I was first introduced to the exercise options in Taman Merdeka some four years ago, and since then I have dragged myself out of bed at 6:30 am to get to the park to join these lovely ladies and get some exercise. Some of these ladies come to the park from Monday to Saturday, but I give myself the weekend off to enjoy a lie in! Lawrence comes to the park as well, but he prefers to run/jog/walk around the park. He also likes the community group exercises on Thursdays and Fridays, which have now moved to a new area in the park (see my previous summary of The Life of a Park).
When I am away from Johor Bahru and try to keep up with these exercises, I find I quickly forget the moves. Other than the Ba Duan Jin routine which I learnt in Hong Kong, the four other routines I learnt here just by watching the others. I cannot understand the instructions given in the soundtrack that we exercise too, so it is easy for me to get lost, especially when everyone is having a good gossip! So this year I finally got around to making videos of the Garden Ladies doing their moves; this will serve as a reminder to me of how to do the exercises and as a memory of these lovely ladies for when I return to the UK later this year.
In typical Malaysian fashion, our first planned day of filming was greeted by a downpour. So we used a different location in the park which had a cover, but not really enough space for all of us to be filmed. I have only included one video from this occasion (Ba Duan Jin) as there are plenty of videos of this on YouTube already. For the other four routines we are in our usual location, and you will see most of us wearing pink in support of breast cancer campaigns. We generally designate Wednesday as our pink day but this is not compulsory! Nothing about this group is compulsory as you will see in the videos, we are the most uncoordinated group going! Personally I think this very much represents Malaysia where everyone gets on together by doing their own thing.
Indonesian warm-up exercise (Set 1)
Indonesian warm-up exercise (Set 2)
Shi Ba Shi (Set 1)
Sh Ba Shi (Set 2)
Ba Duan Jin
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