In these three months, I have found myself having to adapt to new regimens and methods of exercise like I have never done before. For example, I finally found the courage to try out for the badminton team which has involved new levels of training that I have never experienced before, being a tennis player for all of my high school life practically. I also have been learning that there are specific skills for specific racket sports, and while this may be so, there are definitely some skills such as communication and intuition on the court that are transferrable between the different types of games. Being a doubles player, this is extremely important to me because learning how to communicate with my partner is crucial in order to utilise both our skills to the maximum level of efficiency possible.

In having to adapt from April onwards, there has been nothing more challenging than staying quarantined at home and having to switch off my schedule temporarily, finding new ways to keep myself fit with forms of working out that are more suited to a home environment. I have been using online videos a lot of the time, and my parents have been my biggest motivators during these times because they have been doing these exercises with me as well. Although there is no real supervisor in the kind of training that I am doing at home, my parents and I constantly help each other and keep each other in check when it comes to things such as technique.

As a result of COVID-19, this month’s healthy living exercises needed to be moved inside and I could no longer continue with badminton as scheduled. This meant that I was now forced to find ways to adapt what I was doing to being inside the house, and I have now found that using the TV in our living room as a means of depicting workouts online so that my parents and I can follow along helps me work on a lot of muscles and endurance skills that are in fact instrumental for the kind of racket sports that I play. For example, we have been doing an online cardio workout from one of the videos on YouTube that really works on every part of the body, and all round fitness is something that is really required in racket sports as well. I think that I was really able to show discipline and commitment because I adhered to my exercise schedule without failure during this month, and it showed the level of commitment that I was prepared to go to in order to get my body ready for the upcoming seasons, as well as for general all around fitness that is really important for the kind of sports that I play where I need to be on my toes most of the time.

Here is the video that we have been using as a family for our workouts.

Following on from my experience kayaking in Vietnam, my next new experience was to understand how oyster farming worked in Ha Long Bay. I understood how intrinsic this type of livelihood was to the local communities of Ha Long Bay, and especially how the preservation and conservation of certain ecosystems is crucial to the thriving of oysters so that they can be harvested not only for food but also for their pearls which can be enough to support whole communities in the region. I was able to extract pearls from some oysters myself at the farm, and understand the process of pearl extraction myself. It was not something that I have ever tried before, but it was really great to have the opportunity to understand the way in which marine ecosystems in specific may be more beneficial to some communities than others. This was a realisation that really dawned on me the importance of having a great understanding of the environment and how our actions can cause such an immense stress on the lives of those that depend on these ecosystems. For example, understanding the impacts of ocean acidification on these communities was something that was truly crucial for me to know. I was taught how the effects of carbon dioxide in the air can have adverse effects on the oceans; when the carbon dissolves into the water, it affects the presence of calcium carbonate ions that are used by marine animals to make tougher shells to protect themselves. When this happens, oysters cannot recall enough calcium carbonate to form exoskeletons that can protect the development of healthy pearls, which is economically problematic as the developing pearls will not sell for much at this instance.

This month was more about filling in the document with all our personal information and information about the provider that we were going to be working with. The document we were given needed to be filled out before February, as a goal that we set ourselves before we got our next set of instructions. This was a very research heavy month as it involved us researching a lot about our provider in terms of contact information and medical locations, and it also involved us using the research that we obtained from our interview with the representative of OrcaNation. It really helped us come together as a group, because we were collaborating a lot more than we needed to before in order to get this work done and it helped further develop our relationships. This month was revolved around just getting the logistical information out of the way, and this was done without much hassle. We expect to see a lot more work coming in for February, when bookings have to start and forms have to be signed, and so on.

In December of 2019, I made a trip to Vietnam which comprised of a lot of cultural and environmental activities that I did with my family. One of these activities comprised of me going kayaking in Ha Long Bay. It was an activity that I had never tried before, save for an expedition that I had done in September of 2018. This was a really exciting trip for me as it allowed me to experience an outdoor activity that felt rather inaccessible because of the heavily urbanised environment that I live in. To be able to open kayak in the ocean was facing my fears and stepping out of my comfort zone because I had never really been comfortable in open water environments, let alone be kayaking in them for the first time. However, being able to kayak and witness the trash floating around the riverside communities and floating villages that actually lived in the same river really opened my eyes to the importance of keeping those environments clean, because so many people depend on those environments for their livelihoods and supporting their families. I saw that as I experienced the techniques to kayak properly more and more, and thought on what I had learned during my tenure kayaking in 10th grade, I was able to feel a lot more comfortable than before and really understand what type of skill sets I needed in order to be able to perform this activity on a regular basis. I think that at the end of the day, this experience really helped me understand the importance nature plays in the lives of so many, even if I live in a very urban environment, and how I must have a sense of stewardship in its preservation for being able to prolong the livelihoods of those dependent on nature while also keep such opportunities to experience new outdoor activities free for others to do as well.

These last 3 months, there was a very heavy focus on SEASAC; therefore, match play was the primary focus of all matches and practice sessions whenever I did play. I worked extremely hard on doubles tactics and matchplay, since I knew that I would want to go for SEASAC doubles (I got to know I was in SEASAC just before the break). Playing doubles with different members of the team was crucial to my process this time around, as it meant that I was able to see how my game fit with some of the other members of our team and in terms of how effectively this would work on the doubles court. This was a skill I really developed over the last few months, in finding out ways that I can make my game style match to those who do not necessarily share the same strengths on the court, but moulding those two together to make a strong doubles pair. These few months have also been crucial in me developing certain components of my game that are key to a doubles player, such as volleys and smashes and play at the net. While I have got to know and understand how my game fits in with others in my team, it has also helped me with the process of tactics and strategy making during matches. I had to employ this when we were down or losing to any team, and tried to change up plans to mess up the opponent’s rhythm. Overall, these last three months have been very crucial to my journey in tennis and I hope that the next three will be even more fruitful.

This month, the real intensity of Project Week really got underway. We were scrambling to find new contacts and a new location after our previous location had not got approved; we ended up getting approved to go to Rawa, in Malaysia. This was somewhat of our original plan as we had been interested in diving from the start. Our first step was to get in touch with each other, after we got the news that Rawa was the place that we were going. This was where we decided who would be responsible for what within our group and who would be the primary person responsible for keeping in touch with the overseas provider. This was most of what we did during our time in December until the break; however, on the second last day, we met with a representative from the organization. This was where we were able to finalise both the activity and the service components of our final plan. We decided that the diving would take up our activity component for the trip. For our service component, we had a discussion with the representative regarding things that would qualify as service activities on the island, and we came up with two options of things that we would very much like to do. One of them was a clownfish snorkelling survey, where we would get to take a snorkelling trail which houses plenty of clownfish and collect survey data to help a study being undertaken and put into place by a university. On the other hand, we also organised a beach cleanup where we will be able to learn the importance of sorting trash as well as making sure we keep our beaches clean to protect wildlife.

At the end of the first three months of the service with the Salvation Army, I can say with confidence that my goal has been met to quite an agreeable extent in these few months. I was really able to connect with the elders, and with this generation of people that I am not used to communicating with in my everyday life. Through the activities that we organised, we were able to make everyone feel involved in what we were doing and really feel part of the community that they were in. We were also glad enough to be included in this community, and I felt that in the last three months we have really begun to develop relationships with a lot of the elderly as well as the staff present at the centre.