'Blauwe Maandag' sports

‘Blauwe Maandag’ sports are what I call sports I tried but didn’t like. ‘Blauwe Maandag’ is an expression in Dutch for things that have no meaning. With the ‘Blauwe Maandag’ sports I go through memory lane of sports that I wasn’t good at or was actually good at and didn’t like but tried. I tried them, because others wanted to do them, or I liked the way the sport was done but couldn’t do it the same way myself. Also some of these sports where part of my exploration of the culture I was born in on Curaçao.

Merengue & Salsa

Let’s start with the one everybody thinks I should be good at, because I am from the Dutch Caribbean, Curaçao. I started with lessons in Utrecht when I was living in Zeist. Later on continue at another school with the salsa lessons. Mostly I learnt Merengue and that is a dance I can dance. Salsa I can only dance if a trainer is dancing with me. With that said I went a few times with friends living in Eindhoven back then to Antwerpen to dance Merengue and Salsa in Café Local. This a place where they had life merengue and salsa music. It was fun to practice, but I must say I got bored and went back to swimming and tennis.

Bridal Shower

A strange phenomenon I don’t understand are the bridal showers that are organized for the women who are getting married. Most of the time the bridal shower isn’t fun for anybody. I organized two and went to one I didn’t organize.

• The first bridal shower I co-organized was in Den Haag. It was at a health center, and I had snacks, a virgin cocktail and massages in a machine. It was good nobody was claustrophobic because it was like being inside a coffin.

• The second one I co-organized I picked the dinner place and a colleague at E-Quality asked other colleagues there if pole dancing was female friendly. So the bridal shower team went to Rotterdam. To me it seemed like an obscure place, but it was safe for the group of women to practice pole dancing. Pole dancing is an aerobic style, which I didn’t know but was told then. As a bonus the bride took me and a few others for Henna hand coloring.

• The last one I went to was a make-up lesson. I didn’t like it at all, the instructor wanted to do a big make up change over on me, because she didn’t meet people with my skin color a lot. A bit strange because I wasn’t the one getting married who wanted the make-up tips.

Karate

Karate was a sport I didn’t like, but it seemed I picked up a few of the punches and kicks. Although I like training in swimming and tennis, I didn’t like the 10.000 hours of making the same kick and punches.

Belly Dancing

Belly dancing was one of the sports I could try at Olympus, the student sports facility in Utrecht on De Uithof. It was a workshop, where I noticed that I really can’t dance on the rhythm of the music and my belly doesn’t move the way it was supposed during this workshop. Is seemed easy seeing al the other doing it, but I couldn’t. It was like being in music class again in high school with the music teacher behind the piano playing music and I had to write down if the tunes were high, the same or lower than the one, before. I always got lost, because most of the time I couldn’t decide if it was higher, lower or the same. No musical ear for me, which I knew from the ‘blokfluit’ and ‘dwarsfluit‘ lessons I took.

Golf Clinic

Golf is one of the sports I learnt during my studies at the HES Amsterdam. I had two golf lessons and a lot of explanation about the rules in golf. The first lesson was on a real golf court in Amsterdam.  I was first told that there were no lefty material and had to practice with my right hand the swing to bring the golf ball in the field. I noticed that a fellow student, who also was a lefty found somewhere lefty material and was doing better. I asked if I could try too. It went better and I liked how far and how much better it went with my normal left swing. Actually I could put all my frustration in sending the ball as far as I wanted.

Putting In Golf

The second golf lesson I had was putting. I had to put the ball all the time form different angles in a gym. I don’t have the patience for this, like I didn’t have with the snooker lessons I had also. Another one of these sports I got acquainted with during my studies was bowling. I was better at that, but also boring.

Other Sports During My Youth

Besides swimming I did a ‘blauwe maandag’ Jazz Ballet and gymnastics in Almere when I was living in The Netherlands. When returning to Curaçao I opted for swimming and not for gymnastics which was at the same sports facility on Curaçao.

Tai Chi

I got acquainted with Tai Chi, when I talked to my spv’er, about one of my travels where I had seen Tai Chi done in the open air. I wanted to try it. She asked me if I really wanted to try it and told me where I could do it in Utrecht. I tried a few lessons, but it is a very slow sport, and I had to move in a circle. And yes, I got dizzy again. I was also unsuccessful at this sport.

These are all the unsuccessful sports I tried. In the future I will stick with swimming, tennis or hiking or maybe try a variant on them like paddle tennis. 😊