This Precious Life

For my SIL’s birthday, my brother bought her a Nintendo Wii. I never knew the Wii is so much more fun than XBox and PS3!

Over this Raya break; my Mum, Dad, brother, SIL and I have gone crazy over the Wii.

We started with the standard games – tennis, baseball, golf, and bowling that came pre-packaged with the Wii. After one day of playing, my arms were sore and aching.

Then, my brother bought the intelligent Wii Fit. It comes with a white “Wii Balance Board” that knows everything about you.

Before playing, the Balance Board will ask for your height and age. Then, it will ask for you to step onto him so that he can measure your weight and how balanced your weight distribution is. 

After that, he will prompt you to do simple balancing exercises where you have to lean to your left or right to hit a certain target and depending on how well you do it, it will calculate all that and provide you with your Wii Fit age.

I am too ashamed to reveal my Wii Fit age. Let’s just say that according to Balance Board, I am supposed to be having a mid-life crisis. *sigh*

I think my SIL’s favorite Wii Fit game is the Hula Hoop and “Step”.

For Hula Hoop, you are to sway your hips in large circular motions to swing the hoop around you. You musn’t sway too fast or the hula hoop will go up to your neck, and you musn’t sway too slowly or the hula hoop will tumble. You must aim to achieve the perfect rhythm and a balanced weight distribution between your two feet.

Every once in a while, some one will throw a hula hoop at you and even though you are already swaying with one hula hoop around you, you must bend your body to an angle so that the flying hula goes over your body. Then, you must sway stronger because now you have to keep 2 hoops circling. It gets harder. :D

For Step, you are basically on stage with a few others so you won’t feel like you are exercising alone. In the huge auditorium, you’ll see an enthusiastic crowd clapping and cheering your good work. I think this is a lot more fun than doing Step in the gym. You can really get out of breath doing this.

My Mum is especially good at skiing. There are two skii games on Wii Fit. For the first one, you are to skii between the planted flags. Some times, the flags are to your left. Other times the flags are to your right. You must balance and bend your body at just the right angle while skiing down the moutain at a lightning speed just to get between the flags.

The second ski game is Ski Shalom. It is quite easy. For this, you are skiing at up to 60mph when all of a sudden, you realize that you have come to the edge of the cliff. At exactly the right time, you must extend your legs and pretend to jump!

You are supposed to jump as far out as possible so that you land on the next mountain safely. If you don’t, you will roll down the cliff like a giant snowball. 

Once you succeed, a large crowd claps while you smugly wave to them. You are such a hero. 

A game that we found difficult at first was tightrope walking. I think this game gave me a lot of near heart-attacks because it is seriously shocking when you fall. Each time someone falls, Mum, Dad, brother, SIL and I will scream as though we’re watching a horror movie.

After a while, my brother figured out the trick to it so we all managed to succeed. Whew.

Personally, I find the strength exercises hardest but most rewarding. These are the ones where you have to do push-ups and even one-handed push-ups.  The day after playing, my abdomens, arms and thighs ached for two whole days.

Trust me, the Wii is a really good buy for any family.