Chapter 17. Workin' out.

Hello there.

When I was a boy, I didn't excel in many sports either. Nevertheless I was a sporty boy. I learned in a school which had emphasis on sport. So the majority of the pupils were involved in some training. There were several sports we participated: skiing, basketball, football, sport orienting etc. We had regular exercises and even played football in the morning before school. It was amazing and healthy. When I left school I missed sport. Then I started to practise martial arts. Martial arts were quite popular in our country in that period. Lots of kung-fu movies flooded video-salons. Wushu groups were raising like mushrooms after a warm rain. Many of them were accidentally or on purpose fakes. I was relatively lucky to happen in the group of Huynh Ngok An, the patriarch of Vietnamese Wing Chun Kung-fu. That was great. I studied Wing Chun for over ten years. Unfortunately the situation changed and I had to stop my study. Now I'm pity a little about it. Nowadays I go to gym sometime for I believe a human must keep his body fit. I blame myself for it happens too occasionally but I'm looking forward to improve the situation in the nearest future. :) I wish I went to a swimming pool but those in the town have poor conditions, so I don't.

Speaking of DIY. Tricia, by the word 'plinth' I actually meant not a shelve but a skirting board (or baseboard, if you like). I just didn't find appropriate word yesterday. It appears not to be an easy task to dig the correct word out of my dictionaries. :) A man of many skills I am, but it's not willingly. I just can't trust anybody else to do what I need. Usually it costs too much but the result is disappointing. In the most cases when I hired someone to do a job for me I just had to redo the job. So now I try to do it myself first and only if I fail I ask for help. To confess, I don't like it much. Concreting walls, reparing the car, fixing the roof, painting, drilling, sawing, glueing and so on and so forth. Jobs are overwhelming. And you must take into consideration that nearly everything I do from scratch. After all, it takes significant time! You know, recently I bought a chair. It was a package of separate parts with holes had been drilled in it, with screws and all the stuff supplied. I just screwed it all together and got a chair. I spent ten minutes. If all the DIY jobs were like this I'd probably like it.

Alex.

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