Psychomotor Skills to the Max

These few weeks during the holidays will test my psychomotor skills to the max.

First up, driving. I realised a couple of days ago that my practical test for driving is held in March. Well, it's something that I should have remembered. On hindsight, it didn't seem bad at all that I could only book my test 6 months in advance, and no earlier. Till now, I have only attended two driving lessons. That means at least 25 more lessons to go before I take my test in 3 months time. If that didn't stress me, it didn't. It just means that I need to pick up my pace in learning driving and depend on the good old FLAIR.

Attended my first driving lesson in weeks on Sun morning. Not exactly a great idea to put a beginner driver, who hasn't been familiar with the clutch and gear coordination, on the road on a rainy day, on his third lesson. Lesson three involved driving around Bukit Gombak, through a road with a 70km/h limit, hence allowing me to experience 4th gear for the first time, driving through countless traffic lights and junctions, making right & left turns at T-junctions, and overtaking vehicles (mainly buses and illegally parked cars). But that's the nature of things for lessons under a private instructor. However, I believe I must have broken enough traffic rules to condemn me to a life-long ban on driving.

Amongst the mistakes I committed, both major and minor ones:
1) Not stopping at the T-junction with a stop sign before making my left turn.
2) Stalling my engine in the middle of a traffic junction because I release the clutch too early.
3) Not changing gear often enough. I was quite comfortable sticking to gear 2 and its speed most of the time, though I was told that I must change to higher gears when I reach certain speed.
4) Not changing to gear 2 when making turns.
5) Stepping on clutch first before brakes. Realised for the first time that car does slow down when you step on the break without stepping on the clutch. Always thought clutch must come first.
6) Not stepping on brakes when I switch to lower gear.
7) Stopping in the middle of the lane while I'm supposed to make a left turn. Told that I should keep left, with the wheels steered left.
8) Not switching off my right signal after overtaking a vehicle.
9) Stopping on a zebra crossing, which I'm told would earn me 10 points or immediate failure, can't remember.
10) Failing to slow down before zebra crossing.
11) Not checking my rear mirror at all, only for the first time 15 min before the lesson was over. Oh, I was supposed to check that and not my left side mirror while going into the left lane.
12) And the list goes on...

Well, at least I haven't been into an accident. And I think I finally getting my gear switching coordination right. My initial drive-off and gear switching became smoother towards the later part of the lesson. Only hoping that my fourth lesson, which is to be held at Thurs night, will go smoothly. Drivers at Bukit Gombak beware.

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My other involvement which tests my psychomotor skills is my basic salsa lesson. One-Two-Three-pause, Four-Five-Six-pause. Finally get my body to be less tense. Hopefully I can at least be as good as these dancers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ913L-ABeQ

Maybe not. Wonder how much time and effort must go into getting these complex moves right. Can't even get my basics right. Think I'll aim to be at least as comfortable as these dancers, and not to step on my partner's toes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=js0IZi6L_uw

And this is plain inspirational. Kudos to the male dancer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnsz8Uc3enE&feature=related

For now, I shall simply try to master the 5 basic steps of salsa. Left-Right-Left, Right-Left-Right.

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On an academic note, I've just gotten my results for two of my modules. A bit disappointed, as they did fall short of my initial expectations. Considering that I only spent 6 hours in all (over week 13-week 15) to prepare for one of them, it's a rather satisfactory grade. The other, I blame it on the excessive time spent on AFA and the 5 papers in a week, which restricted my ability to do more preparations. Well, not many people are comfortable entering an exam hall without practising any questions at all, relying just on your understanding of concepts. I'm one of them. Now, I'm just bemoaning over my falling GPA.