going to the gym anyway, so I grabbed a Jaffa cake and joined in. Felt ok actually, despite initial lethargy. 15 mins running, various weights and floor contortions, 15 mins x-trainer. Lots of punters (though not as many as in Bloomsbury, which is constantly packed).

Back home to find Felix out somewhere. I update my twitter, in case M wants to follow the plot, and then he chooses that moment to wander back in. Has the panicky old lady fed him, or not? Anyway, he gets another dinner. And another wash.

Because of the wonderful new Pet Porte (photo) , we can do clever things like keep everybody in at night.

Missed Chinese tonight obviously. Read the book, highlighting new words. Pleasantly surprised at the level of comprehension, though I'm making no regular effort to update my vocab. Resolve to try and catch up with Chinesepod. Though not tonight. And so to bed.

Oh Hi, how's it going?

2008-02-03T21:01:00.001Z

As I was about to start another Monday night Chinese class, I bumped into a (very) erstwhile classmate, who was about to teach her Hebrew class. She's awfully clever, and fantastically good at picking up languages, so is probably is at my level with about a tenth of the instruction. Both agreed that present UCL offerings probably not immersive enough. She also recommended Chinesepod (hang on, didn't I recommend that to her ages ago?) and I learnt her name there. Thought I recognised it, but the new hairdo had prevented me from making the connection.

Bound up with the technology

2008-01-24T10:50:00.001Z

I was bravely adding high Frequency characters to my Treo, using PlecoDict. Will I ever learn these things?

It's good to find helfpul tools and resources, and better to combine them. I experimented for a while with an online flashcard sharing tool (I bet their number has grown now, so I won't even bother linking). It tied me the the machine, and doesn't give me that waiting-for-the-train learning opportunity that the handheld does.

I really like PlecoDict though, with its embedded Oxford dictionary (I now use the paper version as a paperweight), and it's one of the reasons I'm sticking with the greasy old Palm, rather than lusting after the lovely iPhone. I'm definitely iCurious though, and would gladly flash my gadget cash that way if Pleco was there.

Dictionary of the 500 Most Frequently Used Words Yong Ho, Hippocrene Books, 2001
PlecoDict Chinese dictionary and study aid for handheld computers and smartphones

Doctor 2

2007-12-22T17:26:00.001Z

Something's not right. Remember the incident of the unpleasant sensations in the heart? About 18 months ago, as diligent readers may remember. Well it's back. I felt, er, em dunno doctor, "funny" standing around in Marks earlier this week. Guildford high street is steep, but not vertical, so I didn't think I'd been overdoing it. Went to see the Dr on Friday, with noncommital results. You see, if and when I exercise, there's not problem. Except that time in the Peak District. And it has been feeling strange off and on for half of this term.

However, today, walking up Market Street, the distinct unpleasantness came back, as we were looking around for the annual Christmas decoration. I don't much like shops at the best of times, but I had to retire from the close, warm shop to the relative calm of the square. Then we wandered at half steam to our favourite erzatz noodle joint, and then to cinema. But walking up our (rather steep) street from the station seemed to require caution.

Back as soon as possibly can to the GP, I think.

Low point

2007-10-09T23:25:00.001+01:00

Back to Mandarin class. Level "5" now. Due to the low number of students knocking around UCL language centre, the levels are a bit mixed up. We had at least four people who were basically fluent as far as I could tell, and were rattling on with the new teacher and breezing through the text. Us lot from the old level 4+ were pretty stumped. Wo. um. Jiao. Matt. OK I've had a bit of a long break, but this might not be good. Or it could be very good. But I doubt it. It's like climbing with office worker fingers, thinking 3b is hard, and with the partners running up grade 6 routes.

One problem is all the other work. If it's going to fly I'm going to need time for consistent study. At the moment there's no way. Sad to say, but I might want to knock it on the head for a term or two, just to stay sane.

The climbing analogy is an actual experience, which resulted in me giving up the sport, because I just suffered every week, I don't regret it whatsoever.

Master Wang Chieh, Push Hands Practice, Taiwan

2007-09-10T15:00:00.001+01:00

I saw this intriguing photo on Flickr (I have a feed looking at photos with the "Tai Chi" tag) which then led me to this clip of a blindingly brilliant push hands session. This got everyone in the office wondering what was going on. Strength through softness, innit?

Mike Martello (reasonably well known in European/US/Taiwan Tai Chi circles), who put up the YouTube vid, along with dozens of others, seemed to be at the event (looks like it was organised by this club) photographed by Flickr user BeijingKungfuCamp2007.

Sword (links)

2007-06-17T13:53:00.000+01:00

Dunno whether the class will start doing sword form again, so for now my little floppy practice sword is gathering dust. I would actually like a one-piece practice sword rather than an extendable version. I heard a nasty rumour about sch things becoming harder to get hold of in the UK – some sort of forthcoming weapons legislation?

Here's Mike Garafolo on taiji sword forms in general. Click through to find his excellent links and bibliographies.

Class update

2007-06-09T09:28:00.000+01:00

Mandarin classes re-resumed in April, this time with only 5 participants. Hmm the lack of momentum at the so-called higher levels. I think there's only one level above in the UCL Language Centre system. And this is in London. Imagine the difficulty I would face in the provinces! Admittedly there are choices, e.g. the much more formal approach of SOAS. At the moment, we are still being quite conversational rather than textbook-bound. My h/w this week, for example, is to write out a recipe for egg fried rice. There are approximately 15 characters for various sorts of frottage in a wok, now, what were they... ?

Really don't know what's going on

2007-05-28T17:19:00.000+01:00

It could be a sign of increasing awareness, or it could be a sign of stagnation or regression, but I get the feeling often that the meaning of a conversation, in Chinese that is, can slip by me completely. Despite the grammar and vocabulary being in theory known to me. The same could be said for many things other than Mandarin, truth be known. Could be me just rattling around the conscious/competent matrix.

So, in our class, I could be struggling to pick an "easy" word like 那 (nà, there) out of my head. I know I know it but what is it? Or in skype chat with a language partner (I've got a couple of those now), to fail to read a critical 就。 Or watching a movie in Mandarin for an hour and have no idea what's going on. It was Shuzhou River – a bit David Lynch-ey, so maybe no suprise.

I reckon words are leaving my vocabulary as quick as they enter.

Also, I thought I was confused with the new "v3" Chinesepod. They've suppressed the lesson numbering system for example. But I think I've worked it out now. They have provided personalised feeds, which can put the lesson transcript straight into my itunes. And I finally grokked the whole calendar business. Wheee!

March Progress

2007-03-31T09:33:00.000+01:00

Chinese : classes over for another term. Waiting to hear what will happen next - the classes don't run unless there are a minimum number of students, and some of us (there were 6 left at the end) are dropping out for various reasons. Chinesepod is a great backup, and now that I've got a car adapter, I can crack through the podcasts. I don't listen to Newbie level now, and I keep running out of Elementaries. Intermediates are still slightly too hard.

Running : I seem to be able to manage three sessions a week now, plus one gym. Or two gyms and two runs. Some good runs lately, around familiar loops.

Taiji : At the weekly class, we got to the end of Lao Jia Yi Lu. Admittedly in a very ragged way, but yeah! Off to Wang's class today to do it properly, where we are about 12 moves in. Although the level is more consistent there (only reasonably serious folk turn up), his method is to go over and over the moves rather than go through forms at a high rate of knots.

Chatty chat chat

2007-03-20T10:55:00.000Z

Yesterday, spent most of my lunch break (wu xui) chatting with a Chinese person on Skype. I had posted a notice for language partners on the Chinesepod forum, and consequently this person got in touch.

Although my level of understanding is really terrible, I think, we were still able to keep a (typed) conversation going to and fro. I needed some help here and there. Sometimes I would recall the word or phrase, having been reminded. Mostly in pinyin (which can be confusing without the tonemarks) with occasional hanzi. When I know the characters, hanzi is more efficient, but if I don't then I am likely to be stumped.

I picked some (probably obvious) chat abbreviations. e.g. "hao d" instead of "hao de" and l for le. These words occur _a lot_ in Mandarin. Doubtless there are many more for hardcore chat heads.

Next time, we will try audio.