Surprise, surprise!

I went for my first aikido session in Sydney yesterday morning. It was at the Sydney Olympic Park. I didn’t join in for the session, partly because I have not received my gi from spore and partly cos I wanted to familiarize myself with the Australian style of aikido before I joined in. Hmm… abt aikido 1st, it was quite different from the training sessions in spore. Oz seems to focus a lot on “ki” and meditation, the basic skills for weapon training and they really take their training very seriously by training non stop throughout the whole session. Overall, I found their training session quite interesting but I need to adjust some of my techniques and mindsets to fit their style of training. Can’t wait to start my training. I miss aikido!!!



Here comes the big surprise. I met one of my aikido friend (Lian Jie) from ZQS during the training session on sat. I was shocked beyond words to see her. So shocked till I had to blink a few times before I was sure that I was not seeing things and could call out to her. I mean, never in my life would I expect to meet my fellow classmate in Sydney, not to mention in so ‘ulu’ a place as the dojo. But it was a very pleasant surprise. It’s always v nice and heart-warming to meet fellow Singaporeans in a foreign land, esp if u happen to know the person in spore. It turned out that Lian Jie was in Sydney for business and she wanted to continue her training while she’s in Sydney, so there she was. After the training session, we made plans to meet up on Sunday.



So today, we went out together in the afternoon to Manly beach. I would imagine that the beach is a very nice place to hang out in summer. But now being winter, the place was quite quiet and it was quite cold to walk along the beach. However, we had some fun watching some brave young lads wave surfing in the cold waters. After that, we went to a nice Italian restaurant at The Rocks for dinner. The entrée was very delicious and well made. The pasta was well-done too. Then we went to Pancakes on The Rocks for desert. Had 1 chocolate & 1 butter pancake with 2 scoops of ice cream. The chocolate pancake was yummy. It really melts in the mouth. The butter pancake was normal but went very well with the ice-cream. Lian Jie was very nice and treated me at both places. I had a great day. Good scenery, nice ambience, enjoyable company, fantastic food.



School starts again tomorrow. Hope it’ll be a good week.