New Resolution: Learn To Swim

Okay, I admit it: I can't swim. Never could. Oh, the shame!

But not anymore, I've decided along with all my other life changing resolutions this year, I'm going to learn how to swim.

For years I've been pretty embarrassed about not being able to swim and bearing with the taunts from my sisters about how I can't swim properly. But this year, I thought "I can't swim, I know I can't swim, I should just admit it, stop being embarrassed because that's not going to make me any more able to swim and just learn how to swim properly." Thanks to Sae as well because hearing how she's been swimming regularly at her club somewhat inspired me to want to do that too. Lately, I've been skipping and running more as well and discovering the limitations of my joints, especially my right knee and ankle that went through fairly bad injuries last year. I don't want to injure myself further but I want to be able to increase my cardio as well. Swimming was really the only thing I could think of that would get me exercising without over-exhausting my joints.

When I was little, my parents sent me to swimming classes. I'm guessing I must have been 4 years old because it was in State which is near our house and we only moved there when I was about 4 years old. It was called Atlantis and these days instead of swimming pools, there's a huge building that looks like a Chinese style gravestone except that its white.

I don't really remember anything about these lessons but I remember getting my head pushed in and held down by the instructor (I don't even remember the instructor, but it must have been the instructor) in order to teach me how to breathe. I remember struggling a bit to come up because I didn't actually inhale enough air. (Its possible that I wasn't listening to what the lesson was actually about or what I was supposed to be doing...) But of course I couldn't because of the instructor's hand on my head. And I remember swallowing a whole lot of water and water going up my nose. Well, those classes didn't last very long at all.

Of course, I didn't drown and nothing bad happened to me at all I'm sure. I do remember that I had asthma at around the same time as most kids do and had to go through a lot of X-rays and doctor visits and what not. And somehow I think in my brain, I fused asthma and swimming together.

I love being in the pool and playing around but the moment I reach an area where I know my feet can't touch the ground or my head is under the water without me having gulped big lungfuls of air in preparation, I start to tense up. The moment I swallow a bit of pool water, the same thing happens and I just feeling out of breathe and gasping for air. I know of course that I won't drown and I don't actually think I feel scared or anything but somehow that's just what my body does.

Well, in my effort to get over it, I've started taking private swimming lessons at Melbourne City Baths. Its going really well and I've learnt how to do the freestyle stroke. I've also gained quite a lot of confidence in being in the water and breathing. From now on, it'll just be a matter of practice and practice and persevering through it and trying to change my frame of mind about being underwater. I'm glad I've decided to go for lessons because now I know for sure I'm learning the proper techniques while getting over this psychological state of mind.

I'm quite excited about working through it and hopefully soon, swimming will just be as natural to me as walking. And maybe I can go swimming with Sae as well when I go home.

8 Mar 2010: Labour Day at Melbourne Zoo

I absolutely love going to the zoo. Chen-Po on the other hand delights in not agreeing to go with me. So we haven't been to the zoo for years, but finally, he relented and agreed to a trip on Labour Day holiday. I think secretly, he wanted to see the baby elephant Mali as much as I did. ;)

After the freak hail storm that hit Melbourne on Saturday, we weren't going to risk going anywhere without an umbrella. And it was good that we brought one, because it started raining quite a fair bit. Which was awesome for driving away the crowds! So we only had to deal with the big crowds of kids at the start of our trip and when we were queueing up to see Mali.

We brought a long our Nikon D60 camera to take photos. Chen-Po's been teaching me how to use it as a proper DSLR, not just as a big point-and-shoot camera. And so our trip yesterday was also a chance for me to practice. I always thought our camera was really fancy and could do everything, but now that I've learnt how to actually use it, I'm starting to see all its limitations. So now, I've joined Chen-Po in hankering after a new DSLR. Photography is expensive!

Well, here's some of my photos:

For more photos, check out my Picasa site.

My favourites were Mali, the meerkats and bestest of all were the red pandas! I absolutely love red pandas, they are super cute and beautiful.

Well, I had a really lovely day at the zoo, hope you all had a wonderful Labour Day holiday too!

Haruki Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

This is the first ever Haruki Murakami book I've read and what really got to me what how he managed to turn something so mundane and repetitive like running into something so interesting to read about. And what really struck me was how normal he is. I think I tend to elevate artists and authors for some reason and so it was really insightful to read that Haruki Murakami goes through the same kind of thoughts and experiences that I do when running.

I read a comment on a book review site where the reader was disappointed by how normal Haruki Murakami is. He had expected someone weird and abnormal judging by the books that Haruki Murakami writes. I'm the opposite, I love that he is just so normal and yet he can come up with such great creative works. It showed me that you don't have to come from some kind of tragic past, struggling and starving and being hit by all kinds of shit luck and getting dragged through hell and a sewer to be able to create something good. You can be a normal person that has a normal good life and still be able to come up with fantastical worlds, characters and stories. That to me is the most inspiring thing about this book.

And the fact that at the age of 60, he can still a run a marathon! Every time I go out for a run and think about stopping before my goal, I tell myself, "You want to be able to run when you're 60, don't you?? Well if you can't handle this now, you won't be able to handle it when you're 60!" or "Haruki Murakami runs a marathon at 60! I'm 27 and I can't even run 15km?? How pathetic!"

Health Check

I got a free health check today courtesy of my company signing up for the Victorian Government's WorkHealth Check initiative. I got a blood pressure test, a cholesterol test, a waist measurement test and a blood glucose test. I also had to answer a questionnaire about my lifestyle, for example how much I drink or exercise or how much fruits and vegies I eat.

I think I'm a fairly healthy person and I have upped my exercise levels by heaps so I was hoping for pretty good results. So I was a little disappointed with the outcome. :( Turns out my blood pressure is a tiny bit high. The recommended levels as adviced by the Victorian Government is 120/80. Mine was coming up at 127/89. I know this is fairly variable though, a couple of days ago I had it tested at 123/90 and about a month ago it was 105/78. Either way, I'd like to keep it nice and low on average.

I was quite pleased with my cholesterol level, the guideline is 5.5 or less denotes normal cholesterol levels, mine was 2.74. However, my HDL cholesterol which is the good stuff is meant to be more than 1 and mine was only at 0.9. I'll have to stop trying to avoid those daily fish oil supplements and focus on eating more avocados and nuts.

My blood glucose level was pretty low at 3.5, with 6.5 being the upper limit of Normal. But I think that is not accurate as I hadn't eaten for about 3 hours and was starting to feel hungry. If I had gone in there just after a chocolate snack, it probably would have shown a pretty high reading.

My waist was bordering on the upper limit of Normal, which makes me even more determined to exercise more. Though right now, I'm making the usual excuses like "She measured over my jeans, 2 singlets and a vest!" and "She measured my waist too low, my hip bones pretty big!" I know all that is bullshit and I need to get it down though. Well, I've been wanting to get it down and now it looks like maybe I need to get it down.

One interesting fact I learnt was that being Asian makes me more susceptible to diabetes. I scored a 6 on my diabetes risk score and that just puts me on Medium Risk (6-14). The nurse told me that I got an automatic 2 points for being an Asian female. If I was an Asian male, I would have gotten 3 points right away.

All in all, I'm glad I got this health check, it's definitely inspired me to take better care about what I eat and how much I exercise because I want to get a good score! So if you have an opportunity to get a free Health Check, you should definitely go for it. This particular program is offered to companies completely free by the Victorian Government so if you work in Victoria, ask your company to set this up so you can get your free Health Check!

Race Matters

As a Malaysian Chinese living in Australia, the topic of race is always hugely interesting to me. Ten years ago, when I was about to come to Australia to study and actually still to this day, people from the older generation keep telling me to take care in Australia because gweilos are racist against Chinese. Which in ten years, I still have not experienced a drop of racism. Or maybe I'm extremely ignorant...blur as they would say in Malaysia...Not to say that there's no racism here, because I'm sure there is and then, there's the extremely interesting issue of the emasculation of Chinese men in Western culture. Here's an interesting blog about  Asians in Western society, specifically Asian Americans. Still I find the "gweilos are racist" advice to be so ironic. 

All through growing up in Malaysia, we were taught in school that Malaysia is a multicultural place with many races and religions and we live in perfect harmony and unity. Sounds very lovely, doesn't it? And me being innocent and naive, I came to Australia with that opinion too. I was quite high and mighty about it even. "Hah, these gweilos don't know a thing when it comes to living in a multicultural society! Look, they're all gawking at fire crackers and lion dances as if they've never seen them before." And that was really my extent of knowledge into multiculturalism and racism. I thought us Malaysians were better at being multicultural because we know lots of the customs, traditions and languages of other races, whereas the average Caucasian Australians speak only one language and don't know much about other cultures. 

I don't think knowing all that is a bad thing, in fact I do feel proud that I can speak English, Bahasa Melayu, Hokkien, snippets of Mandarin and even less snippets of Cantonese. (Actually, I consider that to be pretty bad when I'm at home trying to remember how to order food in Cantonese, but its seems impressive here in Australia) However, it's taken a journey to a whole different continent away from Malaysia for me to realise its not about what you know or tolerate about other races or religions, but how you respect them. 

I've seen a lot more respect for other cultures here in Australia than I have back home in peaceful multicultural Malaysia. In Malaysia, I see a lot of grudging tolerance. Its not nice, but I can see why people feel like that. Starting from the way we're questioned about race and religion in school to entering into adulthood with the government policies that segregate according to race, everything seems to me to be about separating Malaysians, not uniting us. It seems like most people in Malaysia are first and foremost Malay or Chinese or Indian, and then secondly they're Malaysian. 

I hate to admit, but I have the same kind of mentality too. When watching anything about Malaysia in the world arena, I'm a true Malaysian. I'll cheer any Malaysian athlete on in any sport regardless of race, gender or religion. And I can get all fired up when any non-Malaysian says anything negative about Malaysia. But first and foremost I want to be identified as a Chinese, specifically a Chinese Malaysian. 

Many years ago, I was with a couple of Australian friends and when one learned that I came from Malaysia, he remarked "Oh, so you're Malay." And I said "No, I'm Chinese. I'm a Malaysian, but I'm Chinese. My other Australian friend said to him, "Whoa, you can't say you're a Malay to just any Malaysian, man! Malaysians get max pissed off when you just assume they're Malay."

That got to me, because it was somewhat true. At that moment, I was quite fired up because this person didn't seem to know that just cos you're a Malaysian doesn't mean you're Malay. I felt that they should know what race I was. But then why should they? After all, we call people from Vietnam Vietnamese, people from Thailand are Thai, Irish come from Ireland, Italians from Italy, New Zealanders from New Zealand but yet, I'm a Chinese from Malaysia. 

I think this kind of mentality is unhealthy but how do you fix it? Its so deeply ingrained since we were all young. Even though none of the government policies in Malaysia really affect me on a day-to-day basis, just the fact that race segregation policies exist is enough to sow negative seeds. Actually, if the policies are removed, would it fix things? I'm not sure, it might but it would take a long, long time to change the mentality of the people. 

I love Malaysia and will always consider myself a Malaysian. But sometimes, I'm don't feel too proud of being Malaysian. And I definitely don't feel proud of my own racist mentality either, no matter how much I try to tell myself that I don't have any. 

New Route, New App, New Shoes

On Sunday, with renewed Chinese New Year spirit and Firecracker remains and smoke in my hair, I went for a run. For a while now, I've been thinking of running around The Tan at the Botanical Gardens, but to get there, I always figured I'd have to run down Swanston St which is normally packed with people. So I had been putting it off til I woke up early enough to run through the city before people are out and about. Meaning, it was probably never going to happen. 

But as I walked out onto the street, I thought of going around to Treasury and Fitzroy Gardens instead. When I ran there, I found that none of the water fountains worked so that killed my enthusiasm for running around there. So I made my way to The Tan instead. And since I had come via Spring Street, it wasn't people heavy at all. 

I didn't really have a route in my head of where I was going to run, I just thought, I want to go around The Tan but did not really plan how to get there, which way to go around and how to get back. So a lot of it was made up as I was running. Which was quite fun actually. Also, my footpod ran out of batteries so I wasn't able to see what distance or pace I was running at. This was a new experience for me and it was quite stress free. I probably wouldn't do it often as I'd like to know that I'm getting faster or going further, but every now and then, just going for a run without caring about time, pace or distance might be nice. 

After the run, I was keen to see how far I actually did go, so I created an account at MapMyRun and charted my route, which you can see up there. The site is pretty cool and the best thing is that it has an accompanying iPhone app called iMapMyRun which can chart my route for me as I'm running using the GPS capabilities in the iPhone. 

I also had on my new pair of runners that I'm trying to break in before Run for the Kids. I got the Asics GEL-1150 with light yellow trimmings from Shoe Logic for $169.95. I used to run in Nike Free 7.0, which is a really light shoe. It was meant to simulate running barefeet so you really feel the changes in the terrain and you can work out the little muscles in your legs that deal with your stability on uneven surfaces. I really liked them but since my right knee and ankle got quite badly injured last year, I thought I should go for runners that would give me more support and take some pressure off my joints. These new Asics are still quite light but definitely sturdier and I no longer feel that little spasm of fear every time I come across cracks and tiny bumps in my path. 

I used to really hate running but with all these new things, its not so bad!

"NO" Signs Around the World

Review: Peach Blossom Pavilion

First of all: **Spoiler Alert**

The story of Peach Blossom Pavilion is interesting though familiar; the life story of a young girl named Xiang Xiang given to a prostitution house and trained to be a ming ji aka prestigious prostitute. Memoirs of a Geisha anyone? And so I entered into this book thinking that this was indeed going to be the Chinese version of Memoirs of a Geisha. I was right and wrong. Some of this book is indeed very reminiscent of Memoirs, such as the story of  Xiang Xiang and Mr. Anderson, aka Memoirs' Chairman. There were a few other characters in the book that I initially matched to a Memoirs counterpart but was pleasantly surprised when they turned out quite different. I had predicted Xiang Xiang's 'elder sister' Pearl would turn into the evil and jealous Hatsumomo character and surely the quiet and unsuccessful Spring Moon should have followed the path of Pumpkin? But they did not and I was glad of that.

For the first 2/3 of the book, Xiang Xiang's story revolves around her training to become a ming ji  in Peach Blossom Pavilion, her relationship with the owners of the house and her prostitute 'sister' Pearl, as well as her experiences with all her different clients. I quite enjoyed this part of the book, it was interesting and quite well paced. My problem is with the last 1/3 of the book. Let's see, she escapes with a lesbian lover, ditches her lesbian lover for a monk, ditches her monk to go back to her lesbian lover, finds out that her lover's husband is the warlord who killed her father, finds her mother, plots to kill evil warlord, doesn't quite succeed, meets Mr Anderson, and marries him. All that within a third of a book! I was really quite baffled at this sudden change of pacing. It really did feel like it was written leisurely, and then suddenly at that 2/3 mark, the author suddenly realised she had a limited number of pages in which to finish her story.

The language used simulates a native Chinese speaker telling her tale in English. Many Chinese style metaphors are used and after awhile, this started driving me insane. For example, the very first time Xiang Xiang learns about sex, the F word is used liberally for it. This is most likely because a maid is telling her about it, so a ruder word is used to indicate the lesser upbringing of the maid. Later on, when she learns more about sex from her masters or her sister, cultivated metaphors are used like "letting his jade stalk enter your golden gate" and "mixing of cloud and rain" and these phrases kept getting repeated. Somehow, I found this to be quite annoying.

As a main character, I couldn't really figure Xiang Xiang out, which I thought to be odd as this story is told in first perspective. I couldn't really see what kind of person she was and what her motivations were (beyond the obvious get revenge one). On the other hand, I really liked the character of Pearl and I found her to be a more believable character that I could relate to.

Overall, I'd give this book a 2/5 score. The story is interesting but I think the way it is told lets it down.