I’ve been to lots of competitions, so I know what to expect. The recent Asian Para Games were my second so I knew roughly who was going to be there. It was just a matter of preparing myself mentally for the training and the competition.
It would be pretty eye-opening for someone who’s never been to the Asian Para Games before. You will see people with really different disabilities, for example someone who doesn’t have any arms and who uses their feet to eat.
I like the atmosphere of being in any big Games village, you feel like everyone is there for a reason, everyone has their own goal to achieve, and you get to meet a lot of new people.
I still get nervous; I sometimes place too much pressure on a certain event, but I’ve had years getting used to the pressure of competing.
I was about 7 on the stressed-out scale for the Asian Para Games. And the highest I’ve ever been, at the Paralympics, was close to a 10. It’s all about managing the pressure, though, bringing my stress levels down. It takes a couple of years to work out how to do that.
Competing is so mental. You can only do so much in terms of physical training; people miss out the mental aspects —being able to calm yourself down, or to raise your excitement levels up if you’re not feeling energetic enough.
My training schedule varies, but currently I’m training every day except weekends. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays we do gym training in the mornings, and then Tuesdays to Fridays we have swimming in the afternoons for about two hours. But this is off-peak; it’s even more intense in peak season, in the lead up to competitions we do swimming twice a day.
I was at my peak physically from 2000-2008. I had a lot of highs, I was breaking world records for 50m and 200m breaststroke. I was training around 13 times a week, plus gym sessions. I was consistently able to reach that high level and it showed in the results.
There were a lot of sacrifices, I was tired all the time but I couldn’t really think about being tired, it was just training, training, training. Still it paid off when I saw the results.
I’ve been swimming for 15 years, so there are times when I feel like maybe I don’t want to do it anymore.
It was a low point after the Beijing Paralympics, I’d been training for four years for that moment. I was pretty sure I would get a medal and I missed out by 0.2 seconds. It was really disappointing because that wasn’t my best time.
Maybe, I wanted it too much, I just got to the point that I was hitting a wall. I think about that when I’m training, because I want to do better next time.
I was pretty happy most of the time as a child. I was surrounded by a lot of positive energy and encouragement and generally didn’t feel like a had a disability. I am smiling and laughing in photos, and I think that shows what my childhood was like.
When I got to school I realized I was a little bit different, but I was never bullied. Luckily, my school mates and teachers were all really nice and always made me feel like I fitted in.
I feel strongly about women’s rights and LGBT related issues. When I look at my news feed these are the things that are missing. I feel like I need to put some information out there so people are more aware of the issues. Sometimes people just need to read one thing to start changing their mindset.
More awareness and more accessibility would help people with disabilities in Singapore. The physical environment is really important. Being in a wheelchair, whenever I go out I need to use Google Map to see for myself where the ramps are or call the venue and ask if it’s wheelchair accessible. These are little things I’ve gotten used to over the years, but for equality you want to make it accessible for everybody.
