"Foopball is a tuough game but it is a pity you canot win by hacking everybode. You hav to be nippy."




On Saturday afternoon, I played my debut game for the Hong Kong Spurs supporters' team. Mercifully, it was a friendly, as my performance was not up to much. It's three years or so since I kicked a football, and that was in five-a-side, which is quite different as it turns out. No throw-ins there, for one, my technique for which was described by a team-mate as "perhaps more suitable for netball".
Indeed, as I took my run-up for the first throw I suddenly thought wait, there are rules for this aren't there? but it was too late, so I just made the best stab at it that I could. Perhaps I'll look up some tutorials on YouTube or something.

Having done so poorly on one throw-in, I'm not sure why I took a second. I think I thought getting someone else to do it would be timewasting or perhaps insinuating that I would be best utilised on the receiving end of the throw -- clearly not true.

It later occurred to me that this was my first full-size football match ever. My school did rugby, you see, so my previous experience was limited to two types: 1) five-a-side and 2) playground kickabouts.
Both of these football forms are fine in their way and provide much-needed expertise and exercise, but there's a lot of tactical stuff to think about with 22 chaps on the pitch that I'll have to learn.

There was also a small issue with Getting Very Tired, for everyone, since it was about 30 degrees C in the sunshine. For me particularly, since it turns out it can be quite tiring to spend the morning doing a martial art based on kicking and then spend the afternoon playing a sport based on running followed by kicking.

We had rolling substitutions, thankfully, and I put in three separate stints - right wing, leftback and striker. Much to my surprise I seemed to do best at the latter. Turns out it's mostly running into space and annoying the other team's defenders, for which I have some aptitude.

Now, if I could just sort out the whole "kicking the ball into the goal" thing.

CK took some pictures, which you can see here. They're a little lacking in action, but I think I like that about them.
We won 5-2 in the end, by the way.

Feliz aniversário para mim



When I go to class tonight it will be exactly one year since my very first capoeira lesson. I'm pretty pleased with that. My progress from having no idea to where I am now hasn't been stellar, but neither is it too bad.

Goal for the coming capoeira year: learn to play the berimbau. Due to the circumstances of moving around (and our previous gym not being the right place for it), music lessons have been few and far between. I've had a go on the bermibau a grand total of once, in a bar. So if general music classes don't happen for whatever reason, I need to make an effort to get some lessons somehow.

The Ballad of the SLC

Here's an email I sent to the Student Loans Company complaints department at the weekend.

To whom it may concern

I received today a letter dated 4 August 2009, which kindly informed me that my repayment amount would go up by more than £100 a month because "we have not yet received a completed Overseas Income Assessment form". This surprised me, because I would have thought if you wanted one then you might have told me. Maybe it's more fun if your customers have to guess, I don't know.

Indeed, the penultimate paragraph of the letter says "We will contact you in approximately ten months to reassess your repayments for the following year." I am fairly sure the letter I got 12 months ago on this subject said much the same thing, and yet you have not contacted me.

Having inferred from Kevin O'Connor's blunt missive that an assessment form is required, I shall furnish you with one forthwith. In future, I hope that whenever you want me to send you something, you ASK FIRST. It's not rocket science.

I look forward to your next letter "in approximately ten months".

yours
etc.

I mentioned this to a couple of work colleagues yesterday. One had this to say:
Nicely said.
If they’re not capable of sending one letter a year, could they not send an email instead? They’ve had my email address on file for 10 years and not used it once.
It’s almost as if they somehow make more money by keeping us in the dark. How strange.
If there were any competition, the SLC would drop dead.

And then, this morning, from the same chap:
I've had a further development in the SLC saga. After receiving the “we’re charging you £147 a month” letter last week, I now receive a second letter, dated one day later. Enclosed is an Overseas Income Assessment Form.
Nice work, guys. Not only did they annoy the hell out of me, they made me waste my time downloading and filling in a form yesterday. I’d like to think that there’s some sense behind their behaviour, but can’t quite force logic into the required pretzel shape.
Expect a form in the post any day.


The trouble is, who do you complain to? What can one actually do about these idiots?
Depending on how annoying I find the reply from Complaints, I may write to my MP, since it's Parliament that authorises these buffoons, but I imagine it's a low priority, politically speaking.

Rock and roll

We had our first proper gig last night (i.e. not an open mic night), at the Wanch on Jaffe Road. It went pretty well - no major mistakes, plenty of people came, and the audience seemed to enjoy it.

Afterwards people said very nice things, e.g. "you sing a bit like Jim Morrison", "you're really good at the guitar" etc. These things are not really true, but it's nice that they said them.

COYS

Tottenham Hotspur are playing South China in Hong Kong on Sunday. My wife and I will be joining an assortment of the many HK Spurs fans in the north stand, along with my capoeira teacher and her 5 year old daughter. I think it's good to have kids along - it helps cut the swearing down and the sprogs' energeticicity can be infectious.

As I will mention at the drop of a hat, I've been Spurs since the day I was born. I wasn't born in Tottenham - I pranced onto this mortal coil at University College Hospital a little way down the road - but my family lived there at the time, on Philip Lane. And on that day, Tottenham won the FA Cup. So I didn't really have much of a choice in the matter.

Despite that, this will be the first time I've ever seen Tottenham play in real life. When I was a little over the age of one, we moved to Bedfordshire. We were never terribly well off, and we could likely have afforded either tickets to White Hart Lane or the train tickets to London, but not both. As a student in London, I honestly never even thought of going to a match. Now that I think of it, I probably would have had the cash, but it honestly never crossed my mind - I'd got used to football, or at least Spurs, being something I saw on TV. At uni in Beijing, I did go to a match between Beijing Guo'an and Qingdao at the Workers' Stadium. I think that was the only sporting event I went to in those four years.

After university, I moved to China, which pretty well nixed any chances of Spurs-watching. We nearly had the chance on our honeymoon earlier this year to go, but the home matches were on the day we arrived and the day we left (and in the middle was an away game at Villa that seemed unappealing). Despite this we did spend some time trying to work out if we could get from White Hart Lane to Heathrow in time for our flight back to Hong Kong. As it was, we barely made it from my cousin's house near Loftus Road to the airport in time, so it was probably for the best we didn't start from N17.

So what I'm saying is, it's been a bit of a wait for this Sunday afternoon, and I fully intend to enjoy it.

Capoeira on Lamma

The inestimable Lamma-Gung came by on Saturday to take some photos of our classes at the Island Life Studio. I don't usually go to class there, but the sessions in Central have been on hiatus while we relocated from Kontact gym (the facilities were good but it's hard to train capoeira with other classes and workouts going on around you).

Anyway, the photos got put up on Lamma-zine today, and here they are.
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Sou discipulo que aprende, sou mestre que da lição

So on Tuesday I had to lead the capoeira class. Our contra mestre called me about half an hour before to check I was going, and to let me know she's missed the ferry. The original plan was that she would catch the next ferry and I would just egt everyone to warm up and do some basic exercises. In the end, she didn't make it at all, but things didn't go too badly.

I ran out of ideas after about an hour - it turns out it's not so easy to think up sequences of more complexity that "you do this kick and you esquiva". But we did all right, and I think some of the beginners did need more practice on negativa and meia lua de compasso, which it was nice to do without too much pressure. Consensus afterwards was that without The Teacher there, one could get away with experimenting a bit.

At any rate, after I'd run out of ideas, we just made a roda and played for about 20 minutes. I put on some of the slower songs so we'd not get worn out, there being only half a dozen of us. I think this was good practice, since we don't usually get to play for so long at the end of the class. Unfortunately a combination of me not controlling my kicks well enough and two of the girls not doing a low enough esquiva meant I manage to kick two (count them) people in the head. One quite hard with a meia lua de compasso she didn't see coming and the other with a queixada I just didn't lift well enough.

Strangely neither seemed to mind that much.
So in the end, we got through it and everyone was very nice to me afterwards, suggesting I should get the evening's pay from our contramestre. And I won't complain about being at the front of the class for a while, since it's still easier than being the teacher.