New Skates!

"Goodness gracious! He's got another new toy!"

Yes yes...I've got myself an early Christmas present. Bet you guys out there never knew I was into inline at all. I didn't expect myself to be so eager in acquiring a pair too. Maybe it's the year end bonus, but probably I was influenced by Alex's devious NLP mind tricks, playing up to my learning values and enticing me with the exciting challenges that awaits me in the process of learning to skate.

I think it's a pretty great pair of skates, definitely a little wasted on me now with my current skating proficiency. After we bought them, Alex and I headed down to ECP to try it out. Woah. The bearings were very, very smooth. and I had not bladed for a very long time already. Every time I sat down and rest, and got up to start again, I would stumble precariously for a moment because my body would had forgetten how smooth and fast the wheels were. I fell twice and scratched my brand new wristguards, and also the skates too - Ouch.

And indeed, I fully appreciated the challenges of learning to skate. So many salient points about the motor learning process, memorised for the exam, came back to me. When skating, I was too consciously trying to take in a lot of proprioceptive data and processing it, making me lose peripheral vision and limiting my concentration to the spot a metre in front of me. I used too much energy just going in a straight line and my body was mostly stiff as it tries to control movement by freezing the degrees of freedom. Alex's simple word of advice "Try to bend your knees more" became a mantra that I inwardly recited throughout the entire session.

But oh well, it got better, I got the hang (somewhat) of swaying to the side of the planted leg when gliding, which is the 'go with the flow' movement people talked about I think. I am dead tired both mentally and physically from the experience, but guess that's what makes it a worthy challenge ha. I'm such a sucker.

We had a good dinner to recover from all that effort, having Dim Sum, then durian, at Geylang. Their Kong Ba Bao is interesting -

...the bao is just a thin layer of pastry covering the huge slice of Kong Ba. Alex couldn't even bear to finish one, but I ate it all up, fat, skin, and all. :p