Easter Vigil at St. Paul's

I took Flat Stanley to the Easter Vigil service at St. Paul's Cathedral last night. We got there a few minutes early to get some pictures. The service started outside and here you can see folks starting to gather on the steps outside the cathedral.





Here's Flat Stanley with the famous dome of the cathedral in the background.






This is the back of the Queen Anne statue, where the service started. They had speakers set up so that, though those reading were standing in front of you, their voices came from over your shoulder and then reverberated around the enclave created by the surrounding buildings following the curves of the streets. The buses charging past and the tourists with their cell phone cameras detracted from the atmosphere. Fortunately, as we moved inside, folks were asked to put their cameras away. So, no photos of Flat Stanley taking part in the service.

The language of the service struck me as disturbingly militant. Outside, everyone gathers around a bonfire (well, a charcoal patio grill gone out of control) and listens to a reading of the story of Moses parting the Red Sea, "I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously;/ horse and rider he has thrown into the sea... The Lord is a warrior;/ the Lord is his name." Later, the bishop said to the newly baptized, "Fight valiantly as a disciple of Christ against sin, the world and the devil". In his address (which was blessedly short, perhaps bearing in mind the unending line of confirmees to come), the bishop spoke of those joining the church as "being called up into action". It felt like an encouragement of this frightening "us against them" mentality, made even more potentially dangerous by leaving "us" and "them" open to interpretation.


Being a fan of Captain Aubrey and everything related, I was delighted to find myself sitting next to a statue with the above commemorative words chiseled underneath it.

Flat Stanley visits Scotland

Apparently, Eleni had a great time posing with Flat Stanley.


Here they are hanging out with some sheep on a Scottish plain in front of an old and crusty castle.


Stan shows off this great view of Edinburgh.


Eleni and Flat, enjoying Edinburgh castle.


Stanley's no different from any other tourist in Europe. He can visit churches with the best of them.


Here's my favourite. Flat scopes out some new duds.

Kudos and many thanks to Severine, who has again been an excellent tour guide for my little paper visitor.

Go Seigen vs. Inoue Kohei -- 11/25/1927

My Go is more or less on hold for the moment, as I try to spend all my time on maths in hopes of someday finishing my thesis. I still take a few minutes every day to do some problems and review a pro game though. For the past week or so, instead of looking at a recent game or an old Lee Sedol game, I've been studying this 1927 Go Seigen game.



















It is the second game in the "Grand Masters" series on Guo Juan's Audio Lessons site. I love the pro game reviews on her site, but I find that I get a lot more out of them if I memorize the game first. I have this game memorized now, but I'll continue reviewing it every day until I get a chance to watch both of the lectures on it.

These lectures (in the "Grand Masters" series) are done by Jujo Jiang 9p. His style is very different from Guo Juan's, but I really enjoy his lessons as well. Go Seigen's games are beautiful and worth studying in their own right, but one of the things that I especially like about these lectures is that you get to hear stories about the players and the games that, as westerners, we would probably never hear otherwise.

Volume 2

Last night I bought volume 2 of my Chinese text book, "Chinese in Steps". We're on break between terms now, but when classes start up again at the end of April, we'll do the last chapter in volume 1 of our text and then move on to volume 2.

I think the textbook is really good, but there are a few obvious improvements they can make. In particular, the two CDs that accompany volume 1 each have only one track. So in my book I have to note down the time that each dialogue in each chapter starts so that I can skip to the part I'm currently studying. For volume 2 they've at least managed to break it into separate tracks for each chapter, though they still haven't split it up into dialogues, listening practices and whatnot.

The book is clearly meant for use in England (though it also seems to favor France, which turns up in our vocabulary and dialogues on a regular basis). I've heard that others consider it even London-centric. Living in London, I hadn't really thought of it that way, but I'm sure it's true. It does talk about 论敦 quite a bit.