Confucious says: man who walk backwards clapping hands looks...well...silly

As the weather gets warmer and warmer over here, I'm noticing more and more people out exercising in the mornings on my way to work. I'm sure that there are even more people exercising in the early hours between 6-8am, but there's no way I can ever force myself to get up at that time to be one of them. The weather here during summer definitely does not seem conducive to a lot of outdoor exercise - it's currently 9:30pm and it's still 25 degrees outside. I guess it's slightly more bearable in the morning...but only just.

Anyway, aside from using the outdoor gym equipment that dots the landscape of my apartment complex, one of the main things that I notice people doing during their exercise routines is walking backwards slowly whilst clapping their hands both in front of their stomach and behind their back. I'm assuming that it has some health benefits (aiding coordination perhaps) but it looks extremely strange. It certainly seems to be favoured by the older people - in fact I rarely see anyone younger than 50 doing any exercise at all. The guys I play basketball with on weekends are all in their early-mid 20s, so it seems like there's a big gap between 30-50 where exercise just doesn't seem to be a priority. Either that, or there a lot of gym memberships getting some decent use.

I suppose one other way that people are keeping active is dancing. A few times I've gone out running in different directions to see what was around, and have gone past some big courtyard areas where there are 50 or so couples all dancing away hand in hand. On a couple of occasions there's been some boppy Chinese techno music going - it was quite surreal to see some elderly couples grooving away to the 'choons! Definitely not pulling out the nightclub moves, but moving around nonetheless. Awesome stuff.

Back online - finally!

Ah, the good old Great Firewall of China strikes again.

For almost the last month, I've been unable to post anything on this blog because it's been blocked over here. The only reason I'm online now is because I shelled out a little coin for a VPN service. For those of you not technically inclined, it's some software that runs on my PC that 'tunnels' all of my internet traffic via the USA...where I get access to all the sites that aren't blocked. Hurrah!

Now I can proceed with some long overdue updates. I think I'll backdate a few of these so it doesn't look like there's such a big gap in the month of May.