Swimmingly

I’ve started swimming regularly. In October it’s still perfectly possible to swim outdoors here in Taiwan and there is a pool right on NCTU campus. I go three, four times a week. It’s what I’ve needed for years. Low impact exercise in a liquid environment. Nice!

I was never much of a swimmer. I mean, I always knew how stay afloat, but I never did it with style. (Style is important if you’re wearing nothing but swim trunks). Growing up in northern Sweden it was far between pools and the ocean was about 14 degrees even in the middle of the summer. Now I’m slowly learning — breathing, strokes and kicks. And wearing goggles makes all the difference.

A sociological observation: at the NCTU pool all guys sneak off to their individual shower cabins to change clothes. Why? Aren’t men supposed to show themselves naked to other men? If they all change clothes in secret, why not share locker-room with women?

Compare the pool in Nanjing, on the Chinese mainland, where I went a few years ago. Here everyone walked around in their birthday suits in the locker room, completely oblivious to their own nakedness or that of others. Or compare Sweden — at least Sweden of my youth — where guys flicked towels, splashed water and exposed their genitals at each other in exuberant displays of homoerotic bravado.