Andy-san's Asian Exploration

half moon full

andysan — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 14:41:23 +0000

“aphex twin birthday” google search…-\ _ /-

i shaved 2min 13seconds off of my PB for the 5.5 mile club handicap course that my club run once a month. This was my second attempt at the course and I am really surprised that I was quicker than last time, extremely shocked that I beat it by more than two minutes. Running with the running club on Mondays has obviously helped immensely with regard to my strength and stamina, I was not out of breath at the end of the run and was taking the course at a moderate-fast pace because my calfs were cramping up on the flat, and I didn’t want to kill myself I came second. The point of the event is not “who runs fastest wins” but “who has the greatest improvement in time compared to their last attempt at the course”. The winner, a 70+ yr old shaved off 3+ mins from his previous attempt. Well done Old Dude!!!

New Music I’m Loving::: The Maccabees’ “First Love”; Jurassic 5′s “Work it Out”; Muse’s “Nights of Cydonia”.

It’s my good friend Rachel’s Birthday today. Happy Birthday Rachel!!!

wow!

andysan — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 22:17:46 +0000

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thanks to joel and this girl monday post. My thoughts to the ROK girls and boys in such an awkward time. The North Korean Commie bastards have tested their first Nuke under the mountains in the North-East of the country. I loved the film Team America: World Police especially the Kim Jong-Il scenes (and of course the projectile vomiting scene!). Sort it out guys, life is only liveable once.

I went running with my running club tonight. Whereas last week I stomped on the afterburners to be with the fastest runners from the get go (and suffered badly by the end), tonight I started at a lower Mach and kept going a this little bit slower then “them fast ones” keeping a fantastic rhythm going to retain energy through to the end!

testing the more function of w.bloggar

andysan — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 20:49:28 +0000

the impressive Eva Huang (aka Shengyi Huang)

there (adverb) is (verb) a (indefinite article) yellow (adjective) cat (noun) outside (noun) that (pronoun + adjective) is (verb) changing (verb) colour (noun) to (preposition) red (noun). What do you think of that?
Over the last number of days I have been buckling down and bucking my year-long trend of not doing it, and have done a lot of my TEFL course. Currently I am working to finish my Grammar Awareness Module (GAM) which accounts for 20 hours of my course. It will take much longer than the 20 hours but I am finding it enthralling and stimulating, and it will be beneficial to me, so I have no worries with regard to the extra work.
I had a job interview yesterday. It was for a telesales position in a town 30 minutes away. I have never done any sales work, let alone any telesales, but I think that it could be something I would be able do well in.

Films: I have downloaded 5 films, watched two and have three waiting. Today I watched “Kung Fu Hustle” and it was bloody amazing. So funny and the martial arts were stunning. Yesterday I watched the film “Lucky Number Slevin”. Truly twisted and would have remained in the fucking psychotic except for a weak ending !where all the loose ends were tied up – how crappy!

Smart and Shiney

andysan — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 19:00:28 +0000

Every so often when I go out running I am subjected to the most discomfortable bloating of the stomach, like I have an alien growing inside me preparing itself to burst through my tummy and bladder as it fights to take over my body. Whether this sensation is due to over-exertion or whether it is due to diet or some other circumstance it is not a nice feeling. Last night I was struck by this mighty bloating. I was with my running club (Sandhurst Joggers) and pushing myself to the full going faster than I normally do, then my stomach began pressing on my bladder and I was forced to go much slower and to stop once before slogging on at this reduced speed for the remainder of the run. Besides this it was a good session. Another new route (for me) and several hotties were there!

Hotties and running. At last night’s running session there were loads and loads of women, much more women than men. Is this a recent occurance, has anyone out there noticed this? I guess it must depend on how welcoming each club is, how many fit blokes there are in the club to attract the women;), and how many women are mad enough to go running in the area… Last night the fastest runner was a woman, destroying everyone else.

Kandinsky exhibition at the Tate Modern. Last Thu I went to London to see the Kandinsky exhibition at the Tate Modern. Before going to China Town and stocking up on Kimchi (by fuck I have missed the stuff since leaving Cambridge), oogling the maps and travel books in Stanfords in Covent Garden, and before sitting in Trafalgar Square people watching (and Apache Gunship admiring – which overflew us all), before them all I went to the Tate Modern. If you have never seen the art of Wassily Kandinsky I will tell you that you’ll thank me if you do go and see it! Starting off just a little abstract and a little colourful his paintings quickly turn to the more severly fucked up abstract side of things, and all for the better. The colours he uses are prime and bright, contrasting harsh reds with dark blues and yellow and other colours mixed in. It has provided much inspiration for my website colourification. Check out composition VI and composition VII.

Brrr its fucking freezing.

Music:Mr Hudson, Grace, Nada Surf…

gonna ache tomorrow!!!

andysan — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 22:10:39 +0000

After a hopelessly crap day I made supper and, after 15 minutes of juggling to get the arms and blood moving, I went to badminton. For the first 90 minutes I played three games as there was a match on and we had only 3 courts for the 12 doubles pairs (24ppl) and this led to a lot of waiting. The match finished and then the last hour was non-stop match after match. I played much better than last week, met two people that I hadn’t seen in years (Rob from my year, and drum class, at school, and Clive my brother’s friend) and got rid of a lot of angst that had been building up inside of me over the last 2 days.

Tomorrow I am off to London. It will be good to get a change of scene, and see the big smoke again.

catskill mountain perseverance

andysan — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 21:25:23 +0000

smith’s leg (feb 06)

the first half was horrific, I drank my one beer and felt like killing myself to end the agonising pain. Arsenal – on the other channel – had gone 1-0 ahead and life was not worth living anymore… Thank fuck for half time. After the break Manchester United were a different team, totally controlling the game and having chance after chance, after Saha’s goal put us ahead nothing could stop us. Alan Smith made a welcome return after 7 months out after suffering a horrendous injury against Liverpool in the FA Cup way back in February. Ronaldo was on fire, spurred on no doubt by the echo of booing from the Benfica supporters (he used to play for arch rivals Sporting Lisbon, and the fans hate him; he’s used to the boos now, in Premiership his every touch is greeted in similar fashion in a pathetic response to what happened in the World Cup in the summer – if you don’t know where have you been?). 6 points from 2 games leaves us top of the group, ahead of Celtic who are on 3. Next game is in 3 weeks at home to Copenhagen.

I have been somewhat slack with regard to exercise. But I did get up at the astonishingly early hour of 0715 this morning. The cat woke me, got me up. I am greatful. Honest. This means that at 2215 I am bloody tired and knackered. The cat is clever. I had intended to get up this early but the warmth of my bed and the contrasting cold autumn morning air kept me snugly wrapped until my cat started moving things and creating a general racket. Seriously I think my cat is a genius. She knows how and when and where to be to get the exact thing that she wants. I have incredible resistance, you have to understand, to her super-feline powers but sometimes it is easier to do what she wants. Get up feed her and problem solved. The rest of the day was quite productive. At the current moment I am without employment (self unemployed as I heard one bloke call it) and I have been spending a large amount of time today looking for jobs. There is plenty out there and with enough perseverance I will soon find something that fills my pockets with gold oncemore.

Exercise. I need to work on getting more exercise. Tomorrow I will go and play badminton. And I need to go running at least 2 times a week. I need something to motivate me. When I was in Cambridge I had at least one fit housemate girl, as many as three during a golden 3-month period last Autumn (those were the days!!!), to concentrate my efforts. Now I have the cat and it is not the same. I think she’d admire me whatever I looked like. Any ideas for motivational tools??? A race or 5 would be an excellent thing to focus my mind. Hmmm…

andysan — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 21:58:19 +0000

does this work, testing one two three… hehe… yeah??? Uh Okay then. Pictures forward you can look to for a guess at what I have been thinking and doing… Mmm!!!

this cat haunts me

andysan — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 21:26:05 +0000

It may be due to me being here all day that has led to the growth of a second shadow – my cat, tawney – or my hermit mind wanting total isolation but. Whatever way I turn the cat is always there. Either she has feline alzheimer’s, a phenominal stomach worm, or she needs my company and the only way she knows how is to pester me ceaselessly for food. It is driving me mad with rage. I could lock her outside but I am too nice a person for that.
In other news I have bagged all the loose change in the house (all £33 worth of it!!) and taken it to the bank. The fucking paper boy delivered the Times this morning. He (I assume that is a “he”) didn’t even manage to put it through the letter box and left it on the door mat. Bastard.

I am reading a book about a British man’s trip around China. I got it last week from the well stocked travel section of the local library and its called Green Dragon, Sombre Warrior by Liam D’Arcy Brown. So far it seems as though this bloke knows as much about the area as the locals and that the discovery achieved through “regular” travel seems lost on him. Still, I am only 50 pages into it, things can change!

the minders have gone away

andysan — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 17:37:23 +0000

Dear Reader,

I would like to inform you that I am all alone in this big castle of mine now that my minders have gone away to Corsica for two weeks of relaxation, hiking and sunshine. Now I have the house, it is all mine and it is eeerily quiet. Or it would be, if I weren’t pumping out the most foul blood-churning dance music I could find at full volume. Fergie has been a radio1 dj for 5 yrs and last night was his last night as a regular dj and radio1 celebrated with his excellent essential mix [available until 01/10/2006]. Yeh, yeh, yeh… bmp, bmp, bmp… whoeee!!!

Making excellent use of the fact that I have the house to myself I read the newspaper (the excellent Observer – my minders do not get this paper as they are subscribers to the Sunday Times which I cannot read without wanting to vomit blood, if I get as far as actually noticing it has words in it, such is the horrific state that it leaves me in… does anyone out there read this paper, how can you read that crap???). I have found about wi-fi in Taipei, the Killers, Janet-Street-Porter, news of the Reading-Manchester United 1-1 draw and other interesting and informative bites of wordage.

I heard that this weekend is the cross-over weekend between summer sports and winter sports. There certainly is a lot of sport going on. On TV was the World Road Cycling Championship (won by Bettini, just ahead of Zabel), Davis Cup tennis (Great Britain beat Ukraine 3-2 and remain in the second division), the World Badminton Championships (Emms and Robertson won the mixed doubles final) and the Ryder Cup Golf (I am not a golf fan but any victory for Europe against America has to be heartily celebrated!!!).

Time for din-dins…

EUROPE

andysan — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 13:32:22 +0000

Snug cold grey… back in the UK. Here is a summary of where I went in the 6 weeks (40 days) that I was in Europe…

Flew to Girona >> train to Barcelona, book train ticket to Benicassim, fucking hot, then finally find accomodation

Benicassim Music festival:: beach in day, music at night;; amzing, with bands such as madness, Pixies, Kooks, and DJs such as Herbert, and Coldcut. Hot hot. Gorgeous women.

INter-rail:: Train to Morocco (via Valencia and overnight sleep at Madrid station) >> Morocco >> train to Santiago de Compostela (via just caught connections in Madrid and Algericas, and bounce-back from La Coruna) >> Santander (met cool Spanish dude, long long journey from Palencia to Santander, walking through midnight Santander to the top of the town and campsite) >> Biarritz (really exceptionally ill, painfully long journey stopping everwhere) >> Geneva (via Toulouse and much of France) >> Chamonix-Mt-Blanc (via beautiful scenic route into the mountains) >> Venice (via Milan, slept at Venice station) >> Ljubljana (slovenia) >> Budapest (Hungary, via Croatia, met English who inspired my detour into Poland) >> Krakow (Poland, via Slovakia) >> Prague (Czech Republic, city of no sleep) >> Paris (via Germany) to the music festival >> UK (via anal security) >> HOME (via Dad’s lift).