Dragon Boat

Mott MacDonald Sports and Recreation club (MM SRC) a group within MM Singapore, is run by a bunch of active and creative staff members who are sponsored by the company to bring the staff together on several sporty, social and team building activities. These include bowling challenges, badminton and soccer practice and matches, barbecue at the beach, birthdays of the month and new year dinner and dance and several others. One activity recently organised by the social club was that of 'Dragon boat' training lesson.

Jumping at this opportunity at exploring something new, I signed up and showed up on time at the Kallang Gaelic Dragon boating venue on the 14th of April 2013. Filled with nervous excitement and accompanied by my colleague and partner in crime, LeeKhiang, who is an Environmental Engineer, I geared up with the life vest (not a jacket just a thinner version of it) and my light weight wooden paddle. At the venue, there were other people gathering around who looked really professional and were wearing similar clothes to represent various teams. They were preparing for a challenge for which they would be travelling to Borocay for the dragon boating race and were there that evening to practice their opening group dance! Needless to say, we looked and felt like complete amateurs (at dancing and paddling!) and were praying that we'd blend into the crowd or become invisible for a while! Much to our relief, the Gaelic Dragon's didn't have any opening dance before the training!

It was an exceptionally good day in Singapore when we set out towards the boat. It was slightly windy with a light cloud cover, enough to hide the harsh sunrays but keeping it bright enough to enjoy the outdoors and cool enough to enjoy sweating. Best of all, it wasn't raining. It's unlike me to say that, 'not raining' was a good thing, as I associate rain with fun! But in this case, rain would mean the probability of thunder and of course, lightening! On the days when rain is accompanied by lightening, all boats are called back and that would mean there would be no training lesson. For that day, I was happy with no rain as the fun thing. :) So, with the weather in our favour we stood in front of our boat and the trainer 'Lee' gave us a good 10 mins induction on how to hold the paddle, how to sit and how to paddle (practicing in the air) using the back muscles rather then the strength of the arms and other safety tips. Hmmm, momentarily going back to Lee, the name must have brought a very dashing Chinese looking young trainer with a muscular lean body and bulging biceps in your minds! Right? Well you wish! Sorry to disappoint you, but, our trainer Mr. Lee was a be-spectacled, senior Irish gentleman with a very polite demeanor and whose cheeks kept turning a hint of darker pink with every minute in the heat. Yes! I surely caught you stereotyping there! Guilty as charged!

Now, going back to the training. To the say the least, it was tough! Not recommended for the weak-hearted. Trust me, when I signed up for paddling, secretly, I was hoping that I could stop if I were tired and let the rest continue and no one would notice. However, in reality, stopping for a break was out of the question! The boat is narrow and if you are not paddling then you are bound to be hit in the face or back by the movements of your teammates around you. Well, no reason to panic, I did ok and didn't take any secret breaks or punches. The training was divided into three main points; Technique(style), timing(teamwork) and power. We practiced with varying combinations of these three points until we were sore. The training was well spaced out and we paddled for a fixed number of counts (starting with 5 and progressing upto 60 over 1.5 hours) with 30-60-120 seconds breaks in between and some additional training tips every now and then for better coordination and speed.

One part of the correct style is to look at your partner while paddling so that the body posture is right and you also know if your timing is in sync with the others. So, in other words, you are not looking at the water or at the scenery around you! This was another surprise that I had to deal with. I had imagined I would be paddling away and looking at the birds and the skyline of Singapore along in the Kallang river...hmm not really. We went all the way up to the 'sands by the bay' area and finally stopped for while to take in the view. Suddenly, it felt very peaceful and serene to be sitting in a quiet boat in the middle of the river. Taking deep breaths we absorbed the modern beauty around us.

Our captain turned the boat around and we continued our journey tracing our steps back to the starting point when I dropped my paddle into the river! Hmmm, the boat had to go back to fetch my paddle and as a punishment for dropping it, I was asked to paddle the whole boat back alone for a count of 30 paddles!!! (thankfully two experienced people joined along to save my life and we made it ashore! Phew!) What an exhilarating end to an exhilarating evening! I'll surely be going back for more...

Paddles up!

 (the picture of the boat is an illustration, we looked almost like that though our boat was less fancy)

(Sana and LeeKhiang posing with our paddles)

Monkey morning!

Today started off as a regular school day morning. My hubby left home and I got my boy ready for school and off we went to the bus stop. An interesting duo we were, "a groggy-eyed mama and a grumpy baby". Well, so far it was a fairly boring and regular morning but not until long.

When I reach the stop, all of a sudden, I heard some commotion in the corridor near the bus stop. The bus stop I am talking about, is really just the front lobby of our condo apartment, where the school buses pick -up and drop kids. A couple of people ran out of the corridor and much to my amazement, emerged a full grown monkey after them. He sat on a bench, just about 10 meters away from us and looked deep at us with unflinching eyes. It was about half the height of my son with a 'dude, what's up?', sort of friendly gait.

He stared at me perhaps, trying to gauge what our next move will be and I stared back with pretty much the same thoughts racing in my mind. Finally, after a long minute of staring, screaming, oh-ing and ah-ing in awe and astonishment, I decided it was time to attempt a move towards the bus. I darted towards the nearest open spot. To my horror, the monkey got off the bench and followed us. I quickly reached the bus and handed over my son and his water bottle to the aunty in the bus and asked her to shut the door. I stood by the bus while my sister-in-law called for the security guard. Then, cooly, just like he is one of us, with a regular groggy morning feel, the monkey went past me and climbed up the compound wall.

He came, he saw and he left! Guess if he was out on a 'human-study' tour, he would have learnt that 'human mornings' were not very different to 'monkey mornings'! Inspite of these brief moments of commotion, the kids in the bus seemed calm and disinterested and surely, it appeared that neither the kids nor the monkey could understand what the fuss and panic I was making was all about!

Oh well, at least his visit made my morning a special one!