Heat and Perl

I am not a summer person. Heat makes me tired, irritable and generally gloomy about the state of the world. Consequently, the fact that for the last week the temperature has typically been 38 Celsius in the shade has not made me a happy person. I avoid going out. I growl at people. I can't sleep at night, and then I can't wake up in the morning (well actually, this is pretty true most of the time, but the effects seem worse when it's hot).

When I do sleep, I keep getting this dream about Perl. For non-geeks, I should explain that Perl is a kind of programming language which looks something like this:

sub wordcount {
print "Enter word\n;
$totalwords = 1;
$wordcount = 0;
$searchstring = <>;
chop $searchstring;

Not the kind of thing you'd expect the stuff of dreams to be made on, but here I am dreaming that I'm writing Perl scripts. The great thing is that these scripts actually do stuff in the real (well, dream) world; I can make interdimensional holes appear and swallow my neighbour's horrible yappy dogs and so forth.

The funny thing is that I've only written one program in Perl, and that was over a year ago. Presumably these dreams are trying to tell me to start coding again.

Martial Arts

I'm writing this after spending a long and largely fruitless time searching through Livejournal for other martial aritsts. There are scores of people who have listed martial arts among their interests, but so far the only one I've found who actually writes anything about their martial arts practice are [ damn, why don't KDE applications paste to Gtk apps? ] Lain and Arya (actually, Arya only mentioned martial arts fleetingly, buy she writes in vi so she must be pretty hard).

So, not to continue the trend and disappoint fellow searchers, I though I ought to write about marital arts a bit myself. So here's my personal martial arts FAQ.

What martial arts do you do?
I've been doing t'ai chi for about fifteen years, and hapkido for the last year. I've also done a little aikido and wing chun, but that was ages ago.

Why do you do it?
Most people think martial artists have to be pretty nutty. I mean, we go and train several times a week and get tired, hurt and occasionally injured (though the same applies to squash, and nobody thinks squash players are nuts). The obvious answer is self-defence, but on it's own that probably wouldn't be enough. After all, there are self-defence courses which don't require spending years perfecting your art, or, if the laws of your country permit is, you can just get a gun. Moreover, I live in a place where my chances of being beaten up are minute compared to my chances of being run over (Turkish traffic makes Italy look pretty orderly) and there aren't that many ways to block an attack from a car (I did punch a taxi once, though, after its driver had shot a red light, screeched to a halt inches from me and blown his horn). On the other hand, feeling that you can defend yourself - and others - does wonders for your self-confidence, and not only in physically threatening situations. If you get thrown around like a rag doll three times a week, life's other tribulations seem much less threatening. So your boss/neighbour/relative is going to shout at you - at least you know that she/he isn't going to slam you down on the floor and put you in an armlock.

Health is another reason. If I didn't do martial arts, my lifestyle (smoking, drinking, caffeine, sleeplessness) would probably kill me.

Then there's the personal development side, which a lot of people wax lyrical (and nonsensical) about. I don't think I'm going to attain enlightenment by doing t'ai chi or hapkido (virtually nobody does), but I have this vague feeling that I'm somehow becoming more of the kind of person that I would like to be.

Can you really beat people up?
Don't know for sure, since I've never been in a serious fight (apart from a silly occasion years ago when a bunch of kids had a go at me in the park). I suppose I could if I really had to.

Can you take on five guys at once?
Almost certainly not. Give me time.

Is all that stuff in kung fu films realistic?
Of course not. Some of it they can't even do without special effects (see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for an extreme example) and a lot of the rest looks good but isn't very practical. Real fights look messy; for example, you wouldn't normally attack someone by doing a backflip and kicking them in the face. It's nearly all based on real martial arts, though.

Isn't it just some kind of macho ego-trip?
No more than most sports. In fact, most martial artists I've known have been extremely un-macho. On the other hand, I have to admit that doing stuff that looks cool is part of the appeal. One of these days I'll learn to do that handspring and land on my feet instead of my bottom.