Well, with the hackings and all, I can’t believe there goes the month of June. Lost my one and only entry in June but I guess I cannot really do anything about it

I met Joycelyn at Dover and headed to Tampines to visit a chinese medical hall to “poke needles” (acupuncture) for my still-swollen left pinky.

The train ride felt pretty short because I kept her laughing over my funny stories and she updated me on the trainings at the ever-dirty Kallang River. Seems like most of us are still not into the whole training-mode.

Anyway, thank goodness she was with me to act like a translator with the acupuncturist. I seriously felt like I was lost in translation halfway while explaining to ther about my finger. After poking three needles, I felt like an incense holder when she started burning this lump of herbs on the needle that was stuck on the joint of my finger

After that, we slacked a tad at Starbucks while waiting for Jolene to join us. After a quick dinner at the food court, we went for our first referee practical session at TP.

I really envy TP’s swimming pools. Yes, pools. And we had only one lousy pool that we cannot even fully utilize because we have to leave a few lanes for swimmers Their pool is like, 10 lanes wide. So it felt really huge.

As I have not trained for more than six weeks, I felt like I have somewhat lost touch with canoe polo. Thus, I did not feel very confident about the practical session But after shadowing Raymond (the instructor) for two matches and observing two more, I felt more familiar with the game and the rules.

So when it was my turn to ref the match with Jolene, I felt more confident. And I made a good call for a five-second foul

Overall, I would say it was quite an eye-opener. To ref a match, that is