Despite living in Davis for several years, we had never visited this fantastic wildlife area which is right on our doorstep. Yesterday we remedied this situation and took a few photos while walking around one of the many little walking loops that can be found.
This area is over 16,000 acres and is a (temporary) home to many migratory birds. It is easy to lose yourself in the wild tranquility of the place and forget forget that Davis is just a few minutes drive away.
Being the political junkie that I am, I was quite excited to see a new 'Election 2012' app from the New York Times. However, I quickly noticed that most links that you may care to click on this app are accompanied by a little padlock icon. Clicking on these links takes you to a 'Subscribe' page where you are prompted to pay at least $14.99 per month for a NYTimes.com subscription. There are just six links that let you freely view NYTimes.com articles within the app. There are another fifty-four which link to content where you need a subscription. They do provide free links to an 'All Sources' section which just links to news articles from other providers (Washington Post, CNN etc.).
While I completely understand why the New York Times wants to get people to subscribe in order to access their content, I feel that it is a little disingenuous that this app has so little actual content that you can view without a subscription. At best, this app is nothing more than a 'NYTimes-lite' app. At worst, it should maybe be described as a 'Subscribe to NYTimes' app. Oh, and the app still puts an ad on every page too, presumably to cover the cost of those six free articles that you can view.
I've been an owner of a pair of ATH-ANC7 QuietPoint headphones from Audio-Technica for several years now. I wear them most days at work, and always take them with me when I fly anywhere. Their ability to cancel out background noise really helps me focus on whatever I'm working on. Like other noise-cancelling headphones, they come with a detachable stereo cable so that you can use them with the cable to play music, or without the cable to just enjoy some silence.
Just over a couple of weeks ago, my cable shuffled off this mortal coil and became an ex-cable. Initially, I thought that I would have no problem in getting a suitable replacement. It did not prove so easy however. The end of the cable that has to fit into the headphones needs to have a plug with a relatively narrow diameter. The original cable is about 4 feet and is pretty thin. I did try a 3 foot replacement cable from Radio Shack, but it was too heavy, and didn't 'hang right'. That's when I turned to the Audio-Technica website hoping that you could buy an official replacement cable. No such joy.
However, last Sunday morning I saw mention on a web forum that you could just contact the company's support line and they'll send you a new cable for free. At first I didn't really believe this, but in any case I fired off a quick email to parts@atus.com. At 8:17 am on Monday morning I had a reply, asking me for my address so that they could send me a new cable. Wow. I didn't have any proof of purchase – the headphones are over 3 years old now I think – but they never asked. A few hours later, I received a second email saying that a cable was now in the mail. It arrived yesterday and once more I can enjoy my work environment free of background machine hum!
Thank you Audio-Technica for great customer support!
There are some estimates that there were maybe 5,000 people on the UC Davis Quad today. I was there from about 10:30 and tried – as best I could – to provide some coverage of events via my twitter account.
When I arrived, there was hardly anyone there at all. Apart from the news crews you wouldn't notice anything to make you think that one of the largest gatherings in UC Davis history was about to take place. The speeches began at 12:00 and were led off by many vicitims of the pepper spray. These speeches were all articulate, powerful, and moving...a credit to UC Davis.
After several speeches the UC Davis Chancellor, Linda Katehi, spoke briefly. She was emotional and started out by apologizing for the events of the previous Friday. Here are a few photos from the day. I am glad that I was there and was extremely happy to be part of such a large, peaceful, gathering.
A lot of our time in Portland seemed to be spent frequenting bars, brew pubs, restaurants, food trucks, and cinemas. Portland is a great place to go if you like your food and drink. One place that has to be seen to be believed is Voodoo Doughnut. Nearly every time we passed this place we would see a queue outside of 15–30 people. We passed this place a lot, at various times of the day and there was always a queue. They are famous, amongst other things, for their maple bacon doughnut. A doughnut ... with bacon! They also offer a 'coffin' of doughnuts ($100 with coffin). We had the bacon doughnut because you sort of have to really. It was so very, very wrong, but also so very, very right.
We ate at many great places, many of them tiny and local. Sizzle Pie was our first port of call and they kept us happy with slices of delicious pizza. We also visited a few of the many, many different food trucks that are prominently located throughout the city. One bar we enjoyed a lot was Henry's Tavern, a huge place containing multiple rooms and bars on different levels. The main bar was flanked by a ring of ice that was there to keep your drinks cool.
Without a doubt, my favorite aspect of Portland was that many cinemas allowed you take drinks into the cinema. Not sodas or coffees but beer or wine. The magnificent Laurelhurst Theatre allows you to also buy slices of pizza. It was just too awesome for words. Further upping the ante was Living Room Theatres in downtown Portland. With this cinema you can order food and have it delivered to your seat! The theatres were really comfy and spacious too; plenty of room to stretch out your legs. After being able to watch a few films now with a pint of beer in my hand, I can only ask ... why can't all cinemas be like this?
Of all the cars I saw at the special Portland Art Museum exhibit, there were a couple of cars that oozed sexiness and sleekness. The first three photos below are of the first car, and the rest are all from the second car (the name and details of which I did not record). This second car looked so great from so many different angles.
I spent last weekend in Portland, Oregon. This is somewhere that my wife and I have been meaning to visit for many years but never quite got around to going. We had a great time, and I think this long weekend will inspire several blog posts with many photos.
To start with, I will just say that we spent one afternoon visiting the Portland Art Musuem which had a special exhibit on about the 'Allure of the Automobile'. As well as the collection of amazing cars inside the building, there was also a temporary display of classic cars (along with their proud owners) outside the museum. I don't think I've ever seen so many vintage cars all in such immaculate condition in one place. I'm not a car fan by any measure, but there was an undeniable beauty to many of these cars, some of which dated back to the 1930s.
The title of this post might also double as a personal creed for my life. I like tidiness. I like structure. I like order. We all know that it is far too easy to fill our homes up with 'stuff', and some of us – myself included – derive an almost unnatural amount of pleasure in finding ways to arrange, catalog, and otherwise organize such material.
However, I find that the blog title isn't just a proverb that applies to the tangible things in life that clutter up our homes. Many speeches, presentations, and adverts would also benefit from adhering to this philosophy. You don't have to be Steve Jobs to realize that, sometimes, less is more; that what you choose to leave out of a talk/presentation/advert is sometimes more powerful that what you choose to leave in. This is particularly true of PowerPoint presentations.
At this point, I should confess that I have no formal training in advertising, design, or indeed in any creative art. However, I do feel that I have a strong eye for 'good design'. I am drawn to adverts that are clean, clear, and which present their message in a focused way, free of clutter and other distractions. I am equally dismayed, appalled, and sometimes terrified by adverts that use inappropriate fonts, add unnecessary elements, and which otherwise turn fine pieces of advertising copy into what we in the UK might call a dog's breakfast.
Sometimes I wish that I could ignore bad design in advertising. The truth is that I get rather hung up when I spy the slightest 'wrong element' in an advert. The remainder of this post will deal with one such wrong element, one that many Davis residents will have seen – and probably completely ignored – over the last few months.
Theatre goers in Davis, California may have noticed a recent advertising campaign for Yolo Federal Credit Union, one of several credit unions in the area. The campaign appears to be targeted at the younger generation, people who may not have yet thought about the necessities of long-term financial planning. I presume that the goal of this campaign is to reach out to people with disposable income and convince them to dispose some of it into one of their financial products. One advert in particular consists of nothing more than a single slide of material, with some minor animations, which is accompanied by a voice-over. The single paragraph of text on this slide appears under a heading that seeks to grab your attention, not so much by way of the words that appear in the title ('Hello, Freedom!'), but mostly because of the grotesque nature of the font that is used. I reproduce this slide below.
It's an admittedly blurry image, courtesy of my cell phone camera, but you can hopefully see the item that causes me so much offense. Look in the bottom left corner and you should recognize a portion of an optical disk. It might be a DVD, it could potentially even be a LaserDisc, but I think it is much more likely to be a compact disc. If that is the case then this begs the important question:
Why is there an image of a CD on an advert for a local credit union?
Well let's look at the rest of the advert. The montage of pictures on the right-hand side of the advert imply a concert scene, maybe even a music festival. There are smiling faces, hands in the air, and a band rocking the stage. It all becomes obvious now. There is an image of a CD on the advert because 'the kids' these days are all about music. And nothing says 'music' like a CD. Right? I mean everyone is buying CDs these days. It's such a new format (first album released on CD was in 1983); it remains so popular (CD sales have declined by about 75% over the last 12 years); and it's not like there are any other alternatives (over 10 billion songs downloaded from iTunes).
I assume that Yolo FCU may not have wanted to use an actual branded product in their advert (like one of the 300 million of these things). However, if the goal was to simply reinforce a connection to the idea of 'music', couldn't they have just shown a picture of some generic earbud headphones, or an electric guitar, or anything else? Are the youth of today going to watch this advert and get turned on by the dynamic combination of text and imagery? Because surely nothing screams 'freedom' like a compact disc? In trying to be 'hip' I find that the advertisers have only succeeded in portraying themselves as exceedingly out of touch. They may as well have included something even more anachronistic in the advert.
On the one hand it is such a small detail, and maybe I should not let myself get sidetracked from the overall message of the advert. On the other hand, the entire advert is one single slide, and so the CD becomes a significant component of the whole. If your advertising campaign is based on the notion of young people gaining independence in the world, then shouldn't everything that appears in the advert totally reinforce that point?
I frequently wonder about how the design of the this final frame came about. Presumably someone had to 'sign off' on this advert. Did they just glance at it and think 'yeah, that will do'? Alternatively, maybe there was a method behind this madness, maybe the choice of this particular design element was the result of thoughtful, and deliberate contemplation? One possible idea that I considered is that someone thought it would be hilarious to put a CD image on an advert for a financial institution, because such institutions also sell products called certificate of deposits, commonly known as CDs. I contemplated that possibility for about two seconds before I had to accept that if that was the case, then we might as well just call an end to our existence as life would no longer be worth living. So let us instead imagine two fictitious advertising executives, who we shall call Bob and Geoff, as they went about their final evaluation of this advert:
Bob: "All finished, but we ended up with a bit of spare space on the bottom left of the slide."
Geoff: "Couldn't we just make our corporate logo bigger, to fill the space?"
Bob: "We could do that Geoff, and that might make for a cleaner slide which better reinforces our corporate branding, and makes the tag line actually readable. But seeing how I recently purchased a large collection of 1990s clip-art, why don't we just throw in a picture of a CD instead?"
Geoff: "Sounds good to me Bob. Is it time for lunch yet?"
Can you see what it is about this microwave power control dial that annoys me?
The 'Medium' power setting is not in the middle of the dial! That's pretty counter-intuitive
The manufacturers found space to write the word 'Defrost' (7 letters) but not the word 'Medium' (6 letters)?!?
The setting 'M. Low' looks, and reads, very odd
The increasing thickness of the markings makes it look like the power settings are on a logarithmic scale
Power settings are written with lower case characters, whereas food types are written in all upper case characters
Overall it is needlessly cluttered and confusing. Why not just have 'Low', 'Medium', and 'High' with perhaps icons for defrost, pizza etc? Why not use a scale that maybe just goes through settings such as 1–10? Why not spend some time designing your products?
However, if you are fond of power controls like this one, then perhaps you would find the following power intervals to be of use too?
Basement power level: Nothing happening here. You can zap me for as long as you like but your food isn't getting any hotter
T-minus 10: ice might start melting, but only just
Annoying defrost: most of the food will have defrosted, except the edges which will have cooked
The 'move-along-nothing-to see-here' setting: located just before you get to the middle of the dial; you will never use this setting.
Perfectly cooked edges: this setting will perform an admirable job of cooking the outer edges of your food. The interior will be cold, potentially frozen even.
Nuclear war: This is probably the only setting that you will use. This setting will heat your food to the same temperature as the surface of the sun
A very good friend of ours will soon be leaving Davis to experience the joys of a PhD in the delightful environs of Bath, England. He suggested a few weekend trips away before he leaves his homeland. As last Saturday was St. George's Day (St George being the patron saint of England), I suggested it would be only fitting to take a trip to St. George Spirits, a distillery in Alameda. You can book tours of their distillery – set in an former aircraft hangar – plus arrange tastings of their excellent selection of spirits. If you like spirits, or if you are curious about the process of distilling, or even if you just like monkeys, I can thoroughly recommend a trip to St. George Spirits.
The tour guide exuded a laid back Bay Area vibe but he also knew his stuff. He educated us about how they make their vodka, whisky, absinthe, and other spirits. The hilarious story behind the repeated rejections from the Federal government for the label designs of their absinthe – the first legal absinthe in the USA since the recent law change – is worth the trip alone. They also have a large shark in their hangar (a prop that was used in this film apparently).
When we moved on to the tastings, we were all pleasantly surprised by how smooth all of their vodkas were. They take great pride in the fact that they don't try to homogenize every batch of their spirits to be 100% identical in flavor. Their fruit-flavored vodkas were all a delight, but they seem keen to experiment with just about any flavor that they can add to alcohol (we were told of the foie gras vodka that they tried making!). The chipotle vodka that we tasted packed quite a punch and is definitely one for any chili lovers.
The eu de vie that they make was definitely one of the highlights of the tasting for me. Imagine a fragrant and fresh pear juice, which is light and not too sweet, but definitely very drinkable. It seems wrong that such a drink contains 20% alcohol...you almost can't taste it. We ended our tasting session by trying their 120% proof absinthe. I have never ever drunk absinthe before, and I can happily say that I will never drink absinthe again! Aniseed is not a flavor that I am compatible with.
So I would definitely recommend this place as somewhere to spend a couple of hours, particularly if you like vodka. For $15 the tastings are really good value, and extremely fun. I love discovering local delights like this, a real jewel in the Bay Area. The only downside for me was they are currently completely out of stock of their single malt whisky (but the new batch should be ready for bottling in a week or two apparently). Enjoy the photos!
This week my wife (@fairymel) became a US citizen. The final part of the whole process was to attend the citizenship ceremony. In California, I believe that these take place once a month in each of the major cities (northern California has ceremonies in Sacramento and San Francisco). On Wednesday morning we drove to Sacramento and made our way to the beautiful Memorial Auditorium. We were told to be there for 8:30 am, but at that time there were very few people there.
The soon-to-be-citizens took to the main floor of the auditorium whereas friends and family had to go upstairs to the balconies. After quite a wait for everyone to take their seats the ceremony began. It started by having someone recite the names of every nationality that was being represented by the people who were there. Amazingly, there were people from ninety-one different countries...this is almost half of all the world's nations.
There seemed to be no real pattern or trend contained in the list of nationalities that were represented. Small or large, rich or poor, near or far...all types of countries had people present who were about to gain US citizenship. For each country that he mentioned, he also read out how many were present from that nation. This led to various degrees of cheering and applause, with certain countries eliciting a more exuberant response than others. There was a certain amount of intrigue as to which county would have the highest amount of representation and the speaker played up on this; as soon as he named a new country that had a large number of citizens present, he would recount the current 'top 3' countries.
As the following video shows, the end of this part of the ceremony turned into a bit of a pep rally.
The next part of the ceremony had a very different feel. Becoming a US citizen requires you to swear an oath, and so this needs to take place in front of a judge. Effectively, the whole auditorium became a huge courtroom and we all had to rise as the judge entered and made his way to the stage. The judge said some words to mark the occasion, noting that this was one of the largest citizenship ceremonies he had attended. He, and another speaker, also spoke about what it meant to be an American and the other speaker made some thoughtful remarks about how many Americans will have parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents who have been through this process. This country is truly a melting pot of different cultures and ethnicities. There was also two songs that were sung at this point, you might not be too surprised to know that they were 'The Star-spangled Banner', and 'America the Beautiful'.
Was so amazed by the glorious colors of tonight's sunset in Davis. Felt lucky to have my camera on me, but sad that I wasn't in a better place to capture a good shot of the horizon. Here are three pics which capture just a little bit of how magical tonight's sunset was:
So far, this blog series has contained various old photos of me and one video. I've now decided to scan some of my very old school reports which have been kept safe by my mother for the last few decades and which have remained unseen by anyone...until now.
The first set of school reports will cover my time spent at 'The Cangle' primary school from 1976–1980. Despite being quite a famous landmark in my home town of Haverhill –from an architectural viewpoint, it is one of the only landmarks in the town – I've never been able to determine who or what a 'cangle' is. The Cangle school was a venerable institution and possibly dates back to 1876. Plans to close the school had been around as far back as 1972, but it remained in use until it closed in 1988 and has subsequently been converted into apartments.
Here is a photo which shows the front of this Victorian-era school; its clock tower – a structure that seemed like a towering skyscraper to me back then – can clearly be seen.
Here is a much older photo showing a typical class at the Cangle in 1948 (both photos courtesy of haverhill-uk.com)
If memory serves me correctly, I actually first attended a 'Nursery' year at the Cangle in 1975. This was an optional pre-school year which involved much playing about and not so much in the way of education. My first year proper would have started in late 1976. My teacher for that year was a Miss Wheldon. I have to confess to not remembering much of her as a teacher...but in my defense, it was over thirty years ago!
These days, pupils in England are routinely tested at ages 5, 7, and 11 and no doubt this provides teachers and parents with a wealth of statistics and performance metrics by which to judge the development (or lack of development) of any pupil. Back in the seventies, there were no such tests, save for one end-of-school test that determined which class you would be put in when you transitioned to 'middle school'. At the Cangle school, parents would receive a one page summary for each pupil that would be written by their class teacher at the end of the school year.
Here is what my teacher wrote about me in July 1977 (at which point I looked a bit like this):
On the plus side of things, we can see that I 'worked hard' and was a 'joy to teach'. On the negative side, we can read that my 'hand control is still weak'. Sadly, my penmanship skills would never improve and my untidy scrawl of 2010 probably closely resembles what it looked like back then. I'm glad that I could work with numbers 'up to 20' but am curious as to whether the teacher imposed an upper limit on which numbers we could learn about. "I'm sorry Keith but the answer to '15 + 6' is forbidden".
I recently acquired a few more photos off of my mum which once again capture me in the halcyon days of my youth. Fortuitously, this means I can continue with a few more entries from the My Life Revisited series of my blog. I had tried to keep the previous entries in a chronological order, but I may now have to meander back and forwards a little.
But first of all, I will continue with another 80's school photograph. This photo was taken in May, 1985. The first, and most important, thing to note from this photograph is that I was still very much in my 'grey phase' (see previous year's school photo). I feel that I look younger in this photo than in the previous year's entry; was I really thirteen and a half then?
Do you like the little yellow-mesh underlay that might have fooled you into thinking that I was wearing a yellow T-shirt? GIven our school's fairly strict colour-code of brown, blue, white, black, and grey (yay for grey!), wearing this amount of yellow probably earmarked me as a pupil that the teachers should watch out for. The kind of kid who would start out innocently wearing a few mustard-tinged vestments and then, before you knew it, would be burning down the maths portakabin.
The only other thing to notice from this picture is that I either have a) a long scar across my neck/shoulder area or b) I'm wearing a necklace. I suppose it must be the latter though I don't remember wearing any jewelry around this time (or indeed at any time in my life prior to getting married).
There's something about the pose in this picture which comes across as slightly stilted and awkward. Maybe I was quietly seething at the (then) recent news of President Reagan's controversial visit to Bitburg, Germany. Or maybe I was just desperate for the toilet?
I have been procrastinating about finishing off my series of honeymoon blog posts. I've somehow managed to write 8 parts but that only covers two-thirds of the honeymoon. I've been meaning to write about our wonderful time in Japan and today I finally sat down and wrote down some words. This will be the last post in this series and a little lighter on the details compared to what went before it. Enjoy.
Getting to Japan
We flew from China to Japan and transitioned from pleasantly warm and dry weather to torrential rain. The planes manifest consisted of mostly Chinese passengers, and as we landed in Tokyo I experienced a first in 'eager-passenger-syndrome'. I'm used to those passengers who leap up to get their baggage at the very split second that the 'fasten seat belts' sign is turned off, but on this flight behaviors were even more rapid. Our wheels had just touched the tarmac and the plane was still moving at considerable speed, when a passenger proceeded to get up and start getting his bag down. I will never understand this behavior; you get all ready to go and have all your belongings gathered and then you stand up waiting for 10–20 minutes until you can disembark. Call me crazy, but if I've been on a plane for a few hours., then I can wait another 10 minutes before having to get up.
Kyoto
After landing in Tokyo we made our way to the railway station in order to catch the Shinkansen...better known as the bullet train. Speeding along at a leisurely 186 mph, it was a relatively short trip to travel across much of Japan.
The train afforded me my first experience of Japanese culture. After a conductor has passed through your carriage — and just before they enter the next carriage — they turn to everybody and give a gentle, but graceful bow. This surprised me, but I loved all the rituals we observed in Japan. People are very graceful when they bow. I felt honored. If the skies were not black with rain clouds, we may have been able to see Mount Fuji from the train, which we pass en route. Here is what we didn't see from the train:
We had four nights in Kyoto and luckily the weather improved by our first full day. If you didn't know, Kyoto is packed to the rafters with UNESCO World Heritage Sites. You can't walk for more than a mile without hitting an ancient temple or palace of some kind.
Perhaps the most famous place to visit in Kyoto (if not Japan) is the Golden Temple which was stunning and beautiful. Amazingly despite the bus loads of tourists that flood the grounds of this place, it still managed to maintain an air of serenity.
We enjoyed exploring Kyoto which is a relatively easy place to get around on foot. The food markets were amazing and we visited a cool crafts center where we learnt about traditional wood-block printing.
Tokyo
Compared to the relative calm of (ancient capital city) Kyoto, the (current capital city) Tokyo was bustling and a little overwhelming. The underground system proved to be our first obstacle. Two different companies run different parts of the system, and the maps are hard to fathom to say the least. Oh and not all stations have escalators or lifts so we had to lug all of our luggage up many flights of stairs.
By this point in our trip we were happy to slow things down a little. So we did some shopping in the famous Ginza district which is also a great place for people watching. Japanese people are the most well-dressed people in the world and everyone always seems immaculately dressed. The buildings on the main street of the Ginza are also immaculately dressed and store fronts double as amazing works of art in themselves with insane lighting patterns.
Our one major exertion was getting up at 3:00 am in order to go to see the tuna auction at the world famous Tsukiji Fish Market (which is also the world's largest). It is very much a working market, and so they don't want too many distractions from tourists. Only two groups are allowed in to see the tuna auction and it's first-come, first-served. I think we arrived by 4:00 am and were still too late for the first group. The auctions that you can see don't start until 5:30 or so. Makes for a long day. The auctions were bizarre and incredible in equal measure:
This video which we took gives you a good insight into how crazy the actual auction part is. This video which we took gives you a good insight into how crazy the actual auction part is. http://www.twitvid.com/TVBZ9
Food
Did you know that Japanese restaurants usually have plastic versions of all their dishes on display outside so you can easily judge what their menu looks like. Odd, but useful.
In general, the food was amazing. I loved eating here, and we tried a great diversity of traditional Japanese meals (in addition to sushi, which we also ate at 6:00 am after coming out of the fish market!):
I loved, loved, loved Japan. Partly due to the cuisine, partly due to the culture (people bow at you...how can you not like that?) and partly because of the mixture of the very old mixed in with the very new (the electronics malls here are something to be seen...but not if you don't like gadgets). I could easily see myself living in Japan. My wife remarked at one point that being in Japan is like being in my head (outwardly reserved, but highly organized) whereas being in China was more like being in her head (slightly chaotic but very kind and welcoming).
Epilogue - three reasons to love Japan
1) Japan has vending machines everywhere! It means that it is very easy to get a beer at any time of the day:
2) In some restaurants there are mysterious 'buttons' on the table. They appear to be wireless and you can pick them up and play with them, but if you press the button then a chime rings out across the restaurant and a waiter comes running to take your order. And I mean just that. I.e. the waiter literally comes running to the table. Press the button and then seconds later your order is being taken. Every restaurant should have these buttons!
A friend of mine recently started taking a photography course where they are assigned weekly challenges to capture photos that fulfill certain criteria or evoke a certain mood. I liked the sound of this and so yesterday I set myself my own little challenge. I recently purchased a new camera (a Panasonic Lumix LX5) which I Iove. I've particularly enjoyed capturing some of the vibrant fall colors that have been on show in Davis. One of the features of this camera is that it has a manual slider that is used to change the aspect ratio of shots. One of those aspect ratios is 1 x 1, i.e. square. I've never really thought about shooting (or cropping) photos to a square format, so that became the first condition of my self-imposed task. Secondly, I rarely take black and white photos, so that became the second condition.
Next, I needed to find a theme. Walking around Davis at this time of year, you can't help but notice the amazing diversity of leaf colors as they accumulate on the ground. But shooting in black and white meant that you wouldn't really see the vibrancy of these colors. That led me to think about shooting leaves on the ground in full-frame, using them almost as if they would be a tessellated pattern for a desktop wallpaper on your computer. Here are some of my favorite photos. I particularly enjoyed finding a few leaves that were lying in a thin puddle of water, which reflected the tree from which they had fallen.
I'm so glad that we visited China. It is a bit of a cliche but a city like Beijing is a city of contrasts. Centuries-old customs and practices sit alongside glittering palaces of modern-day consumerism. That is to say that you can spend your day visiting amazing building such as this:
Or you can spend your day shopping in malls that look like this:
I was quite surprised by the proliferation of luxury brands that were doing business in Beijing. In one mall alone, i think we saw stores for Cartier, Ralph Lauren, Dolce & Gabbana, and Gucci. Clearly, some Chinese people have a lot of disposable income to spend on expensive trinkets and baubles.
From our hotel room we would often watch CCTV News...an English speaking news station based in China. We were impressed by their depth and breadth of coverage. Their coverage of European news for example would put any major news network in the USA to shame. However, after we left China we discovered that one story that we didn't hear about at all concerned Liu Xiaobo winning the Nobel Peace Prize. No surprise that the Chinese government did not want news of this jailed dissident reaching the general populace. Sites like facebook and twitter are also blocked in China. We were also amused to notice that you can get free wifi at the airport in Beijing, but you need to have your passport scanned at a machine in order to get your voucher. Of course, I'm sure that the authorities wouldn't use this as a pretense for being able to effectively know exactly who is viewing which website.
So on the one hand China is really opening up to the world — and I have to say that everyone we met was extremely friendly — but on the other hand, it retains elements of the stereotypical 'big brother' society which can still be a little disconcerting. Overall, we had a fantastic time and the trip to see the Great Wall of China was a day that will live long in my mind. The next destination in this blog series will be Japan.
At the heart of Beijing lies Tiananmen Square, the largest city square in the world and a place which was home to the infamous protests of June 4th, 1984 which also introduced the world to Tank Man. The current day still sees this square as a place where China gets to show off its military might, albeit via huge LCD screens:
The square is full of tourists these days and also full of CCTV cameras that are keeping an eye out for any subversive behavior. To the north of the square is the Forbidden City, home to the Chinese Imperial Palace and to the Chinese Emperor for almost five hundred years. The main gate to the Forbidden City is adorned by a large picture of Chairman Mao, an image which remains hugely symbolic for many Chinese people.
Entering through the gate takes you to the impressive interior, which feels like it has changed very little over the last few centuries (though the two basketball hoops that we saw for some of the palace's soldiers did kind of spoil the historical illusion). The Forbidden City has many interior gates, and it takes some time to reach the central areas of the palace grounds. In some ways it feels like you are climbing into a set of Russian dolls. Each area appears broadly similar to the preceding area, just slightly smaller.
The artwork on the buildings was beautiful, though we noticed that it is only on the main buildings that the painting has been kept in a high state of restoration. On many of the smaller buildings, the artwork has faded badly and needs much attention if it is to be restored to its full beauty.
With these images very much in my own mind, I was excited to visit the Olympic Park to see these structures for myself. However, seeing these architectural delights in the setting of the ever-present Beijing smog, rather changes the experience. This is how the Bird's Nest and Water Cube looked to us as we arrived at the park:
During the day, the grey structures blend into the grey smog and the initial impression was surprisingly underwhelming. To be fair, the Bird's Nest stadium is still an amazing thing to see, particularly when you get closer to it:
This photo captures the sun in the sky above the Olympic Park at about 6:00 pm. No filter necessary for the camera as you can stare at the sun directly throughout the day. I wish it wasn't the case, but the smog really dampened my enthusiasm for Beijing. Maybe it's because I'm so used to the blue skies of California.
Just next to the Olympic Park is this strange looking hotel (the Pangu 7 Star Hotel). It is built to resemble a dragon. You will notice that the there are several huge screens built into the walls of the building. These show an endless mix of adverts which I felt reduced the air of elegance and sophistication that the hotel might have been trying to achieve.
A brief break from my honeymoon blog posts to comment on todays afternoon sojourn to tea list in Davis. I've been meaning to come here for a while, and today we had someone leaving our lab and the only time everyone was free was this afternoon...so we met up for tea. What a wondrous array of teas they have. They even provide little timers so you know how you long you should let your tea steep for. There is also a lovely selection of cakes, including the very English 'scone with Devonshire cream' (pictured below). Will definitely be coming back to this place!
Chinese food was the first ever 'foreign' food that I had the chance to eat. Growing up in a smallish UK town in the 1970s, it was also the only foreign food that was available. When I was about 13 I think our town doubled its intake of cultural cuisine by also opening an Indian restaurant. I loved Chinese food right from the start, and it has never let me down. Needless to say I was very much looking forward to eating Chinese food in China!
I don't think that we specifically held back from trying new things and we're both fairly adventurous with our tastes. Having said that, we did eat in one restaurant which featured some English 'translations' on the menu. I put the word 'translation' in quotes because I remain skeptical that one of the dishes really was 'beef enema'. Needless to say we avoided that one. We did end up eating some meat in the same restaurant which wasn't specified on the menu. It was a soupy-noodley affair with floating balls of a meat-like substance. Sometimes, I guess it's better not to know.
We very much enjoyed the meal from 'Mr. Shi's Dumlings', a local place, located in the hutong where are hotel was. Mr. Shi was very friendly and let us take pictures of our dumplings as they were being made:
We ate a lot, and enjoyed all of our meals. When we were with our guide (Joe), he would usually order for us, but he would always order twice the amount of food that it was possible to eat.
You can't visit Beijing without trying the famed Peking duck. And we tried it twice (just to be sure). The second time we went to a place that was established in 1864 and has been serving Peking duck ever since then.The duck is carved at your table and each duck should be carved into 120 pieces (though we didn't keep count):
There was one food item that we saw which didn't really strike us as the most appealing snack. A little side-street that we found had several vendors that were selling scorpions on a stick...live scorpions. To be fair, they did cook the scorpions before selling them, but it was disconcerting to see them wriggling about while still in their skewered, pre-cooked state.
On our second day in China we set off early to visit the Jinshanling section of the Great Wall of China. This is a couple of hours drive away from Beijing (about 125 km). We could have visited a section that is much nearer Beijing, but we wanted to go somewhere where it would be a little bit quieter with less tourists.
You can read a lot about when the wall was built, why the wall was built, how long it is etc. but when you are actually standing on the wall none of these facts seem to matter. It is one of the most impressive sights that I have ever witnessed and it was easily the highlight of our entire honeymoon trip for me. It's the sheer vastness of the thing that blew me away. Whichever way you looked, the wall was there. It snakes off into the horizon, hugging the skyline wherever it goes. I can't begin to imagine the hardship endured by the people who had to build it and then by the soldiers who would live on it, always ready to defend China from marauders from the north. As you can imagine, we took a lot of pictures:
Of our four nights in China, this was the only time where we could actually see the sky. It would have deeply depressing to have such an amazing sight before us, only to have it cloaked in the grey blanket that is the Beijing smog. You have to pay to get on to the wall and presumably this money goes towards the extensive, and ongoing, restoration work that is needed. The main section at Jinshanling is probably one of the 'newest' sections of the wall that you can walk on and is very well maintained. However, as the following pictures show, you only have to walk a relatively short distance (30–45 minutes) to find parts of the wall that are in much worse state of disrepair. I can't imagine how much money and effort it would take to keep all 4,000 miles of wall in good condition.
It did cross my mind that something like this will never be built again. Not just because of the cost and extreme effort that would be required, but also because of the health and safety rules that would have to be followed. The Great Wall of China was not built with 'wheelchair access' in mind!
This was such a fantastic experience; I hope that my memory of that day never diminishes and maybe one day I will get to walk along the wall again. If you ever get the chance to see it, you won't be disappointed. It's inclusion in the list of New Seven Wonders of the World is much deserved.
Before our honeymoon, I had never been to China. I appreciated that by only visiting Beijing we would probably see a side of China that is fairly unrepresentative of the most populous country in the world. Still, four nights in Beijing is better than no nights at all and I was eager to experience the culture, not to mention the cuisine, of this great country.
It was late afternoon when we landed in Beijing, and it felt pleasantly warm as we left the plane. If I hadn't have been living in Davis for five years, I would have said it was hot, but by Californian standards it was only warm. We had landed at terminal 3 which is relatively new (opened in 2008) and this impressive building was clearly built to meet the demand from people arriving in China for the 2008 Olympics. This terminal is big. Really big. Not just BIG big, but BIG, BIG, big! Apparently you can fit all five of London Heathrow's terminals within this single terminal and still have spare room for a luggage carousel or two. The high ceilings only added to that feeling of spaciousness:
Immigration was painless, save for the nervous moment when you realize that you have to walk past an infrared camera which is there to see if you are harboring a swine-flu induced fever, or some other temperature-inducing-illness. I told my wife to 'think cool thoughts'. That's the kind of helpful person I am. Trying to enter China with swine flu is only one of the reasons that you should be mindful of these cameras.
After collecting our luggage, we entered the arrivals hall and was met by our guide Joe and was promptly whisked away to our driver: Mr. Liu. He would drive us the 20 miles or so to our hotel in central Beijing. The ride gave us a chance to ask Joe lots of questions. We would have also asked Mr. Liu some questions but he didn't speak any English. Even if he did speak English I wouldn't have asked him any questions. Driving in Beijing requires total concentration...unless you want to become one of the estimated 45,000 injuries and 680 fatalities that happen EACH DAY in China! If I was feeling generous I would describe much of the driving that we witnessed in China as 'adventurous'.
Anyway, I didn't want to start my description of my first time in China on such a negative note. Let's proceed to my general impressions of the country as afforded me from the rear seat of our car. Ah. Actually I will have to be negative for a little while longer. Any visitor to Beijing cannot help but notice the thick blanket of smog that envelopes everything. It was depressing and took me a while to get used to. The whole time we were in Beijing our visibility was reduced to just a few kilometers. China made some efforts to improve the situation for the 2008 Olympics but I can only imagine that as soon as the Olympic flame was extinguished, the situation deteriorated again. There is much official denial about the existence of the smog, and the air is sometimes referred to as slightly polluted or even just overcast. Do not come to Beijing if you want to do any star-gazing...though you can at least stare at the sun directly throughout the day with no fear of retinal burn out.
Anyway, there I go again being all negative, so let's move on to something more positive...our accommodation. All I knew of our hotel was that it was a) called the Citycourt Hotel and b) that it was fairly close to the center of Beijing (though given the size of this city, you can be 'close' to the center but still be a long drive away). As we neared our destination, our driver seemed a little bemused as he had some trouble finding the road on which our hotel was located. Indeed it turned out that the hotel was not on any major road. Indeed, it wasn't really on any side road. It was on a side road of a side road. What we didn't know was that our hotel was located in a hutong district. These are narrow streets with traditional residences built around courtyards. Most hutongs in Beijing have been cleared to make way for more modern accommodations. Some have been kept though to preserve this aspect of Chinese cultural history. The residents of a hutong district typically have to share communal bathrooms located in the streets (this made more sense than our first thought that they really like their public toilets here). Our hotel had a minimal feel but was full of character, and had retained the traditional courtyard feature.
After we checked in our guide Joe left us as we had not made any plans for our first evening. He would meet us the next morning and so we spent the first night exploring the local district on foot. Just around the corner from our hotel were two huge towers: a drum tower and a bell tower. At night, these were beautifully lit up and this was the time of the day when the smog actually added to the mood of the environment in a positive way (though at times I felt a little like I was in a Victorian-era pea souper).
The streets around our hotel were lined with many small businesses with much of that business conducted on the street. The traffic flow of pedestrians, cycles, motorbikes, and cars, was a free-for-all and it was foolhardy to not take your eye off of the street for too long. Many vendors cooked food at the side of the road and there were some 'homely' looking restaurants scattered around. These included 'Mr Shi's Dumplings' a place that we would visit on a subsequent night.
Walking around the dimly lit, crowded streets, we were very much the outsiders and we saw no other westerners at all that night. But we felt completely safe and were enjoying being in China. After a few Chinese beers from a local cafe we headed home for an early night. The next day we would be getting up early in order to make the drive to see the Great Wall of China!
After a year or so away from our homeland, you might think that on our UK honeymoon stopover the main things that we would be looking to see again would be our family and friends. Well, yes that is true. But I'd like to add a few more items into the mix of things-I-miss-about-the-UK-which-I-like-to-overdose-on-when-I-go-back-home:
It is with great joy that most of these items can be had, all from a solitary trip to a pub. On what is now becoming an annual fixture, we made our way to The Blackbird pub in London which I can recommend highly for it's varied selection of pies (note to American readers...'pie' defaults to savoury pie in the UK).
After we had feasted on the aforementioned delights, our attention turned to the real purpose of the trip...wedding party number 2. This actually consisted of two events...a wedding lunch at a Malaysian restaurant accompanied by my wife's extended UK family (who have a Malaysian/Singaporean heritage). This was probably the second time in my life where I was present at an occasion which necessitated booking out an entire restaurant. At this event we ate some fantastic Malaysian food. And then we ate some more fantastic Malaysian food. And when we were full and couldn't eat another tasty morsel...we ate some more Malaysian food. This is how things happen in my wife's family. Food, family, and friends are all important (I think I have those listed in the right order).
After a lunch we had to haul our, now sluggish and overblown, bodies back into central London for the wedding party. About 60 of our friends and family would join us at a great little pub in Battersea where we had hired a function room. My iPod was to be the DJ (again) and we had decided to recreate some aspects of our wedding:
+ We wore the same clothes that we wore on our wedding day
+ We reproduced the main speeches from the wedding
The speeches allowed my best-man in absentia, who had recorded his speech for our Californian wedding, to give it live in person (he was unable to make it to California). Apart from that there was drinking and dancing and much reminiscing...and more drinking. Thank you to all who attended and I hope that the nightmarish traffic problems that night, and the torrential rain did not dampen your spirits too much.
We had so little time in London that we felt that we had to pack a lot in to a very short space of time. The day before our two parties we visited some friends for afternoon tea, and then other friends for dinner, and yet more friends for post-dinner drinks. On the day after the parties (our last full day in the UK) we visited different groups of friends for breakfast, brunch, and lunch! This seemed a much better idea when we arranged it. Not such a good idea when we had to get up at 7:30 in order to get across London in time for our first appointment (with a slight hangover too in my case).
At the end of August I became a happily married man. The wedding had been in preparation for about eighteen months, which also gave us plenty of time to plan for what we wanted to do on our honeymoon and more importantly...where we wanted to go. Whatever the final route was going to be, we knew that the first port of call would have to be London, UK. This was because we are both British, who just happen to be living and working in Davis, California. We very much wanted to get married in California but we knew that this would mean many of our friends and family would not be able to make it. So it was always in our plans that the first thing that we would do on our honeymoon would be to have another wedding event in London. But where else should we go?
Our first thoughts were modest. We would spend a few days in London, and then fly to eastern or southern Europe, perhaps the Czech Republic, or maybe a trip to Croatia with a short excursion to Italy. We would end our honeymoon by retracing our steps back through London with another long-haul flight to take us back to San Francisco. However, when we saw how expensive the flights would be just to get to London we became curious as to whether we could be a little bolder with our plans without incurring much more in the way of expense.
After a little bit of time playing around with the trip planning tool at airtreks.com, my suspicions were confirmed; a cheap round-the-world ticket would cost little more than flying to London and then taking one more journey within Europe. This led to lots of excited discussion between me and my partner as to where we would like to go. It soon became apparent that the Far East was top of our list. Our biggest restriction was time. Having already taken time off for our wedding, we knew that we could only have two weeks for the entire trip. After some consultations with AirTreks we realized that we could maybe visit two countries and would have to stick to major hubs (this meant we had to change our original plan to see Hong Kong). This is the final route that we came up with:
Not all of these legs were flights. If you are traveling between Tokyo and Kyoto, then the Shinkansen (bullet train) is the only way to go! One minor condition of the ticket was that the return leg to San Francisco had to be from Beijing which meant a bit of double-tracking back on ourselves. However, given the very low cost of the ticket, we were more than happy to put up with this minor hassle. The flights to London were with Virgin Atlantic (who we would have been flying with anyway if we stuck to our original plan), and all of the remaining flights were with Air China.
After we purchased the round-the-world tickets with AirTreks we then turned to their affiliate company Global Basecamps to plan the details of the trip. Normally, I am more than happy to organize (and book) everything myself whenever we travel. However, at the time of honeymoon-planning we were also deeply engrossed in our wedding preparations. Therefore this was one occasion where I was happy to pay a little more to have someone else take care of things.
The only major thing that we had to sort out before the trip was getting our tourist visas for China (visas were not required for Japan). This relatively painless procedure requires a trip to a Chinese Consulate. There are five of these located in various major US cities. Luckily for us, one of them is handily located in San Francisco. As British citizens we could get our visa for a modest fee of $30. This fee applies to citizens of all countries...all countries except the USA. If you are American, then that fee increases to $140!
The next three or four blog posts will briefly recap (with photos) some of the many things that we experienced on our trip...a trip that would be my first time to either China or Japan, and a trip that would be our first ever journey together as husband and wife!
Spent the weekend camping in Salt Point State Park, a few hours north of San Francisco. Had a very relaxing weekend and took over 200 photos. As normally happens, I end up taking lots of shots of coastlines that meander off into the distance. My iPhoto library is full of effectively the same photo, but I thought I would not include those here. Instead, here is an assortment of photos from the weekend. We had a dog and a baby as part of our camping collective, and so this gave me some different subject matter to practice my photography skills with. The photo of the road tapering off into the sea is now among my all time favorite photos, though I'm not sure what it is about the photo that I like so much.
The UC Davis campus features a number of Egghead sculptures. I've just realized that the photo doesn't include anything to give you a sense of scale. They stand about four foot high.
Another year, and another school photograph. If my calculations are correct then this photo would have been taken from my last year of middle school. Soon I would be taking that big step to ‘Upper’ school, a slightly less innocent and more salubrious place. Once again it would mark that transition from feeling somewhat smug and superior at being the eldest year in the school, to feeling scared and insecure at being among the ‘new boys’.
Of course the big news from this photo is that the era of brown is over. For reasons for which I still do not fully understand, I spent a few years of my life in the late 1980s with an unhealthy obsession towards all things grey. I could have stuck with brown, or explored shades of blue, black, or white...all colours that would have been permissible under the school colour code. But no, I went for that most boring, and unappealing of all colours. This photo captures me in one of many grey tops that I would come to own. This one has it’s rather fetching grey mesh overlay to accentuate the grey base layer.
The really sad part of this was that the greyness did not stop at sweaters and shirts. I also wore grey trousers accompanied with grey socks and grey shoes. Let's be honest, I was a vision in grey. When walking to school, I was probably indistinguishable from the concrete pavement on which my steps fell. Was this why so many people ignored me? Thinking back to this era, I’m still perplexed as to what exactly the appeal of all of this grey was. The saddest part of my grey obsession was that it didn't stop with my wardrobe ... it even extended to interior furnishings. I remember requesting that my bedroom walls should be furnished with grey wallpaper and I also had a matching grey lampshade. It was a decor that said "Here's Keith, he's the most boring person that you will ever meet".
All this talk about my 'grey period' is starting to make me feel slightly nauseous. Fortunately I can put everyone’s minds at rest and reassure you all that this was just a passing fad. By the time we moved into the nineties, I had expanded my color palette and I spent the entirety of that decade garbed almost exclusively in hues of blue and green.
It's the latest technological wonder that literally no-one has been talking about, it's the new noPad from Apple. Don't confuse this with the somewhat inferior iPad, though they do share many similarities. Like the iPad, the noPad is simply gorgeous to look at. Its crystal clear display which has a 360˚ viewing angle, is jaw-droppingly stunning in it's clarity. Picking up the noPad is also a delight. What really impressed me was just how light it felt in the hands, almost weightless in fact.
You can orient the noPad in any way that you want, and it doesn't share the iPad's limitation where you have to have the screen actually pointing at you in order to be able to use it. As demonstrated below, it is easy to hold with just one hand, freeing your other hand to interact with the extensively complex, yet innocently simplistic, user interface.
Another advantage of the noPad over the iPad lies with the fact that the noPad is locked in an 'always on' mode which incredibly draws very little power, actually none at all. Unlike many new pieces of technology, there is absolutely no learning curve associated with the noPad. Just pick it up and... BOOM, you're ready to go. Everything works so well and so intuitively that after just a few seconds of use, it feels almost as if it wasn't there at all.
Unlike the iPad, this is a device that is very pocketable which makes it a must have accessory for taking with you everywhere you go. I was impressed with just how quiet it was, even when I was multitasking to the max (yes, it does feature unlimited multitasking). Equally impressive was how I was able to take it outside and use it even whilst it was raining. No expensive waterproof cases are needed for this baby. The iPad (like the iPhone before it) may have made waves with its innovative 'pinch to zoom' gestures. But when you get to play with the noPad's 'pinch to do anything you can think of' gesture, you will be blown away.
In my extensive testing, the only gripe I had with the noPad is that it can be very easy to misplace. However, given the low, low price of this device, I'm fully prepared to buy a new one any time I lose it. In summary I would say that the noPad is the perfect device for everybody as its uses are limited only by your imagination. In a word, it's magical.
Another year, another birthday, and another reason for hanging out with ‘the gang’. We are now into the 80’s but brown still seems to be the predominant colour in our house. Note the absence of any girls in this picture. This would set the tone for my relationships (or lack of them) for the next twenty years.
At back left, wearing the Spider Man top is Stephen Pontin, he used to live next door to me. Then it’s me with another classic pudding-bowl haircut. I am taller than it suggests in this photo, I don’t quite know why it came out with me looking like a little munchkin out of the Wizard of Oz. On my right - and showing how cool he is because he doesn’t need to even look at the camera - is Mark Freeman. He lived four doors down from our house, and I think that his parents still live there. To his right I think it is Jamie Newman who was in my year at school (and possibly in my class).
Into the front row, and on the left we have Kevin Seabright...I can’t work out if that is a polo neck sweater underneath a deep V-neck sweater, or whether it’s a single sweater designed to look like it’s two sweaters. Then we have Mark’s younger brother Chris. There’s something about his hair and face in this picture that intensely reminds me of this little fellow. Completing the line-up is my friend Tony (who lived next door to me as well...but the other side to Stephen). He is also showing that he is too cool to be in this photo, as he has his eyes shut. Notice the nipple-clamp attachments on his cardigan.
We are so wide-eyed and innocent in this picture (apart from Tony, obviously). Our chief concern at this age was accumulating Star Wars toys, eating sweets, and heeding the wise words of the Green Cross Code Man. We were still years away from being aware of the dangers and stresses of AIDS, property repossession, and crack cocaine (though taking a second look at Chris’s face, I do wonder...).
Last November I ran my first ever 10k race (The Davis Turkey Trot). I had previously run several 5k races and so I wanted to step up to the next level (this was necessary as I'm meant to be running the San Francisco half marathon in July). After running the race I experienced a lot of ankle pain, around the bones rather than the muscles, and I couldn't run again for a month.
Since then, I have found that every time I try running more than 5k, the pain returns. This could be a new medical condition, or it could be due to me wearing the wrong type of trainer. I'm inclined to disbelieve the latter as I did get a proper fitting and advice from a running shop when I bought my running shoes. Another possibility is that it's something to do with my running style (or lack of).
When I researching into what remedies I could try, I started reading articles about Chi Running and also barefoot running. The principles behind barefoot running appealed to the scientist in me. It does make sense that, from an evolutionary point of view, our bodies have not evolved to run with a prominent heel strike. And then a few weeks ago, there was a paper published in Nature which gave support to the idea that barefoot running is a more efficient way of running which causes fewer 'collision forces' to the feet.
With some firmer scientific evidence in hand, I decided it was worth trying to see if barefoot running could alleviate my ankle pain. And so I ordered a pair of Vibram FiveFingers from REI and opted for the KSO model (Keep Stuff Out). I imagine that the Nature article has done wonderful business for Vibram as everywhere I looked, they were initially sold out. I had to wait for REI to backorder a pair but I finally managed to get hold of them yesterday. Here's what they look like:
They might look odd, but they feel very comfortable to wear. If you've ever used climbing boots, then you will be used to feel of a lightweight shoe which has a high-grip rubber soul. Actually, Vibram started out in the 1930s as a company that made the first ever rubber souls for mountaineering boots.
The first thing to say about them is that they are hard to put on. I have big feet but my little toes are on the small side. It's a bit of a struggle to get each toe into each compartment. Once they are on though, they feel really comfortable. I spent yesterday afternoon wearing them about the house, trying to get used to them. After 30 minutes or so, I forgot I was wearing them at all. It's nice being able to grip things with your toes!
Today I tried my first run in them. You are warned to not start off running the same distances that you are used to. There is a good reason for this because you effectively need to learn how to run again. If you run in your normal style, your heels will hit the ground first. Without the thick, cushioned heel provided by normal running shoes, this is actually quite painful. Try it in bare feet and you will see what I mean. Instead, you need to switch to running so that you land more on the middle or front of your feet. This takes a little bit of adjustment. It also means that you start using your calf muscles in a way that you never do when you run normally. I ran for 5 minutes and then my calves were sore. This apparently is very common. I think it will take me about a month to get back up to running 5k distances without my calves hurting. Having said that, I would much rather feel the pain of my muscles working healthily, as opposed to the soreness of my previous ankle pain. I remain hopeful that these will help me run again without getting sore ankles. It's very early days, but I'm still hopeful that I will be able to get enough training in to run that half marathon in July!
