journal.wiredreflexes.com

I just went swimming. I hit the pool at 7:54, so I was a little late, and it was obviously a lot more busy. Invariably, this means that there will be more recreational swimmers* than normally, and I was sure it was going to screw with my earlier set time. There was one older woman in particular who was far too slow for the medium lane, but not only that, seemed to ignore pretty much all flow of traffic, and sometimes swamdiagonally across the lane. (!?) There were also two women who talked while they swam, which meant the world’s longest traffic jam queuing up behind them. They didn’t seem to mind. Or care. They must die.

Luckily there were two swimmers that were more experienced and faster than I. One relatively beautiful and graceful woman, whom I didn’t see too much, as she was always one lap away, in the other direction, and a guy who was a powerswimmer. Why he wasn’t in the fast lane, I have no clue, I guess he likes to frustrate himself. I ended up swimming in his wake. He was only a bit faster than I, which I made up by not taking any breaks between laps like he did, but he was like a snowplow, and I was relatively unobstructed by talking women. The only thing was that I had to swim in his turbulence, that wasn’t so much fun. Anyway, I was out of the pool by 8:24, so altogether I did make good time.

* I fully understand that to a lot of people there, I, too, am a recreational swimmer.

This morning I went swimming.

I had decided some time ago that I was getting a bit too soft, now that I’m living about an hour away from Kung Fu, and I can only do it for a couple of hours a week, not enough to balance the fact that I have a sendentary job and love food. I could never decide on what I wanted to do, hell, I even considered joining a Wing Chun class in my neighbourhood, or training at the Amsterdam branch of our school (which I really don’t want to do, because my sikong and I don’t get along too well, and the people there are not my kind of people.) But now I’ve settled on swimming, which should be good for both my stamina and my strength.

I hit the pool at 7:46, did 40 laps, and was out by 8:16. Exactly 30 minutes. I know that I did lap 21-30 in 8 minutes, and lap 31-40 in 7. I’m not too sure on the times of lap 1-10 and 11-20, but it must be something similar, since I took a 30 second break after the first 20 laps, and another 30 seconds 10 laps after that. On average, I did a lap in 43.5 seconds. A lap is 25 meters. That means I managed a relatively consistent speed of about 2.07 kph. I doubt that’s any good, because there were quite a few people faster than I.

I consciously didn’t want to overextend myself, since it’s been a while since I went swimming. That point was driven home quite accurately when I went through a pretty emberassing moment as I was lifting myself out of the pool, which took way more effort than I thought it would. Once out of the pool and under the showers, I could really feel how much effort it had taken. What was interesting was that my stamina was adequate and even surpassing some of the other swimmers, but my technique is probably ultra-sloppy, and the strength that it requires is probably also lacking, especially upper-body strength. I do remember at a certain point getting stuck behind a slower swimmer for a bit, whom I could keep up with quite well just using my legs.

Anyway, looking forward to some more.

Over the last few days, I played host to Jim, a.k.a. Big Jim, as he visited Amsterdam for New Year’s. As always, it was a pleasure to have him, and we spent a lot of time talking, drinking, dancing and watching UFC. Many wodka/tonics and tequila/tonics were shared, and I was invigorated by his energetic and positive outlook on life, which is something that I find relatively unique to Jim, and I greatly admire. I will miss him, but have promised to try my best to find a good time to visit him in Chicago some time this year.

I don’t know how or when it happened, but today I realised that the there’s absolutely no feeling of cohesion among my group of friends. Nobody seems to care about one another anymore.

Spent Christmas with some of my family, which was nice enough, though Moulsari, not speaking Dutch, felt a little left out as much of the conversation was in Dutch. I always respectfully ask people to speak English if they can so that Moulsari can also understand what’s going on, but invariably they’ll shift back to Dutch…even I do that if I don’t pay attention. Luckily, about halfway through the evening, when I went to drop someone off by car, and I visited my father afterwards with Moulsari, things had definitely improved. My aunt, emboldened by a few drinks, found herself speaking English more easily, and I think Moulsari started having a good time, too. Soon after, we had food. A lot of food.

I made a Boxing Day resolution to look into the options of swimming in the mornings, before work, because I have been getting a little soft lately. Having someone around that you have to consider when making plans is wreaking havoc on my Kung Fu schedule, so I’m going to see if I can supplement it by swimming.

Of course, I slept terribly bad the two nights we were over at my mother’s. We have relatively comfortable bedding, now that my old matress was moved there after I changed apartments, but we’re forced to sleep in the living room. All but my brother smokes in the family, and my mother has fourty million pets. With the irritation. Not so much with the rest.

I had bought my mother a DVD player for Chistmas, which was something she was sorely lacking for a while now. Let fate have it that my aunt thought exactly the same thing! A bit unfortunate, so we decided that we’d go and see if we could return the DVD player. (Hell, we’ll be able to find someone for it. Perhaps I’ll use it myself, since my DVD player is getting on in age quite a bit. Though sadly it’s not region free, like my old DVD player is.)

Spent Boxing Day with Esther and Ed. Ed had made dinner, we watched Kill Bill and played with the cats. I had a good time and got to see a part of Amsterdam I normally don’t get to see. (Czaar Peterstraat and surroundings.) Good fun.

Jim will be coming over the day after tomorrow. Looking forward.