A few weeks ago I wrote about how I installed Pokemon Go on my phone to help get my son out and more active. This post, I guess, is an update on how that has been working. Or not. See, the thing is, after the initial jump in activity, we’ve fallen back a bit. He’s not as eager to get out and about to catch them.
On the other hand, I’m more active now. I walk further when I’m out during the day, stopping at pokestops to collect items, and walking around to help catch pokemon and hatch eggs for him. I’m doing this, not just for my health, but also because he is still excited about the game. He’s just not as excited to go out and catch as he was the first couple of weeks. And when I get home in the evening, he wants to see what pokemon I’ve caught or hatched.
Which brings us to last weekend. Saturday mornings he has extra Chinese tuition, which has improved his Chinese greatly by the way, which he finishes at about 1.30. Afterwards we like to get him out and doing things, even if it just means going to the shops to walk around. Like a couple of weeks ago, we went to VIVO City, a large shopping centre, to catch pokemon there. But we try to do more active things like swimming or bike riding.
In that line we have heard about an exercise program run by the Singapore government, called Active Kids, to get kids more active and playing sports. Like many places now, Singapore has a weight problem with its children and this is part of how they are tackling this problem. Anyway, one of these programs is run at West Coast Park, which isn’t that far from where we live, every Saturday afternoon about 5.30pm.
See where I’m going? We decided to ask if he wanted to go to West Coast Park with the idea to catch some pokemon. Of course, he loved the idea, so just after 4 we headed off there, with the intent of accidentally seeing the activity they were having that day. As all great plans do, it failed. Sure, we went catching pokemon, but then Jay got distracted by other things. First by a nearby marina, where we sat and watched the boats for a while. And then by all the playground equipment. And before we knew it, we’d missed the Active Kids program.
We ended up having dinner at the park and went home. We did have fun and caught a couple of pokemon, it really didn’t seem like a great place to catch them. And most importantly, we got out and about and had some exercise. Not the exercise we had hoped Jay would be doing, but any exercise is better than none. Who knows, maybe we’ll have better luck next time.
