I'm in China now and will be back in Spore end July

Unfortunately, this means that I will have to miss the Judo team prelims and finals as I will still be in China at that time. All the best to those participating though! Good luck!

And now, an update on what I've been doing in China:

Skating
Thats basically the bulk of what I've been doing now so far. Shen zhen is an ice skating haven, with three rinks in relatively close proximity- large, not very crowded rinks some more. Having grown acccustomed to super crowded fuji ice palace, the rinks are fantastic here.

The coaches are top notch too, all former national team competitiors. The bad thing though, is that my previous coach was not as careful as he should be in teaching me my basics, so now I'm back to working on basics again- forward and backwards crossovers. There were so many things I didn't realize I had to do. I'm also a bit impatient with myself. I mean, how long does it usually take to get backward crossovers working properly? It seems as if I've been doing them for forever, and I KNOW I'm still not gettting them right. Argh.

Skating takes up like about 8 hours each day, including transport, time I spend slacking, plus lunch.

Shopping/exploring
If I have free time and energy after skating, which is not a lot, I explore a bit, do grocery shopping as I'm now responsible for cooking the meals.

Oh, and I'm like single-handedly bringing down the style quotient in Shen Zhen, China. Here, most people take the effort to dress up properly. Not Singapore- T shirt and jeans= properly, properly.

I mean, its like 80% of the girls/women are wearing high heels? Don't their feet get tired? And they wear nice dresses or slacks. I hardly ever see any one wearing jeans even. And me? I'm usually in a T-shirt and trackpants, since thats what I've brought to and bought in China. And birkenstocks. I wore FBTs out once, and kept on feeling like people were staring at me- I was literally the only one wearing shorts that day in the area.

Watching TV
Watching sports on HD TV is fantastic! Need I say more?
Oh, and I watched the Fed-Nadal final at Wimbledon. So heartbreaking!

Yea, basically, I'm slacking and I'm enjoying it.