I am aware, and have been for some time, that I am hampered in my ability to learn about (and exist in) China by the fact that my Chinese is rather poor – this seems like a rather ridiculous statement but perhaps it’s not. You get used to being able to survive in China with little to no Chinese, used to understanding things on the basis of what you see, refracted through the lens of your western-ness. Helped only by English speaking Chinese friends and family who tend to represent a particular section of society or by non English speaking friends where the discussion and analysis gets dumb’d down to the level of your of Chinese.

I want to be able to read the graffiti (not that there is much to read), listen to conversations on the bus (not that I ever get on one) read the local newspapers, read the chitter chatter of the Chinese blogosphere.

I want to read articles like this one, because I am aware that because of my inability with the language I miss out on this kind of input and lots more besides. Currently my mental map of China and Chinese-ness is too full of the spitters, the queue jumpers, the dumb / racist comments said to you or about you when someone is assuming you don’t understand, the horrendous way that people treat other human beings on the road, etc. I need to be able to speak Chinese properly to open myself up to other inputs to restore the balance.

Tip of the hat to the humanaught as that is where I found the link to the danwei translation of the article.

Some people who are much more experienced than me said it was the hardest course they’d ever run. I believe it. It was hard. I ran 17km of the full 42km course, it took me 4 hours and 20 minutes. It was hard. I’m actually not convinced that it was only 17km. The ipod (which can’t be very accurate over that kind of terrain) measured 20.55. My average pace over the whole race? 12 minutes and 11 seconds per kilometre, which should give you an idea of the kind of terrain. I wanted to run longer so it was officially a half but if I’d gone on it would have had to have been to 26k over a couple more hills before I could get down again and that just wasn’t going to happen.
Big shout out to the guys I ran round with! It would have been a lot harder without you there.

Even bigger shout out to the guys who organised the event. It was a huge success and those of us who ran all or part of it now have a much better understanding of how much effort you put in.

This is the graph that the nike+ and ipod recorded but it lacks scale. Fastest speed was about 6 min/k and the slowest was about 24 min/k.

And the best bit? I now have a t-shirt that says ‘I eat hills for breakfast’.

I’ve been meaning to post this for ages – this is why China is capable of progressing so fast. Basically they surfaced an entire block in both directions in a day. It would have taken weeks in the UK. I rode up this road about 09:00 and they’d done about 50 metres of one lane. By mid-afternoon when these photos were taken they’d done one side all the way up. By the time I finished work at about 22:00 I was able to ride all the way down a fresh, new, road. When I came into work the next morning the lines had been painted.

Click the photos to see larger versions on flickr.

	Tarmac laid all the way to the junction the layer turns while buses shuffle round.
Steam-Rollers follow up the road.
	As does an e-bike.
A tricycle and a trolley pull their loads accross the fresh road while another e-bike struggles through the wet tar.
	Laying of the other side begins.
And in no time at all you have a working road.

Flew down to Xiamen last weekend and ran (mostly) the Xiamen half marathon. I wasn’t prepared, I wasn’t anywhere close to prepared so it took me 2 hours and 27 minutes to get round with a fair bit of walking

The weekend was fun though, weather was gorgeous (which didn’t help the running) but did make the experience of standing in the South China Sea for 20 minutes afterwards rather more enjoyable.

Xiamen seems to be a lovely place. Worth a proper visit some time.

Next one’s got to be a full.

I’ve been dwelling on blogging this for a while because I wanted to have something other than just good intentions to talk about and that is hopefully where I am now, sort of. I’m taking the personal MBA. What’s that you ask? Well, let me tell you.

The personal mba as described on it’s web site is “an experiment in educational entrepreneurism” or perhaps more helpfully “set aside some dedicated reading time, pick up a good book, learn as much as you can, and go out and make great things happen”. The idea is built around a list of 42 books that if read, studied, discussed, absorbed would allow you to “progressively develop a greater understanding of business” and, better yet, “increase your effectiveness”.

The manifesto that describes it is here http://personalmba.com/manifesto/.

So, my journey has begun. I’ve read my first book off the list – David Allen’s Getting Things Done and am another convert to GTD. I’ve been using MonkeyGTD for a while. I’m now reading Keith Ferrazzi’s never eat alone, which isn’t on the list but I did hear about through the pmba forums. Through the forums I also found How To Read which is an amazingly effective technique.

A few of us down at the Muppet Show have been talking about it and it seems to be quite a popular concept, I’m certainly excited about it. If nothing else it gives you a structure to your self-learning and keeps you focused. What would be nice is if it became more widely recognised in the future and almost becomes a one-liner on your cv that tells potential employers that you are serious about your own personal development.