phinmag: a personal experimental media project

“Oh no, he’s gonna make us do warm ups!” I told my friend while in the car one fine Saturday afternoon.

My friend dragged me along to play futsal because her colleague invited her. Her colleague wanted to start an all-girl futsal team. My friend thought it was just for fun until the coach arrived.

“I guessed this is serious,” as my friend giggled and laughed at my statement earlier.

Honestly, I am not an athletic person - even back in school, when training for Sport’s Day was a nightmare. I never survived warm ups. I died by the first five minutes. Stamina is not something I have for sports though, ironically, I can actually danced for four hours straight in a club. Another point is that I haven’t done any proper exercise – unless you count dancing alone in my room because there are no where else in Kuching to dance without getting gawked at by people – for more than a year! That’s how active I am.

But seriously, I’m not much of a sports person. The only sports I pay attention to is the X Games. Yeah, I like extreme sports especially skateboarding (I used to skateboard when I was little until the board broke and Dad said girls don’t skateboard and that was the end of the story). Other than that, sports is not a favorite subject of mine.

Anyway, before I go off tangent, back to that Saturday in March… I happened to take a day off from work then, which was why I was able to make it for the afternoon training. This was my first experience playing futsal; the same with my friend too.

The coach is a few years younger than I am (my friend and I are the old farts there). Four other girls showed up including my friend’s colleague (she’s the captain) with the youngest being, like, eighteen. We are like a motley crew of female futsal players. One petite girl is like a little dynamite of energy; another is a bit crazed and tend to give self-sports-commentaries when she’s playing, pretending to be Ronaldo or one of those famous football dudes; one ever-smiling quiet girl who is just as confused as I am about the rules; our patient captain who tries her best to keep her deranged team mates in line; and my friend who giggles when she plays even when she’s kicking air with all her might. I just kick ball without any grasp over the rules or technique yet. (Though my friend told me that the captain thinks I got potential. My friend has been calling me Miss Pele since then.)

I admit it was a lot of fun. I guess I could be a part of the all-girl team – just for the heck of it. But with work and all, going for training may be a bit difficult. I think my friend likes the idea of wearing those cute women’s futsal outfits than actually playing the game.

Well, the coach did tell us one honest fact why guys like to watch women play futsal: it’s the sexy outfits – and definitely sexier if the girl can actually play. Hmmm… sweaty girls in sexy futsal jerseys and shorts expertly tackle a ball appeals to men, eh? Hah.

Trying something new has always been fun to me though it is not something I have done in a long while. A part of me is afraid of the unknown. Trying something fresh is scary. Yet, strange enough, a bigger part of me has this daring tendency to just go “Oh hell” and try anyway. I find that trying new things is a challenge to myself. If I never done it, I really want to do it no matter how scary it felt. I think growing stagnant of mind, body and soul is scarier.

Boredom kills me. And I do get bored easily - which is why I strive to find something new to do to get me all excited, motivated and feel alive again. The creation of Phin Magazine or Phin Mag is one endeavor to breath new life to the world of blogging. Well, at least my world of blogging - I don’t expect to rock other people’s world of blogging as well.

I’ve been blogging for about a decade now and it’s beginning to feel old. I know there are a lot of people out there who just “discovered” the joys of blogging. But for me, the trend is so passé now. This was why I came up with the idea of Phin Mag: take something old and give it a new concept. Putting the contents together has been pretty interesting and I’m really excited about publishing the first issue and coming up with ideas for future ones. It’s so fun!

My brain has been spewing some fresh ideas lately, with more new things for me to explore. Phin Mag is not my only side project and futsal is not my only new hobby. I’m game for anything. I just started another side project making jewelry for sale and rediscovering other passions at the same time.

Starting something new may be scary but you’ll never know what you’re missing out if you don’t try – even if you don’t know what you’re doing. New things makes us learn and experience, and takes us to where we’d never thought of. You’ll be surprise. A walk on the wild side has its benefits.

Take Danny Wallace, for instance. He’s a British author, who, out of boredom, placed a whimsical ad in the papers one day and asked people – just anyone – to “Join Me”. Join him in what? No one knew; neither did he. But a lot of people did join him anyway and Mr Wallace ended up with his own cult, by accident. It’s not a the-end-is-near-suicide-pact kind of cult (but he prefers to call it as a “collective”). It’s more about doing good deeds and random acts of kindness. I’m reading his book Join Me now, thanks to a recommendation from a friend who picked up a tattered secondhand copy of it in the budget bin at a bookstore recently.

I’m not starting a cult here. Nor do I have big ambitions to be a cult leader either. I’m the kind of person who throws herself into something new when she’s bored and needed a challenge to bring her out of her rut.

Life should be an adventure because sometimes there’s a need to get out of that comfort zone and have fun.