I'm learning freestyle, or the front crawl, at a local club's swimming pool.

I had had my first swimming classes as a kid. I was 10 or 11. I don't know. But that was it. I mean, I didn't really went back to a pool to swim. I only remember a bakery near the pool where my sister and I spent about an hour after each lesson. It was during a summer school break and my father finished work about an hour later than our swimming class - he was a high school teacher lecturing summer school classes. He was a regular of the shop so we could stay in the shop until he came to pick us up. Both of the owners, a married and kind couple, adored us and usually offered us soft ice cream. That soft ice-cream cone's taste is only thing I still remember., but nothing else. No muscle memory or any swimming techniques left.

Then I took another chance after I got married. I think it was the year of 2010 or 2011. I enrolled in an adult beginner's class at a council-run sports centre. It was a 9 p.m. class on Wednesdays and I was working full-time. I had to be the first person to leave work in order to make a short window to fuel myself quickly and then run to the pool which was 10 mins drive from home. I think I dropped out even before I could breath. Making my way to the lesson was just exhaust. I wanted to learn swimming, but I didn't enjoy learning swimming. So again, no memory or real learnings.

Since I moved to Sydney, I became a beachgoer. And I started to notice people don't use tubes in the ocean. Everyone seems to know how to swim and they don't seem to fear of being in the open water. I actually learned the term open water here.

I envied them. I wanted to be able to swim in the ocean. So I decided to make my 3rd attempt to become a swimmer.

I will talk about my progression in the next post.