Doctor 2

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

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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.

Ploddy start

An old friend of mine has entered the Stratford half, and hopes I'll join him. That means getting the long runs long and a bit of speedwork in, over the next 6 weeks. Maybe even a warm up half, like the White Horse in a month's time.

Out today for the first run with M for a while. We looped behind Loseley House, then back toward the town. The plan was to go on to Bramley along the Downs Link (over the bridge that's been restored, but that was enough for me. My energy bridge is still out.

Bit of progress

It might be hubris to say that I might actually be getting the hang of things. This time last term I was getting the distinct feeling of slipping downwards, or at least not going up. This could well have been due to the chaos, or at least the intensity, of my term 1 schedule. I counted at least 6000 of the ten thousand things.

The new year's been a bit better. I've almost got a rhythm going with Chinese, helped I think by getting a gizmo to listen to ChinesePod in the car. The classes are being run a bit more steadily now, and I think the rest of the class is bit less panic-stricken.

As well as my regular taiji classes, the Wang Hai Jun monthly specials have started again. Two this year so far, both excellent. I got on the same tube train as him last weekend on the way to the class, and we kept up a 90%-in-Chinese conversation on the way to the class. It's hard to gauge, but I think that's way above the level of my O-level French. The taiji was good too, working through the lao jia yi lu, and concentrating a lot of figure of eight hip movements in the form and in silk reeling.