Sunday, 23 September 2007

Last day at Law

After over 6 years I have officially finished working for the ANU College of Law. It is amazing how scary that is. It has been a good job with reasonable pay for many years, and now it is no more.
I am onto bigger and better things though, better pay closer to home, overseas travel. It should be good times for both Kung Fu Fist and Tea!

Unexpected visit

When you're giving a Kung Fu demonstration your mind is somewhat occupied. So when you see your sisters who live in 12000 km away standing in front of you it makes for a great amount of confusion. It turns out they were down visiting their father (not mine). If he lived less than 400km away this would have made perfect sense I am sure. I gave up trying to understand this and instead spent some time with my long lost (haven't seen in over 12months) sisters. I also saw my former step-father. This was quite interesting, but civil so that was nice...

Demonstration

What fun that was, two full demonstrations 2hrs apart. It was a long day but a good result. I think that very few people were able to see the errors that were made and even less were able to say exactly what was done wrong. We seemed to pull about 100 more people together than any of the other displays for the day so that must be a good sign.
I've been told that I will be getting copies of photo's taken by students etc so I will post those asap.

Tuesday, 18 September 2007

Getting back

Not happy. Two Chinese exams down and both had major errors! Though I did do lots of study and I have learned a lot from it I do wish that I was able to get it right at the time. The good part is that the total of the two exams are only 2o% of my final mark so I still can get an HD!

Condolences:
Oral;
I did well in my questions though I wasn't able to follow my notes due to lack of full "rehersal" I take partial responsibility but there was a time factor to consider.
Written;
The lecturer said that the exam was too long for the time given partly because we started late and had to finish early! However I do know however that I answered more of the written exam than many of my peers. So that makes me feel good!

Tuesday, 7 August 2007

La Vie En Rose

What a movie! It was great I loved it. The only thing that might have made it better was if it showed the last scene first. It was a death scene (I don't think I am letting any cats out of the bag so say that she dies in the end) If it was first one line would have made the movie a little more coherent. The style of the movie had you skipping from one event in her life to another with dates etc for you to keep track. What made this hard to follow was that the dates were from young to middle aged at the beginning and each Edith became older though the movie until she was middle aged in the middle and then dead at the last. If the opening credits had started with the end scene, the dialogue from that scene would have prepared me for the ride easier as some of the jumps are quite large (as you would expect).
I did have some other problems with the movie however. None of these were the fault of anyone involved in the movie's presentation. Many years ago Xiao Ma introduced me to Edith Piaf, I liked her voice straight away and very soon afterwards I loved everything she sang. When I saw that there was a movie coming out about her I was very much looking foward to taking Xiao Ma along for a wonderful experience full of nostalgia. Us no longer being together made it different. I could have asked Xiao Ma along, but at the moment that wouldn't be good for me, I couldn't go on my own, as that would have made me really depressed. So I had to go with someone, not the people I usually go to films with as it isn't their kind of film (at least not with me) and I wanted to go with someone that I could feel the bond of a shared experience with. So from my pool of friends and acquaintances I wanted to go with someone of the female persuasion. I had had a long weekend and I knew that I could probably do well if I dropped by a friend's work. In the end I went and saw the movie as hoped with 5 others all fitting my requirements. Who would have guessed it was that easy!
We went to Sammy's afterward and discussed over dinner then made out way back to respective homes. What a night. If only there had been red wine, would have make it quite a night. (something about French music and wine...)

For those who love great music (or haven't heard Edith Piaf) I have added this clip it is also probably my favorite song of hers that I can listen to, remember (other times I have heard it) and still fell good.

NAS round 3

Many moons ago I told my students about a tournament that was being held last weekend. Unfortunately for me some remembered and wanted to enter! My rotten luck!
I don't know why, perhaps to satisfy my own standards for the competition or at least know how the event was going, but having students in the comp made it necessary for me to judge.
It wasn't a bad competition but I did have to spend a lot of time not doing things like study (still the reason I'm not getting this site updated regular like).
The results, Xiao Mao, 2 firsts and one disqualification (just but came from bad understanding not true misconduct/malice. DaGe 1 Second for one of the better performances of his form I have seen him do (though he did muff it up a little). In the end we came away well ahead.
Now to blow my own horn, I also had someone come up and say that they were happy to have me judging their students and that I was an exemplary judge. I like it when that happens.

I also got recognized by a heap of people afterwards, that I didn't think would have seen me there. That was interesting. Eg, my office mate said his friend told him that I was there. Why in blazes would he... I live in a small town.

Monday, 30 July 2007

Hmmm, been a while...

It may have been noted that I haven't been updating very much lately, this roughly coincides with starting back at uni, taking over my bosses job while she prepares to go to America and taking over my teachers classes while he goes over to America with his second senior student, sister and my boss (all the same person). This was complicated when I was sparing/fighting her in preparation for the trip and broke her arm... It wasn't much more than bad luck and good technique. My block landed with the maximum possible force given the attack and had the maximum affect possible for the situation. That does not happen too often... when it does you hope it is on someone that you want to hurt, this time it wasn't...

So I will take up regular blogging again when I am happy with my Chinese, some time after my teacher comes back from America and possibly when by boss comes back from sick leave. (She wasn't able to go as she was supposed to be getting surgery on her arm when the plane left.)