*dimsumdolly* - the different morsels of the life of a foodie

Weekend at the Beach

After my home and office, Sentosa's Tanjong Beach is probably the place where I spend most time at. I reinforced this fact over the weekend. After an early evening paddle on Friday - I steered (under instruction from a more experienced teammate) to Sisters Island and back - three of us girls stayed behind as we planned to spend the night at the beach. The plan was to camp out, wake up at 7.30am, then go for a 5km run from Tanjong to Siloso Beach, then go for the usual Saturday morning paddle.

One of the girls had roasted a kampung chicken with mixed herbs, cooked brown rice, made guacamole and brought nachos, and tossed some garden salad with balsamic dressing. A bottle of Cabernet Merlot blend was the cherry on the cake for our gourmet camp-out. We even had an iPod plugged into small speakers for some nice jazzy music to complement the sound of waves lapping up the shore. Desserts were sugar plums, kiwi fruits and apples. Oh, there was chocolate too. Hee.

After being so stuffed from dinner, we decided to be healthy and walk off our dinner. From Tanjong Beach, we walked to Sentosa Cove to check out "the world's most desirable address" (that's how it's marketing itself). Nothing much there at the moment. There are already condominiums up and people living in them, but we couldn't get past the security post guarding the residential area as the security informed us that there's a big-shot living in there. It's amazing how many obscenely rich people there are in this world. Anyway, it took us 1.5 hours to walk there and back at a leisurely pace. I thought we had done enough to walk off our dinner.

We then pitched our tents. We had two big tents that we set about 10 metres from the water. At 1.30am, another teammate of ours came to join us after her company dinner & dance. So us four girls slept in the two tents, under the stars. We were really lucky it didn't rain!

Next morning, we dragged ourselves up at 7.30am and went for a 5km jog. Upon returning from the jog, about 20 other teammates had arrived for the regular Sat morning practice. Everyone was shocked that we had actually gotten up to run. Obviously no one believed we could do it! But I'm so happy we stuck to our programme and didn't give in to the temptation of sleeping in! The waters that morning were really choppy and it wasn't exactly a very fun paddle with choppy waters.

Anyway, camping out at the beach was good fun! We intend to do it again sometime!

This morning I was at the beach again. The morning was so gorgeous that we couldn't not take the opportunity to canoe to Sisters Island. I steered again and from Sisters Island we went to Lazarus and Kusu Island. We encountered some really rough waters and strong currents at some points and it was actually pretty scary when we were being hit head-on by the currents. The canoe just couldn't move. My crew really had to pull real hard and my steering skills were really put to the test. Yikes. It's at such times when you really feel extremely small against Mother Nature.

Both times I steered on Friday and today were good lessons for me in learning how to read and understand the waters. Partaking in sports where you're up against the elements really gives you a more profound respect of what nature is capable of. Of course I was steering under instruction from a more experienced paddler, otherwise I'd never dare risk going out there. Being a steer brings with it much more responsibility in that you'll have to ensure the crew's safety by steering and reading the waters well.

Often I think it's just much easier being a paddler and I shouldn't bother with learning how to steer. But I guess my desire to learn comes from the fact that learning how to steer makes for a more complete and versatile paddler. The club also benefits from having more people knowing how to steer. The best thing about outrigger canoeing is that no one situation is the same. Every time you're out, conditions are always different, be it different tides, different boats coming your way, weather conditions and wind direction etc are always different. There's always something to learn each time you go out. That's what I really love about the sport.

So there's my weekend!

Posted by DSD at December 10, 2006 4:06 PM