Work, gongfu, novels, bad lemonade

First day of work at the bank today!

A lot of reading about a lot of policies and procedures, and little else. Free tea and coffee from a machine! A flat screen (phew!), since my peepers have been spoilt from looking at a laptop LCD (better than those photon-spewing cathode ray tubes by far). A nice desk, but a temporary one until my PC arrives (and whoever it is returns and finds me sitting at theirs). A slight feeling of being in way over my head!

I'm sure it will pass. Familiarity breeds contempt, perhaps, but it also begets comfortability, if that is a real word. You get the gist even if it's not.

Gongfu tonight as well, just because I'm not doing enough. I've paid my monthly dues (£48 that we didn't really have, but I have to keep going!), so at least I'm not scrounging for change every week. It is fun, difficult, tiring (exhausting, really) and social to boot, although I still don't quite ken the wee Scottaesh accent so half the time I just nod and smile, nod and smile.

We're learning the Bear form of bā guà 八卦 "eight diagrams", the animal styles, so now I have an insatiable desire for honey, and pic-a-nic baskets. ('Ey, Boo-Boo!) My stamina with the horse stance is getting better, slowly -- ask Jared, it's hard -- as is "splashing hands" (so named because of the sound of water bouncing off ones hands. Has everybody seen House of Flying Daggers? Anyway, I hope to grade in about March next year. It is certainly harder than Freestyle Karate in that respect!

Ever thrifty, we bought the cheapest diet lemonade that Tesco had on offer, something like 25p for 2L. I think I can see how they manage to make it so cheap, too -- "taste" must cost extra. Still, it would probably go nicely with vodka and ice. :-)

My novel has stalled, as novels are wont to do, at around the 6,000 word mark. Not a bad start, but I should be at about 12,000 by the end of tomorrow. I'll have a couple of hours after work, and then all weekend (nothing else planned after all) so I'm hoping I can catch up!

And that, dear friends, is all (s)he wrote!