The past four weeks - Swing, swing, swing, swing, everybody start to swing!

Wow, seriously been a while since I updated this thing...and seeing as how i'm not really in an emotional mood right now (or even if I am, i wouldn't tell YOU), I shall instead update the last four weeks to those awesome few fans who actually read this. Muahaha

Starting backwards...

Today: woke up to the sound of my phone alarm, then woke up again to the sound of my phone ringing, to which I then had to seriously get up and out of bed to go out and open the door. Got out of college, walked over to physio, handed in my assignment, took her to the city so that she could go home seeing as the poor girl wasn't feeling very well. Afterwards, went to chinatown for some food (obviously) bought a few bottles of asian drinks in preparation for SWOTVAC thirst and cravings. Was on the phone most of the day, either answering new friend's messages, or talking to old friend's about their lives and how we should shoot study in the head, then castrate it, then burn it with like 2000 degree celsius hydrogen plasma to make sure that there won't ever be any chemical or physical remains of it other than slight spike in energy readings over the area where we burned the life and soul out of it, so that even the freakiest biological scientist in the world couldn't resurrect it....something along those lines.

Not sure what to do tonight....perhaps go out, or perhaps stay in and try to get some work done or try to finish this damn game i've been playing online for the last few days. I got up to the boss and nearly killed it today! Darn those rockets and bombs...grrr.

Yesterday was swing!! WHOO and BOOYEAH!!!! LEARNT BLUES SWING!!! Greatest thing ever, but DARN IT ALL, I wanna learn more and more and more and more and more and more and more...and so on!!! Though I can remember and do all the moves we learnt in class, I still feel utterly inadequate! ARGH. But at the swing club yesterday I copied/stole a few moves just by watching, and actually re-enacted some of them with a partner. Man, so wish we didnt have like 30 hour weeks next semester so that we can take beginner plus classes and start dancing 8-beat, because even with most of the ones i've copied/stole, I still don't know enough to get out there and manipulate the the yo-yo that is the girl. *sigh* All in good time I guess, I sure hope that there are swing/jazz clubs in Hong Kong when I go back this year. Need to practise much in order to make sure that I don't forget anything that i've learnt, and gotta make sure that I keep searching the internet for swing dance videos so that I can copy/steal even more moves and add them to our ever-increasing and ever-impressive repetoire. Thanks to Harry, one of the awesomest guys in swing, I've now got a lot more swing music, but still not enough, as the music that we dance to in class is definitely NOT a good representation of what happens in the swing clubs.

Oh yeah, I also copied and learnt the balboa, this awesome little tiny step move which looks awesome to the song by Eryka Badu "Plenty", and finished learning this move that Harry was teaching us which he also stole/copied from a video, which involved a mini-aerial whereby the girl kinda floats on the fifth beat. We also learnt how to do th 1920s Charlston in class yesterday, which is this kickass "monorail" styled basic, as opposed to the 1930s Charlston which we're usually used to. Argh...can't remember what else we did this week and last week...AH! Got it! Last week we did that grinding thing with our feet in royal hand positions, then learn to exit out of that into a side-by-side charlston! YAY, i remember....and probably can't do it...haha. Hmm...this week we did this tappy thing while doing the 1920s charlston, something to do with semi-circle triplet on our left foot first, then on our right foot, then twist the girl anti-clockwise into side-by-side charlston...i think. And he also reminded us that we did a move called the "johnny drop" which was definitely not on the list that we wrote a while ago...but i still remember how to do it at least! Pitifully, we have so many six-beat moves that we could possibly do in 8-beat, but still haven't experimented enough to actually try and make it work in that situation. Spinning and catching in 8-beat is so damn fun though, as well as the sumo stomp to get into tandem, with a smooth "Dr Evil slide" to get out of it into open position. Ahhh...SO dancing the hell out of my lower limbs once exams are over!

Oh yeah, swing classes actually finished yesterday, hence the venting/exclamating, BOOHOOHOOWAAHHH!!!!
PS: If you wanna do blues, make sure you do a lot of eccentric knee extensor (quads) training, because blues is one of the most tiring and wrecking activities that you will ever do to your knees and my recommendation will definitely help.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=swing+dance&search=Search

Wednesday: Hmmm...not sure, can't really remember much other than the good news that our course coordinator gave us about money issues to do with our department. We have finally, although maybe temporarily, solved the financial crisis that our buddies in the western hospitals would've faced next year with clinical placements....as you may remember me talking about a few weeks ago. The dean himself said that he would personally see to it that not only would all our monetary problems with the hospitals be taken care of, but he also personally came over to the physio building to inspect it with all these other high-brass people, and listened to all the "comments" and "suggestions" Gill and the rest of the physio body gave. He definitely had to save face for physio, considering that we're going to be the best of our kind in the country, and possibly the world, we must definitely put on a more professional and enticing mask. That said...I've been hearing about this whole "lack of faith in physio because all the evidence is dodgy" lately, even by our own students! What was it that you wanted or expected??? Whether something works or not isn't something that can be so easily quantified in a lab under controlled and predetermined "scientific" parameters. The best and most absolute way of determining the truth is through your own empirical experience and judgement. Though the scientists may be blind to their own shortcomings and lack of foresight and vision, we cannot and should not ever become like them, even our own head of physio is trying to take us away from being under SCIENCE at the university. At the beginning of everything, originality came from intuition and experimentation and APPLICATION of what one believed to be the truth or something close to it. Same goes for science, for the arts, and the religions. Whether it works for everyone or not is no issue, because nobody in this world is the same, and what's more important is that what you do for the patient works for him or her in an effective and accomplishing manner. We've all read about and been awed by the power of the mind over the body, the effect of placebos. Even something that has nothing useful in it can exert an effect on the body if the mind believes it to do so, so what more need is there to question whether something works or not? More important than that, all these studies that our discipline produces every year seems only to come from some idea that we NEED to prove that what we do works. Great example being TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) and how its 4000 years of empirical knowledge have kept that country alive and well, and even now, all hospitals in China require that any MD must have a degree in TCM before being acknowledged and able to work.

For 4000 years, without scientific proof, only records of previously gained knowledge and experience, China managed to prevent mass outbreaks of plague (unlike in Europe where Black Death killed 25 million people in 5 years, before enough people were infected and either got culled by other people, or gained immunity after so much exposure) through experience, observation and clear ideas of the causes of disease and illness, even if they are not scientifically understandable. TCM has been progressing ever since, to the development of new drugs that can not only take away the pain and suffering of an HIV infectee, but also possibly cure the disease Luo et al (2005), to the point where even countries of Africa and Thailand have joined forces and thrown funding at the Chinese Government's Health Department for research within those two countries that have some of the highest number of HIV carriers in the world, including China itself. Granted, physiotherapy has neither the age nor experience when it comes to health management compared to TCM and Western Medicine, but we are a profession that is coming out on its own, and if we are to be a successful and EFFECTIVE health discipline, then we must first be able to convince and believe in ourselves and physiotherapy, so that we may overcome our self-given restraints and surpass all other health disciplines with science, experience and FAITH in what we do.

Tuesday: Ahh yeah, I remember, this was the day that two little birdies decided to come in and make camp in my room so that they could study til 3am the next morning without having to go home and wake up early to come back into uni, seeing as I live on campus. It was an eventful night, though the library was so darn boiling that I even had a nose bleed during that time. A lot of distractions that afternoon too, as we had the great pleasure of being in the presence of one of our special friends and her hilarious little antics and words which involved a lot of diaphragmatic work and and mental restraint to not piss everyone else on the tram off. Haha. Managed to get through one and a half weeks worth of neuro. WHOO!

Rest of the previous three weeks: Probably not that important, seeing as i can't really remember anything. But yeah...I moved, ate, slept, talked...watched grey's anatomy and house (both third season episodes) :) hehehe.

Righteo, time to sign off and go stuff myself full of "delicious and definitely edible" cough cough food.

"Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe." - Saint Augustine