Strokes

Yesterday we learned the 8 basic types of strokes and some simple rules for stroke orders. I like the idea of a written language designed with aesthetics in mind. As my teacher explained last night, "If it didn't have that little flick on the end, it wouldn't look nice." I haven't even attempted to write any Chinese before, so this aspect is totally new for me. It's funny that I find being demoted to an undergraduate degrading, but I find being demoted to a five year old (as far as writing goes) delightful.

After Chinese class, I met Brenda to go out for drinks. I ran into Alicia (in theoretical physics, from Mexico; she's in a different office) and invited her to join us. I confessed to them that in walking so much around London, I've been tempted by some of the theaters that I pass on a regular basis. Brenda already knew where I was going with this, but I first mentioned that I really want to see Kevin Spacey in Eugene O'Neill's "A Moon for the Misbegotten". I went on to admit that, right down the street from our office, there's another show that tempts me. Brenda, on the edge of her seat, whose boyfriend already told her she could find someone else to accompany her to this one, was saying "Go on, go on". It's true, I'm won over by the bright pink signs that quip, "Nobody puts Baby in a corner". That's right, "Dirty Dancing" live on stage. I love also the juxtaposition with "Footloose" playing right down the street: the latter is advertised merely as "the hit movie" live on stage while the former is "the classic story" live on stage. I can't wait.

Small Victories

I finally got a bank account! Even better, I've already submitted the paperwork, and should get paid in about a week! Furthermore, I now have a computer in my office. The guy in charge of such things will finish setting everything up on Monday for me. This means I no longer have to lug my laptop around. My laptop is not terribly heavy, but I walk about 2 1/2 miles to get to my office each morning, and it will be nice to not have the added weight and worry of bringing my laptop with me. Finally, a couple of my officemates and I went out for a beer last night. This meant that I skipped my regular visit to the Nippon Club, but I was tired and distracted anyway. I'll play at the Central London Go Club today.

Reading Material

Linda and I usually exchange books (and mostly fiction), but here are some articles we've been reading lately.

http://la.indymedia.org/news/2006/10/182163.php

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucru/americasnuremberglaws

The above article was forwarded to me by the organizer of the Brooklyn Go Club.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6256039

This last link is a story on NPR. It's awfully convenient to have it as a policy to retire out of service those who do what they think is right rather than blindly following the party line. Thus it's not "retaliation" because they told him before hand that he'd forfeit his career for doing his job.

Heavy Stones

My friend Rich sent me this picture (the Go pun possibilities are endless). They are doing some logging on their land: "thinning", i.e., not rampaging through and clear cutting everything in sight but instead intelligently choosing which trees to remove (and which to leave) so as to develop the forest in a positive way. His draft horse, Tom, will be pulling logs out (hopefully I'll get some photos of that too). In preparation, they needed to make a landing (a place to pile up all the logs to be removed so that a truck can come and get them); there were some big rocks in the way.