A dapple-grey gelding

These past few days had ben extremely hectic. Only got 4-5 hrs sleep every night, which is not good at all. On Monday,me, ninghan, and jac did our posters at ninghan's place. At first we thought, oh we shd b able to finish in the afternoon..how hard can putting up a few things, cutting, and gluing papers on a poster board can be. but..we were SO wrong. Ended up doing the poster until 11ish at nite..omg. In the end the three of us just start to laugh at random times, i think due to the stress lol. Thx to ninghan's housemates who cooked dinner as well =) its one of those rare proper dinner I had nowadays.

Yesterday got no lecture, only poster presentation. After that, felt soo damn relaxed, as if its the start of holiday. I'm quite glad that APP is finished. I really liked most of the materials tho, but there's so many reports and tutorials to do..so quite packed schedule. Initially i wanted to go back home and sleep..cos I only slept for 4 hrs the night before (trying to translate this whole webpage frm german-english! omg horror), but didn't really feel like gg home yet..so me, meiting, n michael went for lunch at OC. Then went to meiting's place for a bit...might buy birkenstocks! Went covent garden/oxf st.. shoe shopping! hehe..here's my christmas list : a wallet from Paul Smith, a pair of red pumps from Shelly's, a pair of gold pumps from this shoe boutique in covent garden. hehe...
Irma and Sasha went out clubbing to Tantra on the night, so we drank a bit at home..I decided not to go, due to extreme sleepiness..and just too lazy. Ended up doing my CV (finally, finished!) and cleaning our flat.

Today (Wed) was really good as well. Only had 1 lecture in the morning about stats. Then went horse riding. As usual when i came, i visited Ezra first. He still looked kind of sleepy, but he greeted me happily by rubbing his huge head on my shoulder, while searching for polo mints. Then i went to watch the b team in their jumping lesson. Then turns out I got to ride Ezra for our flat lesson, soo happy!! i've got him for 3 weeks in a row!!!!! happy happy..plus today only got me n harriet, so basically we got the whole big arena only for the two of us. He was really really good today. In the warm up, he was bit tense and he locked his inside shoulder as usual. but after a good 15-20 minutes..after a lot of figure eights, shoulder-in, shoulder-fore, and leg-yield..finally he stretched down and loosen up those tight muscles. When he's calm, he can really move! can feel his hindlegs really goin underneath his body..whilst keeping his head rounded all the time. Ah..that's one of the greatest, bestest feeling in the world when me and him just clicked. He knows what i wanted, and he did it perfectly. It's so effortless.. in a way you feel like floating on clouds =) It is true, if you watch the world's best riders, they never seem to move. They just seem like they didn't do a thing and sit perfectly still..while their horses do all those fancy, advanced dressage movement..like piaffe, flying changes, or passages. While actually the truth is, the cues they gave their horses are so extremely subtle...just a squeeze from their leg, a tiny flicker of the wrist, or a slight adjustment of your seat in the saddle..and their horses are so sensitive and highly schooled, they will respond to the slightest change in the rider's positions. What a magical sight. Reminds me when I went to Aachen in 2000, and I saw Anky van Grunsven on Bonfire doing the freestyle dressage..with flying changes at every stride in canter. wow.

Anyway, i think i shall stop here before i posted the whole page with horses and more horsey story.. Ezra, i love you so much. you've made my day today!!! (he got his treat : a full packet of polo mints).