Sunday was a beautiful late summer day, a little cooler than usual. The number of cicadas is decreasing these days; the end of Ghost Month was being celebrated at a paper temple set up by the restrooms nearby as I exited the subway station at the park. I’ve always felt like the station should be named the 2/28 Park Station rather than NTUH Station, as the most significant exits are in the park, but people seem to think that hospitals are a trump card as far as station naming goes.

NL Guy was wrestling with one of the students who seldom comes to practice, while Teacher X instructed Little Mountain Pig on some of the finer points of sword form. Being rather rusty in the sword department myself, I joined in. I can still do the form, but, after going through the whole thing with Teacher X, the point was driven home for me that there are many areas in which I need work. Teacher X is going to the US for his calligraphy course soon, possibly next week, and we’ll have a month or so without him before he returns in November.

After Teacher X left I did some tuishou with Little Qin, who told me that the body can be divided into Yin and Yang portions, which change depending on how you use them. For some reason this struck a chord with me, one of those “Oh!” moments that has an immediate and apparent effect on one’s performance. It got me thinking of pandas for some reason, possibly the visualization of one’s body being covered in shifting patterns of black and white.

The more you use this, he said, the less you need your hands. Little Qin discourages the use of palms in tuishou, as “Anyone can use their palms to grab and push and pull; what we need to learn to do is use everywhere else.” As Master Zheng said, “Your whole body is a hand.” We transferred the idea to swordwork as well, with the edge of the sword being generally a yang part and the flat part the yin, but not always: Little Qin demonstrated how each can be used as the other, and told me the story of Master Zheng disarming a Japanese samurai by simply controlling him instead of fighting him directly. It was all quite neat.

I got off work about the same time as Jon Stewart, and we were walking out of the building at night (obviously, this is a dream). We looked at the empty lot next door, and I mentioned that I really missed the White House, which was apparently a joke as a building strongly resembling it, which had indeed been used as a stand-in for it on TV, had stood there until recently. He said he didn’t feel like going home and wanted to go take in a game, and would I like to go, so I said sure. I followed him up bounding easily up several flights of stairs (dream) to emerge into the upper seats of a stadium, to find everyone in the stands absorbed in almost every game you can imagine, games like UNO, Chinese checkers and Battleship. I knew then something was fishy, that I must be being filmed; this was obviously something Jon had cooked up for my benefit. I could tell that everyone, though apparently concentrating on the various games, was waiting for my reaction. So I looked around, put a look of realization on my face and said loudly so that some hidden microphone could pick it up, “Wait a minute, I don’t see any rock-paper-scissors!”

This was apparently a very funny thing to have said (dream). Jon came over with the camera, and we were joined by a very famous, very blond actress resembling the blonde cylon on BSG (now there’s a sentence that would have confused the hell out of me in 1980), who was wearing a glittery golden dress and, surprisingly quickly, me, as she wrapped herself around me and stage-whispered something suggestive in my ear. I thought to myself, I really should tell Jon I prefer someone more like Ice Cube or some other non-female person, but it would be a big deal and cause a scandal. Then I began to wonder how my subconscious had chosen all of this, and I started to wake up, wondering, in that strange state when dreams are fading but logic and reality has yet to take hold, why the hell I wasn’t a famous person trading quips with Stewart and writing award-winning comedies.

Of course, then I really woke up, and for some reason I felt like relating this strange dream to you, as you apparently have nothing better to do right now either, and it was a really good and bizarre dream, with nothing particularly bad happening, unless you count the actress thing.

But my Actual Life (c) isn’t bad, really; in a few minutes I’m setting off for one of the New Hampshire Bushman’s get-togethers at the beach, and though it’s cloudy outside, it might be an interesting time. Noname called up last week and asked me to play a couple of gigs with the group in the Xinyi District over the next couple of weeks. And I really should take a fall excursion somewhere before it gets too cold. I’m thinking Japan again, as it would be nice to see what it’s like there when I’m not freezing my ass off, but I’m not sure if another visit to Tokyo is the best idea. Perhaps somewhere else. If I just played it by ear, I’d probably end up taking the Trans-Siberian and end up in Istanbul, which wouldn’t be too practical as I have to be back at work in a week or so. But one can dream.

I was the first one of our group at the park last Sunday when I arrived at 10 a.m. The others didn’t begin to arrive until half an hour later, so I spent the time warming up and running through empty-handed and sword forms. It was promising to be a hot day, but at least the leaves are still on the trees, providing some shade. Mr. V and NLguy are quite chummy these days; they spent the entire time wrestling each other; I guess it makes sense as their approaches have always been similar.

Teacher X was telling me how he would have to leave for his calligraphy class a week early due to the October holiday rush when Little Mountain Pig called on me to practice with a guy from outside our group. He was surnamed Liu, in his late 50’s and small. I started slow, taking Little Qin’s advice to see if I could push my opponent up to the point of defeat and then stopping. At first I though that Mr. Liu was taking the same tactic, but it appeared that he was getting bored with all the pussyfooting around, and his moves became a lot less smooth, exerting a constant, rigid force.

This became quite tiring, but I was still curious, so we kept at it. Then the quick, hard shoves began, and it was NLGuy all over again. Mr. Liu seemed frustrated as well, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t like practicing with me very much. Oh, well. It’s like LM Pig says, with tuishou it seems that you’re either interesting in learning or winning.

I practiced tuishou with Little Qin, who always has some interesting move or observation to impart. Usually it turns out to be something I never would have thought of or guessed, some move that completely doesn’t make sense and yet works flawlessly. “Yi jin dang chang,” he said, which roughly means putting everything into the action. Afterwards we did some swordplay, with me switching hands when I got tired. The practical work is good for me, the equivalent of tuishou with swords.

Little Qin tried to dispel me of my notion of studying taichi staff before scimitar. “Sword takes 10 years of practice,” he told me, “and scimitar three after that. Staff should only be a year.” In any case, it’s still a bit early to be thinking that far ahead, but I still have my doubts about the scimitar. A military man, Little Qin compared sword to a light tank while “the scimitar is a heavily armed helicopter.” To be honest I’m not sure what to make of that. Little Qin often says things that go way over my head; I just file them away in the hope that I might realize what he was talking about some day.

WARNING: Gear talk ahead.

Hard to believe that it’s September already. With most of my weekends gone to playing in clubs, time has really flown. Fall, however, has brought with it a plethora of new camera releases, which in turn represent a conundrum for me.

A while ago I wrote about my photography being divided into three levels of cameras, i.e. my big, heavy DSLR I take with me for dedicated photography trips, the compact camera I keep in my backpack all the time when I don’t feel like carrying the big camera and lenses with me, and the tiny camera on my mobile phone that I use when I don’t have the time or inclination to fetch either of my “real” cameras.

While my DSLR option is pretty much set in stone, as I am happy with the Invincible Rabbit, the compromises represented by the other level cameras make my wallet hand twitch when I see something that could improve the situation hit the market. A few cameras recently announced have had this effect:

The first one, of course, is Olympus’ EP1, a micro four-thirds camera somewhere between a compact point-and-shoot and a DSLR in both size and image quality. The stylin’ retro EP1 has no flash, which doesn’t bother me particularly, but the LCD is not particularly detailed, and since you have to rely on it for focusing, this is an important point to consider. Last week I attended a class on the EP1 just to check it out. It feels great in the hand, and the sound and feel of the shutter are wonderful. The EP1 also has in-body image stabilization, which is good for the low-light shots I love. For some reason, however, it kept focusing about a foot behind where it should have. The speed of the contrast-detect AF was about the same as my LX3, not bad, but not instantaneous.

Many of the percieved deficiencies of the EP1 might be fixable with new firmware, of course, but the focusing issues give me pause. The new Panasonic GF1, however, seems to have much quicker focusing, as well as a properly resolutioned LCD. The Panny, however, lacks in-body image stabilization and relies on lens-based systems. But with higher ISO shooting made possible by the larger sensors, it should still be better than the LX3 (theoretically).

One problem with the micr0-four-thirds format is that, if you want any kind of range, you have to use a bulky zoom lens like Oly’s 14-42 (which collapses) or Panny’s 14-45 (not sure if it collapses). In order for them to be truly compact, you have to use one of the pancake lenses with a single focal length. Is it worth giving up a decent range of focal lengths or portability for the extra image quality? This is the problem of the middle camera: exactly where in the middle should it be?

This brings me to the Canon S90, which would theoretically replace my Panasonic LX3. I have to admit I’ve always had a soft spot for Canon powershots, as one of the early models was my first digital camera, the SD100 back in 2001. Although the Lx3 is a fine camera for its size and does its job with more efficiency than any other compact I’ve had, it just isn’t as pocketable as my old powershots, and I have a hard time loving the output, especially after the brilliant images I got from the Sigma DP1. The DP1’s handling was heartbreakingly slow, however, and I was simply missing too many shots with it. The ones I did get, however, were wonderful. I’m under no illusion that the S90 would be much of an improvement over the LX3 as it has a similarly tiny sensor, adding only some useful telephoto range and a much slimmer, pocketable profile, and hopefully nicer colors.

Obviously, the easiest, cheapest option would to be to not buy anything new and keep the setup I have. Or I could replace the LX3 with either a GF1 or EP1 for better image quality, or with an S90 simply for better portability and range. I am also tempted to upgrade my phone to the iPhone 3GS just for the better camera, but I am tempted by the extra speed and compass functions as well. In that case the phone camera’s portability would make an S90 a little redundant.

I’m not forgetting that Leica is scheduled to unveil some new cameras on the 9th, aka 9/9/09 (full-frame M9 anyone?), but I’m sure that any digital camera they make that I could conceivably afford, I could also get for a third of the price from Panasonic, minus the little red dot.

None of the above cameras will be on shelves here for a matter of months, however, and a lot can happen in that time. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about this business, it’s that there is always a better camera just around the corner, and if you keep waiting for the “perfect” model, you’ll just be missing out on the pictures you could be taking in the here and now.