"This place is really weird - they have noodles and soup for breakfast and porridge for dinner"
- Charlotte Foley, age 13.

It really is a very strange world. We were wondering through Penang's Botanical Gardens early one morning (see the new pictures on the blog gallery) when a chap shouted at us and came running across the gardens.

Ah, time to try out my world-famous Fist Under Elbow posture, I thought, but no, it was our old friend Peter Lim, whom we first met over 18 years ago during one of our 3 month visits to Malaysia, and who taught us the Fan Form. The last time we saw him was 9 years ago when he was about to move to Australia - it seems he's come back home just in time to meet up with us. Without much chat we settled down to some Tai Chi, and Peter checked out our Short Form to see what we've been up to all this time. "It's very small, eh?" was the main remark (they all do very large frame Yang style out here).

Another chap then appeared out of the nearest bush and started to correct our postures, and we learnt something very useful... when you are doing a Tai Chi form it is often good to focus only on the arm/hand that is manifesting yang energy. Let the other be completely forgotten so it can be pure yin. As you transit from one move to the next your focus changes to the arm that is becoming yang, again completely releasing your focus on the hand that is becoming yin. This way it becomes more natural to create the yin-yang balance in your postures.

As I write this we are enjoying a couple of days off from Mother Care at a very posh hotel on the other side of the island from the Botanical Gardens, where just across the road in a field by a block of flats we joined a Tai Chi class this morning where guess who practises.... yes, it was Peter again. Strange, strange world indeed...

Good Qi and Fine Practice.