Learning All Around

I do not write enough about my Kendo. I am practising with the UBC Kendo Club in Vancouver twice a week. Despite having done approximately 2 years of Kendo during high school, I am indeed a beginner again. I specifically need to remember to keep my grip on my shinai when I raise it and to keep my left arm straight strike. I more or less learnt my first kata to-day. I think it is one I had actually learned during high school, but I didn't learn it very well then. That was also shortly before I stopped attending. (Work and University, you know.) On Thursdays, practise for beginners is shorter, and the more senior students practise after us. So, I usually remain behind and watch the seniors. Many of them are quite good. Since a few are to be graded next week, Harding-sensei spent the end of the lesson working on kata, so I mimicked the one being introduced to a few near where I observed. Kendo is easier to follow now. I remember when Underwood-sensei took us to a tournament in Etobicoke and I had difficulty seeing, or understanding, which kendoka scored a point. I felt more confident about my judgement when I last got to observe keiko, though.

A friend of a friend talks to me about computer science questions occasionally. He is my junior in that regard. It's very nice to find someone interested to the degree that he is, as few of my peers ever seemed to be. To-day, he had a calculus question which I couldn't immediately help him with beyond suggesting that he was wrong. I think I found out why. While I'm glad that my "intuition" helped protected me from error, I am quite alarmed at my initial inability to comprehend the details involved or to recognise the error. Perhaps I should practise some mathematics every day?

I'd say I'd start practising calculus, but I have a few other initiatives underway:

• Good Boyfriendliness (apparently, I still warrant poems on birch found on keyboard :D)
• Japanese (presently, Hiragana)
• German (presently, Irish folk tales in German)
• Personal software development (presently, Gender Guesser)
• Open Source software development (stalled, mostly, but to some degree my X.org bug solving right now)
• Kendo (:D)

I hope to add the violin to that. I own one, but I am awful at it. I require lessons and it requires restringing.