A Pretty Good Day In Lima

Saturdays back in the USA are sometimes a very leisurely day, or a day to run errands to get stuff done that may be hard during the week (food shopping, household chores, etc.).  Every married person knows this.

But, here in Peru, Saturdays are often busy, people doing other things.  Ameru works half the day, and they sold almost $1000 worth of bearings (not bad, Saturdays are usually extremely quiet), most of them to a customer in the provinces (which I like a lot, bigger footprint in Peru, and they pay in advance -- no credit risk!). I did a little bit of "work" but not much, they close at just after noon.

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Just before my wife and her sister headed out (that story is coming very soon), I took "Los Lolos" (the family nickname for their parents, a few of you have met them!) to lunch.  Here is my photo of them while we were walking to get lunch this afternoon.  Ana is 83, Eleodoro is 93 (still works outside doing construction and stuff, I have shown him before in my blog).  When they walk together, they walk the "old-fashioned way", she takes his arm.  (Our daughter LOVES this stuff!)

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My wife and here sister went off to see the Met!  The Metropolitan Opera of NYC is perhaps the best opera company in the world.  In Lima?  Well, The Met has a special deal, with quality cinemas now in 66 countries (and some 10,000 screens) where they show a live performance on some Saturdays at noon (US ET).  And they have one here in Lima.

(Sidebar: why do I even write here about opera?  Here´s a little secret for you socio-economic climbers out there: the richest and most connected of every city go to the opera, you want to get to know the right people, you go there, source: Esquire magazine.  Also, to make it (as a singer) in the opera, you have an excellent voice and work very hard to get there, only the top succeed, opera singers are not to compared to, say, Peter Frampton...)

My wife is a big-time opera fan, almost a fanatic (one of her friends is a fanatic).  She has been an opera fan ever since she lived in London in the 1970s and 1980s (two hitches there).  When we lived in the DC area many years ago (before we got married and for some 16 years thereafter), she subscribed almost year to go see the opera at the Kennedy Center, a very nice place to see opera.  When we moved to our current city, she has joined their opera as well, but there are fewer performances and the quality is not as good.  I´ll discuss one other drawback of the oepra in our town in just a bit.

The performance this week was Jules Massenet´s Werther, I had never heard of it before today, it is sung in French.  I provide a link below to one of the most well known passages, sung by the very same guy (Jonas Kaufmann) who was singing at the Met, and only the best of the best sing at the Met...

So, my wife and Lily go off to the opera, they did not need to dress up because who goes to the cinema all dressed up (no one)?  I asked my wife to provide information, some of you may like these comments...  First here is a handy table to be able to make a guess as to how YOUR opera experience might go, based on my wife´s experiences in the below venues:

Opera Venue	Audience Description & Behavior
The Met, New York City	NYC´s elite, very formal, very well behaved
The Kennedy Center, DC	The nation´s elite, VERY well behaved
The Opera in our city	Our city´s elite?, fairly poorly behaved
HD Cinema, Lima, Peru	The Lima elite, well behaved
HD Cinema in our city	Our city´s elite?, very poorly behaved

By "the Lima elite", of course I mean mostly the rich and white descendants of the Europeans.

And what do I mean by "poorly behaved"?  Well, everyone who goes to the opera (should) dress up, and be silent during the performances!  After all, opera productions are expensive to put on, and the rich and connected go there, so they should STFU! Sometimes there are quiet passges, and not all people (not even most) know the story lines and so are trying to pay attention while reading the subtitles...  It´s a respect thing.  And in most places they do.  But, not in our city!  The old ladies here talk among each other (or yell at their husbands), rustle papers (opening their snacks), smack their lips while eating and drinking...  Tut-tut!

The audiences in our city make my wife often want to pull her hair out!  It ruins the quality of the experience.  She even wrote to our local opera and suggested that they include an "Opera Etiquette" insert (English and Spanish) like some cities do.  The letter got nowhere, duh, and she is not just a subscriber, but a contributor (albeit a small contributor).

But, today things went very well.  Lily enjoyed the opera VERY MUCH and almost cried (that´s pretty normal at operas among women), she is now an opera fan, neither of them even KNEW that Lima had an HD screen showing it!  Now Lily (who likes culture as well) can see more of the opera as she can, her life will become a little better now,,, "gracias hermana!" (thanks, sister!).

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When my wife is away, I am free...  I went to Starbucks (yes, they have one "on almost every corner" here too) and enjoyed a "Mocha Frappucino" (hey, it´s summer and hot now) while reading the News and Business sections of El Comercio, Peru´s biggest and most serious newspaper.  And Starbucks did a good job with my Mocha Frapucciono, the place was also jammed, I got one of the last places to sit down...

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After walking back "home" and letting my coffee beverage settle (while wasting time on the Internet, although I DID get a joke out to my Joke List), I asked my 15-year old niece to take some pictures of me while doing my two favorite Tai Chi forms.  This is about the only exercise I do when down here, so I try to go three times a week.  I like the small nearby "Trinitarias Park", in Surco, a municipality of Lima; Tai Chi is much better done outside.

Here are three photos, taken by my niece Viviana, this first posture is from the "Yang Style Long Form", most movements in Yang Style are slow and graceful.  This posture is named (thanks wikipedia!) "Step Back and Ride the Tiger" (Tuì bù kuà hǔ, 退步跨虎):

Yeah, I'm getting kind of old and bald, so what are you going to do about it?  Please also note that static pictures show next to nothing about how Tai Chi flows, it is a wonderful exercise, and hey, it might come in handy some someday (it is a legitimate martial art, although almost practioner does it for their health).

This next one is from the more combative style Chen Xin Jia.  This is a more athletic form and is more similar to real combat (like karate's "katas" are).  It is also rarely seen in the USA.  Some of the movements are fast!  I am nowhere near mastering this form (or for that matter any of the others).  This one is hard and dynamic.  Here I am setting up a punch, setting up is slow, but the punch is fast:

Chen style Tai Chi, near the end of the form, setting up two punches from down low:

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Here is a Youtube of Jonas Kaufmann singing one of the more famous selections from Werther, that my wife and her sister saw today.

 3:11

Massenet: Werther - Pourquoi me réveiller (Jonas Kaufmann)

• by 70Tamas
• 10 months ago
• 17,276 views

Jules Massenet: Werther Pourquoi me réveiller Werther - Jonas Kaufmann 

Blessed weekend, everyone!

My First Tai Chi Article

will be something of a cop-out as I feel that I cannot write a proper article on it and I have been unable to convince anyone else who knows Tai Chi better than I do to write one.  Instead of explaining it, I will give a link to a good reference and tell you of my experience (very positive -- readers in hurry can stop here!).

Thus, I send you off to Wikipedia, which actually does a pretty good job:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tai_chi_chuan

I will expound on this other important part of my life and how it meshes into my life.  Some of you already know (occasional comments at Zero Hedge, family members and friends) that I have been doing Tai Chi for over seven years.  That makes me JUST above a rank beginner, a "Private First Class" for those of you familiar with military ranks here in the USA.  It takes a LONG TIME to get good at Tai Chi, the forms are best done exactly right...  Many, many details.  Patience and humility are required.  That humility part comes in handy, as our instructor is very demanding and not shy about correcting posture and movement.

I took up Tai Chi after I injured myself a little over eight years ago, a herniated disc in my neck that required spinal fusion surgery.  I now have in my neck a titanium plate (approx. 18 mm long), 4 titanium screws, a DEAD GUY'S piece of cadaver bone and "cement matrix".  Fortunately the surgery worked out just fine.  Some four months after my surgery I was at my doctor's office for a check up on how I was doing.  He then told me that I needed to do "something for internal strength", he tossed out the idea of doing yoga...  I told him to forget about that "as I was NOT a yoga kind of guy".  (author's O/T note: SINGLE guys of any age should consider taking yoga classes...)  But recognizing what he said about internal strength I then told him that I had read good things about Tai Chi.

THAT got a response!  He told me that he was taking Tai Chi from right then.  He said he LOVED Tai Chi...

Soon after I went to my first class.  It is my hunch that all you need is ONE class to know if you will like it or not.  It will be clear if it is for you or no.  For me, I was hooked right away, that first night.

Being the "new person" in a continuing class of students is often hard, and it was for me.  The movements are not intuitive or easy.  I was behind everyone, and learning was slow.  But, I stayed with it.  Eventually another "new student" came along, then others.

So what has Tai Chi done for me?  I am convinced that my life is better since taking it up.  I get sick much less (from one to two colds per year to just 3 (total) in the seven years I have been doing it.  I have confidence that scrawny Robert might actually have a chance in an ugly street encounter.  I get lots of gentle exercise of a sort I never had done before.  It has helped my joints from deteriorating...  My sense of balance is much better.

As we do not have a video camera here in the house, I will send links to various videos of people who are VERY GOOD at Tai Chi.  (I also have no fear from embarrassing myself by showing how beginner-like my forms are).

Now that this article has gone up, those of you who have read my two articles on our Peruvian business and now this article on Tai Chi now know something about two important parts of my life.

NOTE BENE!  The below videos are long (two of them are 10 minutes long, maybe more).

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This first video shows the "Yang Style 24 Posture Form", the most commonly performed form worldwide (the Chinese government in the 1950s, I believe, forced their Tai Chi groups to make this "short form" so that it would not take YEARS for beginners to learn).  It took me 9 - 12 months before I was reasonably happy with my ability to do this form.  There are minor stylistic differences that the same form as practiced in our class.  Such minor stylistic differences are very common in the Tai Chi world.  NOTE to self-styled badasses: Don't mess with a girl who can do this, she will kick your ass so hard your digestion process will go COMPLETELY into reverse if you catch my drift...

4:38

Tai Chi 24-form

Tai Chi 24-form... It's a great martial art style. You should try it.

The below video is Part 3 (of 3) of the Yang Long (108) Form.  I could not find a clean, acceptable and complete Yang 108 Form there at Youtube (perhaps because it takes too long, Youtube does impose time limits on videos).  This guy is very good.  Again, there are slight stylistic differences than in the Form the way our class practices it.  The Yang 108 is my FAVORITE form.

6:49

The below video is very old (1970s) and shows Chen Xiao-Wang performing the Chen Xia Jia (New Frame) Form.  Mr. Chen continues to teach up to the present day.  Watch what happens when he stomps his feet, and listen for the echo in the gym...  He has immense strength.  Our instructor has studied under him as well as others in the Chen family.  I myself have been to three seminars with Grandmaster Chen (there were always lots of people there).  Master Chen's version is the "classic" (clean) version (his family invented Chen style Tai Chi), this is essentially what he has taught us.

Chen Tai Chi Chuan Xin Jia First Form

Here is another version of the Chen Style Xin Jia, performed by an amazing older guy.  This is NOT what we have been taught, he as added a lot of smaller, quicker moves.  We have been told that when we are "good" (twenty years?) that we can do this too, modify the forms as long as Tai Chi principles are adhered to.

Ma Hong Chen Style Taijiquan (Xin Jia Yi Lu)‏ - YouTube