I kid you not.

Perhaps they're being sarcastic. Or maybe the Chinese confused the program. If it could understand what I've written in Chinese, my blog would be at toddler level. Possibly it extrapolates more than it should from the occasional math post. Or do they mean that it takes a genius to decipher my garbled posts?

Guo Juan visits London!

I had lunch with Guo Juan and her friend Bob this afternoon. They're in London on holiday this week. It's always great to see Guo Juan.

She took us to a restaurant in Chinatown which she says is famous for having good cheap food and awful service. I didn't notice the service being so terrible, but then Guo Juan just ordered for us quickly in Chinese. We didn't even look at the menu. It was certainly good, and unbelievably cheap.

They were supposed to join me for the Royal Opera House lunchtime recital today, but unfortunately it was cancelled. Apparently the singer was ill, which is no surprise given the cold, wet, windy, dark and generally miserable weather we've had lately. Last night my umbrella broke while I was walking home. Fortunately, one can buy an umbrella anywhere in London, including any post office. Of course I haven't bought a new one yet. I just walk around with one side of the umbrella flopping down. I'll have to give in soon though, as the weather is unlikely to change.

Guo Juan asked me if I know Pierre Colmez, who is an excellent number theorist in France. He's also a very good Go player, at French 5 or 6 dan. I certainly know of him, and I've seen him give talks, but I've never actually met him. Go players always ask me if I know him, because he is a mathematician and mathematicians always ask me if I know him, because he is a Go player. I'm afraid I'll have to get much better at both before anyone asks him whether he knows me.

Salsa

My friend Alicia lives in a residence hall for graduate students which is not associated to any particular university. It's centrally located and relatively affordable, but it is still a residence hall and worse, they expect you to be involved socially with the community living there. She's joined the wine tasting club and salsa dancing lessons, so it's not all bad, but she's also required to invite her supervisor to a meet-each-other's-supervisors dinner. (Her supervisor turned down the invitation, so that's a potentially awkward situation averted.)

Anyway, I've been going to the salsa classes with her on Saturdays. Gabriel (the guy who is teaching the classes) is a friend of Alicia's who is also from Mexico. It's no easy task trying to teach these stiff Brits how to dance, especially because he has to teach them in English instead of Spanish.

I've been going for a few weeks now, but last week was the first week that I felt like we were actually dancing a bit. It was a small group on Saturday, with more guys than girls. This was a welcome change but more importantly the guys who showed up on Saturday were decent and, having a few weeks under our belts, we could finally do a bit more than just stumbling through disjointed sequences of moves, desperately trying to remember the next step. Also, I got to dance with Gabriel more. He's really good and it's so nice to dance with someone who can.

I like my Mexican friends. We spent the rest of the evening drinking beers chelada style and then Mezcal with lime and a crushed salt/chili/worm mixture.

On Thursday this week, we took our dancing public for the first time. It was really fun, but much harder than our lessons, where we have a big room with plenty of space. At the bar it was crowded, with everyone bumping into each other. I kept getting thrown off balance or just distracted. And the music they played there was Cuban and much faster than the Mexican salsa we've been learning. Also, it had been a long day and I was really tired. But I hope we go back soon. Pubs beat bars by a long shot, but it's so nice to get up from the sedentary office/pub life and move.

这个水果没有水

我的朋友春燕是中国人。 她十月去中国看父母。 上个星期她来伦敦。 她给我中国东西：两个写汉字的书 (下面)， 中国茶， 水果 （可是这个水果没有水), 等等。

Translation: My friend Chunyan is Chinese. In October, she went to China to see her parents. Last week she came to London. She gave me Chinese stuff: two books for writing characters (below), Chinese tea, fruit (but this fruit has no water), etc.



I say "etc." because she also gave me this hanging decoration thing, but I don't know what to call it. Also, I know how to say "etc." in Chinese. As for the fruit, she gave me these dried fruit and vegetable chips, hence the parenthetical comment about the fruit having no water. (I don't know how to say that it's dried.) The comment is more fun in Chinese because the word for fruit is 水果 (pronounced shuǐ guǒ), the first character of which is the word for water.

I love these books. They're for kids to practice writing characters. They give a character and the stroke order and a little illustration from which I can sometimes discern the meaning of the word. (Some of them are rather enigmatic. For the character 今, pronounced jīn, which means today or now, there's a picture of an elf next to a calendar marked 12.25.) Then there are a bunch of boxes for you to practice writing the character. Some of them even have the characters written in for you to trace over.

I know many of the words, but certainly not all of them. I don't know if I'll ever be able to learn all the words for different family members. I have a large family, so I thought I could match the words up with my own family members to remember them, but it's not so easy. In my immediate family, I have an older brother (哥哥), a younger brother (弟弟), and younger sisters (妹妹), but no older sisters (姐姐). And those are the easy ones that I already know. My extended family is large too, but as my dad is the youngest of four brothers, I have no one I can call 婶 (my father's younger brother's wife).

星期四晚上我们有中文上课。 春燕是我们的中文老师。 这个星期, 我去上课， 可是其他的学生不去上课。 所以春燕和我一起看我的成语书。 （她看书，我听她。）

Translation: On Thursday evenings, we have Chinese class. Chunyan is our Chinese teacher. This week, I went to class, but the other students didn't go to class. So Chunyan and I read my Chengyu book together. (She read the book, I listened to her.)