Learn to swim - The beginning

Breath in water from your nose is not something you wanna do everyday...

Finally, we started our first swimming class with Mr. Lim today, 2pm just now.

As usual, I fetched both Kong and Chean to the designated swimming pool, it is actually a scuba diving learning pool, where one side is a 5 feet deep area, and another side is 8 feet deep. We arrived there half an hour early, so we were joking and talking nonsense, while waiting, probably to chase away the nervousness, at least for me it was.

Waited for a while, Mr. Lim shown up, and we went meet up with him, and followed him into the diving learning center. The pool was just next to the gate, well, it's really just a tiny swimming pool, if you are good enough, one breaststroke you can swim across the bugger already. We changed our clothes and prepared to take a warm up shower, where Mr. Lim shown up again ready. Chean asked him how about a warm up excercise, this really hit his button and started to talk all kind of things! He led us to a open space behind the center, and started teaching us his so called warm up excercise. Practically just repeating what he shown us in his house last time, we followed his act, hahaha, and we can't stop laughing, not the obvious one, but it's really funny!

Phew~ finally, to the pool. The water is quite warm due to the hot sun. I was still wondering what would install for me in this lesson. First, Mr. Lim asked both Kong and Chean to perform the swimming style they know, Kong is freestyle, whereas Chean is breaststroke. He spent some time with them to correct their style and gave them some tips, and I was just waiting there, wondering...

"Come", Mr. Lim said. My time had arrived!
Beginner lesson one: Hold your breath in the water!
Well, looks easy enough, but no, not really. You are wearing goggle, and when you submerge into the water, all your senses become numb and silence to the world, but you still can see ahead, that pale blue water sight, and this is where panic strikes! Although you still holding your breath, your lung would tell you to breathe, with this move, eventhough you have closed your nose, the sucking power of the lung still somehow suck water from your nose, and there you go, water from the nose! This painfulness struck me several times, and finally I can calm myself down a bit.

Beginner lesson two: Float!
After overcome your fear of holding breath in the water, it's time to float, make yourself float horizontal on the water. This part was the easy one, as long as your head look down on the floor and relax your body, voila, there you go, floating. But at this point, if panic struck, you will have a hell time sucking water from your nose again, and dunno how to stand straight up without help, and yeah, took me a few time to get myself used to the position.

Beginner lesson three: Move out soldier! Flap like you never flap before!
Flap your legs until you are moving forward! If floating has no problem for you, flapping forward will be as easy as that. As least you can move slowly, and don't expect you can swim like you can really swim.

And the problem comes, what if half way, panic strikes or out of breath, and nothing and no one for you to hold, how would you stand up?

Safety swimming lesson one: Stand up in the water!
When in horizontal position, flap your hand hard down to the water, and bend your abs and knees, hold your head up, straighten up your leg, and there you go, standing position, at least at the depth where you still can stand and your head is outside of the water...

There were many other tips and guides shown by Mr. Lim, how you flap correctly with your legs with using thighs only, the hand position, body movement, etc. Well, my head and nose and mouth was really overwhelmed by pool water, untill I can't really absorb what he said, I dunno about Chean and Kong, they probably also felt fatique due to practice to correct their style back and forth.

And the finale, swim across the 8 feet area, Kong and Chean did that without any problem, whereas me, a bit nervous from the beginning, still managed to pull it out, at least with a helping hand pull from Mr. Lim, hahaha, useless shit...
Only 1+ hour, our skin already has burning dark sign, and the weather was still cloudy, imagine what will happen if under a shinning hot sun! Kong had fully paid the fees, where Chean half, I wanted to pay half first, coz didn't bring much, but Mr. Lim insisted me to pay 200 first coz I have it there, dang, is this guy so desparate for money? We wonder...

And there ended our first swimming lesson. Not bad, something has been learnt, if you ask me is this consider swimming at the first class, well, not entire true, but it's still quite an achievement I can say. I think conquering fear and panic is very important here, coz that's what cause you to loose control in both your breathing and movement, which is lethal in water...