Categories
2007 Swimming

swimming @ eunice’s

i don’t know how to swim. it’s true. i never learned. i never had the chance since i grew up in a desert and only the rich and filthy rich had swimming pools. i didn’t have the slightest motivation to learn either.

the small community centre beside our apartment building has a swimming pool. Eunice’s Swimming School is in charge of the pool and provides lessons as well. they have beginner classes, intermediate, and advanced as well.

lunato knows how to swim but she hasn’t swam (swum ?) for a more than a few months. late last year, we decided to enroll in the Beginners’ class together. the fee is decent enough and the classes are once a week. we choose monday evenings.

our instructor is a kid named Max. i call him a kid because he really is a kid. only 16 years old and yet an expert swimmer. he teaches 10 classes per week!

when we first met, max was a bit confused as to how to teach us. he told us that he has never had “adult” students before so he was’t sure what approach to take. i asked him to consider me a complete novice and perhaps it would be better if he taught us the same way he teaches children who are learning. honestly, if you had thrown me in a pool i would’ve sunk to the bottom and probably drowned myself while frantically trying to reach the surface.

but that has changed now! i can swim! i’m being very liberal when i use the term “swim.” i can move from one end of the pool to the middle and back without any styrofoam boards. i can float. well, i can float as long as i am at the shallow end of the pool because the deep end is still a bit scary. i want to call that swimming :)

last week we were learning how to float on our backs, turn ourselves on our stomach and then back again. the first twist is easy for me and i can go from my back facing the cieling to my stomach facing the cieling. but the second twist is too difficult and i can’t seem to do it properly without completely disorienting myself. lunato was having the exact same difficulty. the first twist is ok, the second difficult.

lunato is so much better than i am. when i swim it’s as if a typhoon is passing through the pool.. water flying everywhere! i can see water droplets flying from my feet and landing in front of my face. with all that power, i still move so slowly in the pool. lunato and i would start at the same time but a dozen seconds later, which seem like centuries to me, she would be at the end waiting for me. annoying!

it took a long time to convince me to actually sign up for the classes. i kept complaining that even though it is a “life skill”, in 26 years of existence, i have never had to say to myself, “gee, i wish i was able to swim right now.”

another reason, and probably the main reason, for my unwillingness to sign up was that i would be half naked. lunato actually wanted to buy me a speedo (never in a million years would i put that on!) but i totally refused. i wouldn’t even touch one. swimming shorts are, of course, better than speedos, but still…….. as i said, i grew up in a desert and never had a chance to swim. in highschool i didn’t have to join gym class. in university, i didn’t have a reason, means, or partner to learn swimming with. so i was too shy about the whole idea. i kept imaging people would look at me, point and laugh at my unimpressive build. stupid, idiotic, and probably egoistic of me to think that way.. but i was shy and that is a fact.

on the day of the first lesson i was having second thoughts about the whole thing but thankfully lunato didn’t give up on me and forced me to try it out for at least one lesson. i enjoyed it immensely. i look forward to each monday evening now. there are usually less than half a dozen people at the pool at the time and they are swimming as well so hey everyone is naked! that helped to overcome my shyness.

each instructor has a maximum number of three students at a time and there are only two instructors in the pool at any given time. max only had lunato and me as his evening students for the first four weeks. last week another woman joined our group. she is a beginner as well so she fits well in our tiny group of adults learning how to survive. the more the merrier i suppose.

at the end of each class, we go over to the deep end of the pool and max asks us to jump in. the idea is to get rid of our, or rather just mine since lunato is ok with the jump, fear of water.

i put one leg at the edge of the pool. the other leg a step back. i lift my arms horizontally on each side. when max says “Go!” i force my brain to act. that takes about 5 seconds of convincing myself. max is already in the pool waiting to help me incase something goes awry.

5 seconds later i’ve convinced myself that i can do this!

i step forward and into the pool while moving my arms forward at the same time. after making a big splash and finding myself in the deep end with the bottom of the pool about 2 metres away, i panic. i force myself to be logical about the situation and i start pushing myself upward. once i hit the surface, i start moving my legs and try to reach the side of the pool as fast as i can.

phewh, made it. time to go home. until next week!

Eunice's Swim School Eunice's Swim School Eunice's Swim School Eunice's Swim School Eunice's Swim School

Categories
2007 Music

sigur ros – hoppipolla

I haven’t posted a music video on this blog until now. Hoppípolla, which means “jumping into puddles” in Icelandic, is a superb song by Sigur Rós.

Amazingly enough, the music video is just as great. You can find the lyrics to the song on this website. Enjoy!

Categories
2007

Canon SD700 IS

lunato and I decided to trade-in our SONY DSC-P73 for a SHARP Korean-English-Chinese dictionary. We bought the camera on August 16th, 2004 and while it is a great camera, whenever we would ask someone other than ourselves to take pictures from it, the pictures would almost always be blurry. The lens is far too sensitive and any minuscule movement while taking a picture would produce a blurry image. The camera is actually wonderful when outside under bright light but if you’re indoors and there isn’t enough light, well.. that’s asking too much from it.

lunato’s friend, choi (pronounced chaay) was going back to Korea in mid-January and he wanted to purchase a digital camera before he left. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to do an exchange of goods. We took his Korean-English dictionary and he took our SONY DSC-P73. We told him about the blurriness factor and that you have to be perfectly still when taking a picture; a skill that takes quite a while to develop. However, he assured us that he would be taking pictures via his tripod most of the time and he really likes the extensive functionality of the DSC-P73. Perfect! Besides, the dictionary is far cheaper than the camera!!

So, after doing a lot of research, we decided to get a CANON SD700 IS. DPreview has a lengthy review for this camera and currently it is rated #13 amongst all the cameras that they have reviewed. I was debating between the 710 and the 700, but after holding both the 700 and 710 in our hands, lunato convinced me to go with the 700. It just looks so much better. Besides, this camera will last us another 2-3 years and I don’t want to carry the bulky 710 with me whenever we go on vacation. The 700 can easily slide in my pocket. Even though it was released before the 710, it looks like a much newer model than the 700. Hey, it might not have every single function and might not allow as many settings as the 710, but it is perfect for amateur point-and-shoot photographers. Professionals, who spend thousands on photography equipment, would probably choose the 710 over the 700. By the way, the IS stands for Image Stabilization, something that we greatly desired after deleting hundreds of pictures over the past few years because of their blurriness. Also, Flickr has an impressive collection of photographs taken from the SD700 IS.

Canon SD700IS An image from our Canon SD700IS.. taken from the CN Tower on lunato's birthday

The Panasonic Lumix is another camera that we considered, but most of the reviews complained about the camera being pretty weak under low-light conditions and apparently it creates a lot of watercolor noise; Image #4. It has image stabilization though and the ad campaign that Panasonic is running on TV these days make it look like the best camera ever! Dodob is taking pretty nice pictures with it so I guess its not a bad camera at all… if you know what you’re doing. Personally, I have no idea about ISOs, histograms, white balance, blah blah blah.. i just point-and-shoot :D

So, choi came over on the 2nd and took our SONY camera. He left behind his dictionary which is something lunato needed since she’s been reading a lot of novels these days. We researched cameras for more than a week and finally bought the Canon on the 12th.

SANYO Dictionary SANYO Dictionary