Above letters are pronounced "goong" and "fu" - meaning "achievement"/"ability" and "male" - so there's today's topic.

Well my abilities have been recognised last Thursday, and I'm now a yellow belt + a white stripe. 10 push-ups, 25 sit-ups and the first Kata (一黄 = one yellow) was all it took :o). I received a stripe for my belt which I spent a good hour sewing on - not impressive craftmanship by any means, but it looks neat from a distance.

And as you may have noticed from the header, I've been looking into learning a little chinese (mandarin), but that's just difficult. First of all, words are formed from about 20 initials and i think 30 or 35 ending sounds - not all combinations are valid. Now, mix that with 4-5 different intonations and you got your work cut out for you. Oh and the letters. There are no clues what so ever as to pronounciation hidden in those strokes. one initial + one ending = one syllabul = one letter. 20 x 30 x 5 and then halved and you get 1500 different letters to learn :o(

I found a pretty neat website http://www.chinesepod.com/ with chinese lessons which I'll give a try. It's american - so you get things explained over and over - but the sound quality is very good and dialogues are mixed between Jenny (native Chinese), and an american, Kenn, so you get two pronounciation examples - really nice! To get full benefit from the lessons, you have to sign up for an account. A reasonable fee, but I think I'll freeride a bit before signing up and see if I really want this.

On another note, these are good times for fans of FCK. 1-0 against Manchester United in Champions League Wednesday and yesterday a 3-1 victory over the rivals from Brøndby.