Happy Birthday

First of all, a bit of a catch up:

Thursday night I went to a work ‘do’ which gave me a chance to catch up with some old colleagues and refresh some friendships. It wasn’t a particularly late one, but I’m still not used to a 9-5 never mind a 9-9!

Friday was a planning day for work where I learned that we will be doing development using a bastardised version of the agile “scrum and sprint” methodology. The difference is that all the design and most of the planning is already done.

Friday evening saw the beginning of the bank holiday weekend and I started in style - white crane style - and went training. It was the first time I had done the Suang Yang sparring class in almost a year and I absolutely loved it. I can’t understand why more people don’t do it. Kung fu and tai chi are about 2 people and yet most people choose not to spar. I struggle to understand their justifications.

Yesterday (Saturday) I also went training in the afternoon after helping out my instructor with marketing in the morning. He was teaching us how to perform our patterns rather than execute them like westerners. I didn’t do so well in the demonstation at the end, but I learned a lot in those 2 hours. More practice needed methinks.

In the evening Rosie, her sister and I went to Breakin’ Convention in Saddlers Wells. The first half was very good with an amazing crew from north London being one of the highlights for me - great dancers, amazing coordination given the number of dancers on stage at a time, I was impressed. There was one other crew that were amazing, although you would expect that due to the fact that the choreographer (and dance lead) Mukhtar works for cirque du soleil and has won the world hip hop championships. Altogether an amazing first half.

The second half saw Rosie and I leaving partway through though. It took ages to start because of technical teething troubles which didn’t help, but it was a very arty piece of hiphop theatre from south America by a group called Membros. The problem was that it was far more theatre than hiphop. In fact there was barely any music in it at all. We left when Rosie fell asleep on my shoulder.

All of which brings us up to today. My birthday. I am going training with the chief instructor now with my birthday barbecue this afternoon.