~JcZw

How does one take the blood pressure of one's ex-tuition teacher?

1. Put on the stethoscope

2. Check for brachial pulse

3. Discover you put the stethoscope on the wrong way.

4. Reset the stethoscope

5. Attach the cuff

6. Pump the cuff

7. Feel alarmed when the systolic reading starts at 180 mm Hg

8. Feel relieved when you discover that its cos you were shaking your leg with you free arm
touching the stethoscope

9. Repeat from Step 1 without steps 3 and 4

10. Discover that the thudding in the background was the heartbeat which you have missed

11. Pretend nothing is wrong, repeat step 9

12. Third time lucky! You get a good reading

13. Remove cuff with a fluorish and announce to your teacher that she has a healthy blood pressure

Heheh till today I've used my mother's sphygmomanometer three times... Once on myself (in which I nearly gave myself gangrene cos I didn't know how to use the cuff properly), my tuition teacher who used to teach me chinese, and my grandmother... =) But I guess taking people's blood pressure is nothing compared to other things in the medical field... unless your patient's b.p. is like 300 / 200 mm Hg or something =D hahahaha...

Anyway just finished watching "Ying Xiong", or Hero, as its known in the Western World, again. I couldn't remember anything about the show except that there were a lot of colours.... and the lines "好快的剑" which in the show is translated as "How swift thy sword"(strikes me as funny that QinShihuang would be using Shakespearean English) and the lines "去就是死" "死就一起死". Which literally means "To go is to die" "Die then die together lor" or something... Mushy...

This time while watching I discovered that

a) Jet Li has a marvellous fleche. Not only can he do it faster than a raindrop can fall, but he's accurate and maintains the same perpendicular distance above the ground while doing it. Also, despite the high velocity, his hair and his eyebrows never seem to be ruffled. And he can fleche so fast that a feller who has a longer reach than him cannot even touch him. He should have tried doing it on Maurice.

b) Chinese fighters always HAVE to do a somersault or some flashy move before making a thrust at their opponents. My goodness. Give me an epee and I would have taken out Qinshihuang's assasins for him with ease....=Pp

c) Everyone is the show is super strong, or are using rubber blades. I take the super strong one cos I doubt you can kill with a rubber blade unless you're aiming for the eye. But then again, how else can you do a quadruple flick unless you're very strong? With a solid pole of wood to boot. I mean, I haven't even seen a double flick in fencing, let alone a quardruple one.

You know what? I think the story is fictional. Why didn't I think of that before? Heheh but NONETHELESS I think its a nice movie lar...

Although I wouldn't mind learning Jet Li's fleche. Being able to fly at your opponent from 17 meters away would be a useful skill in fencing. I wouldn't mind my opponents somersaulting from 2 meters before attacking me either... so long as they don't land on me =)

Speaking of which... Coach has been telling me about new handholds for close quarters... basically loosening your grip as you twirl the blade behind your back so that the handle slips into a new position, which is more sharply angulated to hit your opponent... needs A LOT of practise though... n slightly painful to execute too..

--->

View from neutral position

--->

View from supinated position

Ah well.. FSI (purely for experience) is coming up soon... After that we'll have to start deciding if we want to take part in the 1st Inter-School tournemant in July, periliously close to prelims, and my birthday, again... haha...

Anyway... Chinese prelim is like 3 weeks away, and I'm still coming away from my lessons feeling stupid and inept, despite the fact that my exercise have all been not bad, and somehow I've been able to churn out one zuo wen a week, on top of the thick pile of pasages, tian xie's, chengyu's, shuyu's etcetc (if its difficult to produce one GP compo in 2 weeks, how easy is it to turn out 1 zuo wen a week? well, maybe for some people I know it would be chickenfeet, wings and the rest of its anatomy).

I'd rather go for third period PE. Even if I was unfit and found it terrible etc, at least PE doesn't have homework. I'm like doomed to study chinese till I go into NS.

But whats the use of thinking about it anyway. Right, gone for now..