Just back from the second Wang Hai Jun class. I'm knackered now. Some of that was due to the Northern Line being out of commission, but also because of the intensity of the sesssion. It became a very humid afternoon just as we started getting into the stamps, leaps, kicks and jumps of the 18-movement Chen style form. As before, nothing that I strictly speaking had not seen before, but a different quality altogether. Loads of people took pictures, which might get posted later. I think Andy who runs
Palmchange was going to post the group photo there.
Met Julia who was at the Norfolk weekend (
photos on Flickr) last year. She amazed me by having a photo of us lot – on Holkham Beach during the course – still on her camera since last August. I'm more of a two-memory-cards-a-day man.
On the way up, I studied Chinese in Steps. It's going quite well. If I put in a couple of good long sessions each week, the size of the lessons is not too much to keep up with. I spent about an hour yesterday translating simple sentences, and writing them out.
你有点感冒，你要多休息，多喝水。
从我家到学校走路只要五分钟。
请问去火车站怎么走？
一直向前走，到红路灯向右拐。
second character should be "zhi2" - error in IME?
你想吃中药还是吃西药？
从医院走路去药店要几分钟？
Yes, it took me about that time to do all six.
So, as I was studying on the train today I briefly chatted to a guy sitting opposite who admitted to wanting to start learning. He looked Chinese, but turned out to be Thai, though I heard him speaking German on the phone! He said he'd studied lots of Western European languages and had moved on to Russian. Thai is tonal, and grammatically similar to Chinese (lots of implied verbs and sentence components, particles-a-go-go, all that) so I reckon he's got it easier than most. Also being a pianist he'll know what it's like to hunker down and practice, and he'll be used to reading strange notational systems.
