Cheryl & I have been in Korea (Incheon & Seoul) for a nearly a week now, and tomorrow will travel with the Korean team to Shanghai. Theres about 200 people registered for one competition or another.

Seb etc & half the Australians will also arrive tomorrow, not sure about the Singaporeans or the Russians. The Other australians will cut it fine & arrive on friday.

Judge training has been happening since yesterday (6th Aug), so a couple of the Koreans are already out there.

Its rained a great deal in Korea since we arrived. its not usual for it to rain here, but this is the rainy season…

Olympic park’s surface is one of those really slippy ones if there is a drop of rain on it, so the weekend in seoul was tricky, though Yeoido park has a normal surface (tarmac), and in Incheon, the surfaces is like that of Olympic park, but they have that super smooth area underneath, in the subway station, that Ive seen in vids.

I haven’t really practiced my combo for shanghai whilst ive been here, as have been trying to learn some new things, particularly some really great basics. We’ve both been really lucky with the help that we’ve been given.

They are all extremely friendly. Weve been hanging out with Crazy Slalom, No Break, Remix & Narsha (the freeride part of No Break). Craxy Slalom are based in Incheon, No Break & Narsha were at Olympic Park (though they came to Incheon tonight for the indoors area), and Remix skate at Yeoido Park.

Im really nervous about going to shanghai & meeting everyone. I think tomorrow will be a tense & peculiar day.

its going to be an exciting competition, especially with the two australian competitors. Its their first competition, and they are my ’students’ from melbourne & brisbane. They will be the first Australians to compete in a competition. Talk about baptism by fire. If im scared, I can only imagine what they are.

oh man, its been a really great, and really exhausting day…

Last night was a funny one though - I went to the start of the Friday night skate here, to do some slalom, and found myself completely incapable of human interaction… everyone is sometimes outgoing, and sometimes shy - I tend to oscillate from extreme to extreme, but usually I can muster up ’sociable & outgoing’ when needed. Not last night. Man, my jetlag was so bad, I just kept on slaloming becasue even though it was exhausting, it was less frightening than the possibility of someone actually trying to start conversation with me in that state…  It really sucks, because there were loads of nice people there that I’d love to have had the chance to chat with & get to know.

Today was awesome though - the mornings workshop was great fun, and we had a really great location. The afternoons workshop was something else though. It was like ‘cone camp’ or maybe ’style workshop’. It was 4 skaters, from Seattle, Philadelphia and Massachusetts, most of whom have already done 2 workshops with me, and 2 of who have already entered international comps. So, I got to do something a little different. Today, all we did was style. Or, as I put it, ‘maintaining dignity in competitions’. Basically looking good in cones. So we took some basic moves, and made them look stylish. We looked at how to achieve a fluid look, how to make your slalom more dynamic looking, what to do with arms, how to keep good posture etc etc - its amazing what you can do with moves just by working on the style with which you do them. We all agreed that its the difference between ‘meh’ and ‘wow’ when you see them done.

We also discussed the importance of wearing unzipped jackets or unbuttoned shirts…

Im currently fighting the overwhelming desire to go and lie, horizontal on a bed, and close my eyes… the cardinal sin of jet-lag. Please let blogging wake me up…

So, anyway, left home again yesterday, and arrived here last night. And remain here til tuesday evening, when I have a beautiful nights sleep planned on the two overnight flights to Detroit. Oh God, it’s two separate airlines - does that mean that in the middle of the night I’m going to have to wait at baggage reclaim & check it in again?

I wish that night-time would come so that I could sleep again… though I need to go and do some slalom at the start of the night skate first.

I never finished off my Paris blog due to laziness. The competitions happened, and it was all good fun, but in the pouring rain. But rain cant be helped, and if you have the choice of (a) not doing the competition, (b) the organisation paying loads of money to hire an indoor location for ‘just in case’, and (c) competing in the rain, Ill choose the competing in the rain anytime.

Unfortunately, a fall that I took on the sunday morning set a timebomb in my neck, and about 20 mins before the competition on the Monday, decided that it would be a good time for my two misbehaving disks to prolapse, so if you see the womens vids, do enjoy a fun and rewarding game of ‘lets see what Naomi can do without turning her head or looking down’.

I found it a bit embarrassing on the podium when I was unable to hold all the gifts that Seba was bestowing on us (couldn’t use right arm) - and was unable to bend down (couldn’t let my head roll forwards or tense the muscles to keep it straight) to put them down, so there was a rather special moment as 8 wheels found freedom and tried to make a getaway by bouncing & rolling in various directions… They were all retrieved and later exchanged with JB for some Korean textbooks…

Just arrived in Paris for the Paris Slalom World Cup again, its much bigger this year, with participants from over 10 different countries I think. The number of competitors is huge.

A couple of years ago we decided to ditch the whole hotel business, and start renting a couple of apartments for us all instead. Much better - you get your own living space, kitchen, and it works out much cheaper too. This time, the number of people in my apartment varies from 4 to 7 depending on which day it is. For the most part, its just me, one other UK skater, and the two American skaters. Its really great, especially when you turn up to find that despite extreme jetlag, they’ve already unpacked the wireless router and set up a network for the week - happiness!

Well, last night I found home sweet home in Melbourne - I found it on Thursday as we were going around the city centre to find ideas for places to do freestyle, but last night was the first time that I’ve actually gone there & done any practice. It was lovely. good lighting, friendly passers by, relatively deserted, and a huge food court within 2 mins walk. mmm… food…. perfect… but its the kind of place where you can just sit down and do some study for an hour too.

We decided to move the 2nd day (today) of my workshop there too, so that’ll be really great. Ill be interested to see how everyone else likes it too.

Here is some footage from last october that I eventually got around to editing… its bad, really bad, but shows some of the slides runs at Singapore’s Slalomania competition:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcxyfAKZbIw

Sydney tomorrow, then Singapore on Friday, then London on Monday. Really looking forward to all 3 actually.