Planing lesson

I shall open with some Plain ol’ Taichi moves:

BUT WAIT! That looks familiar!
Compare with Plane ol’ Taichi moves:

When you plane, you’ve got to MOVE YO’ BODY!!! … and not forget to breathe and concentrate and stuff, etc etc.

But really, planing taichi-style puts the strength of your legs and the weight of your torso behind the plane, which will slow down arm fatigue and let your arms focus on controlling the plane. So, today’s lesson in review:

You don’t even need the check mark and X to tell you which is the right way – obviously you’d choose Shaolin Planing because it makes you look way cooler. But make sure you’ve got good footing, or else:

We are Siamese if you don’t please

Where did this whole parallel-fifths-association-with-Asians thing come from anyway? Is it really even valid?? I’m looking at you too, Kung Fu Fighting song!

Charrette Syndrome

Princess Chicken

If you can’t read Chinese, don’t despair! Click here for English.
And please excuse any of my linguistic shortcomings.

So… which makes more sense: Expensive Airplane or Senior Concubine Chicken? My misinterpretation was a logical error, wasn’t it? Either way, little Chinese restaurant menus, you can’t fool me with your euphemistic English translation “Princess Chicken.” But whenever I hear someone say “贵妃鸡,” this is what pops into my head:

And then this… the actual dish:

Highly recommended, by the way. It’s yummy.

purfling pick

Those double black lines on your violin are not drawn in decorations. They come from this:

That purfling strip gets bent with an iron and stuffed into a channel, which we cut out with knives and pick out with this:

And in the process, we smash our left thumbs with the hard tempered metal of the purfling pick.

We knife two lines, 2mm deep, but there’s no real way of knowing how deep we’ve cut other than guessing by eyeballing how far down the tip of your knife has gone. Also, keeping that channel perpendicular to the surface is no easy task!