Last night I attended my first swimming lesson with my officemates Ivy and Jaypee and my roommate Maya. It was held in the Mandarin Hotel swimming pool. P&G’ers have a 50% discount on the classes. We had been planning this since last year but due to some weird circusmtances involving Jaypee and his nose, we only pushed through now.
Yes, I don’t know how to swim. Most people have a misconcepcion that people who come from our place, which is near the sea, should definitely know how to swim. The truth is, most people from our place don’t know how. Maybe because we take our sea for granted? Or maybe because our people are thrifty and are not willing to spend for swimming lessons for their kids, which they don’t consider a necessity.
I’ve actually nearly drowned three times already. The first time was in a Zamboanga west coast beach. We kids were playing with a rolling coconut tree trunk in the water. Next thing I know, it had rolled and dragged me under it. It’s not a nice sensation, breathing seawater while getting your face scratched by a coconut tree’s rough bark. Good thing someone had the common sense to pull me up. The next time was in Bolong beach, Zamboanga east coast. This beach is known for its fine sand that suddenly goes deep without warning. As I walked farther out, I suddenly found that I could no longer stand and get air at the same time. I flailed wildly, and my friends thought I was only playing around and laughed at first. Then they realized I was drowning for real and one of them (who was my crush then, by the way), threw his lifesaver at me and then pulled me to the shallows. The third time was in Busay waterfall. We were crossing the body of water towards the waterfall itself. I thought it was just shallow, but halfway through I suddenly found myself with no rocks to step on. This was my worst case yet. I really went down under. Someone had to jump in after me and pull me up to safety. After all those near-death experiences, is it a wonder then why I’d want to learn how to swim?
The first session was a two-hour class wherein our teacher (who had an R&B lilt whenever he talked) taught us how to breath-hold, make bubbles, do three types of floats (turtle, jellyfish, superman), glide and do flutterkicks. I aced the jellyfish float the first time our teacher asked me to try, but I am so bad at gliding. Also, I can now flutterkick almost all the way across the pool. I love doing bubbles best, though. Our teacher said that this was a good technique against tiredness. So everytime he made us do something tiring like hold our breath for 30 minutes or flutterkick with 70% of our energy, he makes us do 10 or 20 bubbles afterwards to make up for it. How to make bubbles — take a deep breath through your mouth then plunge into the water and exhale through your nose…and make bubbles! Do this several times over and over and you’ll feel really really sleepy after about an hour.
This week has been extra stressful for me, what with it being the monthend and also because one of my teammates went on a week-long vacation leave to Australia (good for her!) and I was her assigned backup. You just don’t realize how stressful it is to be in P&G until you realize how much mail you get and how many invoices get stuck in your inbox for troubleshooting and how many issues suddenly crop up during a day. I was so stressed today that I found myself wishing I could do 20 bubbles right then and there. Then have a nice hot shower and a few minutes in the sauna. Bliss. Can’t wait for the next swimming lesson!