The past week was a meaningful one. First I donated blood, then I registered as a bone marrow donor and just yesterday participated in "paddle for life", a fund raising dragon boat race for cancer charity . I am right now a proud registered organ/bone marrow/regular-blood donor!
The dragon boat race at Jack London Square, Oakland, was lotsa fun, and it's for charity! A friend invited me to join the malaysian team because a person pulled out at the last minute. I had a basic training a week before and went straight to the game. Paddling a dragon boat is certainly not as easy as I thought. Apart from strength and endurance, it requires great deal of team work to achieve synchronized strokes, so to avoid hitting each other. There are many teams from big corporates such intel, xilinx, visa, medtronic etc. We have 9 women on our 20 people team, some of them are aunties in their 50s. We rolled 3 times in total, each race is 300 meters I think. First race we did it horribly, and got placed in the lower division for subsequent races. Despite being inexperience and with aunties on-board, we outran some american competitors (agilent team) and got first place:) Although in 6th division, it's still No. 1 of its kind! The last race we had was extremely competitive that we beat the closest team by 0.08 second. I have no idea how they take the time though. In the end of the day, we were all drenched and tired, but everyone is feeling victorious. Also I got to know some interesting malaysians like a physics post-doc in UC berkeley, and a chindian dude from Penang who speaks perfect hokkien!
It's actually funny that I am doing dragon boat in the US. Come and think of it, I am from Penang, a famous host for dragon boat race (in fact there is an big international race this coming August), I have never watched any race there, only to do this "asian" thingy in foreign land. I guess it's same as you don't normally visit the places that are physically closed to your home. Whenever friends asked me what to see/do while visiting malaysia, I really have to think hard to answer, for I myself haven't been to many of the interesting places like redang, national park, sabah, sarawak etc. The point is that I have been missing out stuff that I shouldn't. So I am thinking of picking up swimming again. Pretty sure that the swimming I learned while interning at Qualcomm San Diego has long expired. And finally I scheduled motorcycle class in August. Kawasaki, here I come!
The dragon boat race at Jack London Square, Oakland, was lotsa fun, and it's for charity! A friend invited me to join the malaysian team because a person pulled out at the last minute. I had a basic training a week before and went straight to the game. Paddling a dragon boat is certainly not as easy as I thought. Apart from strength and endurance, it requires great deal of team work to achieve synchronized strokes, so to avoid hitting each other. There are many teams from big corporates such intel, xilinx, visa, medtronic etc. We have 9 women on our 20 people team, some of them are aunties in their 50s. We rolled 3 times in total, each race is 300 meters I think. First race we did it horribly, and got placed in the lower division for subsequent races. Despite being inexperience and with aunties on-board, we outran some american competitors (agilent team) and got first place:) Although in 6th division, it's still No. 1 of its kind! The last race we had was extremely competitive that we beat the closest team by 0.08 second. I have no idea how they take the time though. In the end of the day, we were all drenched and tired, but everyone is feeling victorious. Also I got to know some interesting malaysians like a physics post-doc in UC berkeley, and a chindian dude from Penang who speaks perfect hokkien!
It's actually funny that I am doing dragon boat in the US. Come and think of it, I am from Penang, a famous host for dragon boat race (in fact there is an big international race this coming August), I have never watched any race there, only to do this "asian" thingy in foreign land. I guess it's same as you don't normally visit the places that are physically closed to your home. Whenever friends asked me what to see/do while visiting malaysia, I really have to think hard to answer, for I myself haven't been to many of the interesting places like redang, national park, sabah, sarawak etc. The point is that I have been missing out stuff that I shouldn't. So I am thinking of picking up swimming again. Pretty sure that the swimming I learned while interning at Qualcomm San Diego has long expired. And finally I scheduled motorcycle class in August. Kawasaki, here I come!
posted by ongngg at 7:48 PM
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