Wednesday, December 28, 2005
No animosities please... if you want to skate safely...
Went ice skating at the Fuji Ice Palace with Yunlun and Edwin today. Although we reached there at about 11.30, 1.5 hrs after the opening time, it was already damn freaking crowded, teeming with primary and secondary school kids. It was later that I learnt that Wednesdays were the days when discounts were given to students and many grabbed hold of the last opportunity to skate before the school hols end.
I was a little afraid and inconfident initially, having not skated for at least 8 months. But very soon, I felt more at ease on the rink and was able to skate decently well (that is, for a 3rd tim
er, *lol*).As I skated on, there was one thing I noticed: everybody carried some form of confidence in them; not one facial expression I saw had fear in it. This resilience is what prevented them from crashing into each other in near-miss situations. It is important to avoid locking eyes with a person you are about to crash into so that you would not stare at each other and freeze in terror, thereby retaining the last bit of confidence and saving that precious milli-second to steer yourself to safety.
Another thing I realized was that if you want to prevent collisions, you shouldn't habour any form of animosity against other skaters that piss you off: that ah-beng that cuts into your path and who skates like a Lambo driven by a drunk driver in a skating crowd amongst which you can hardly move; the little tots that push their walkers everywhere and who don't look out for traffic in the rink; the teens who hold onto each other's shoulders, towing each other in a line and trying to bring the spirit of Christmas into the rink, via portraying the imagery of reindeers towing Santa Claus behind. (The Fuji Ice Palace is one of the very few places in Singapore that could scarcely pass off as having a white, white Christmas, I know, I know.) Now, if you are irritated by these people, it means that you would be less tolerant and less resilient to sudden situations that require you to keep calm in order to react accordingly. I see people pushing away others who accidentally knock into them, instead of helping to stabilise them and indirectly themselves. Needless to say, both of them fell down. It is this sense of animosity,stemmed from the sense of irritation, that made them selfish and unforgiving enough to help the party who was at fault. In the end, they suffered from the fall as well.
***
For this session, I concentrated mainly on learning to skate without that walking motion, reducing speed quickly to adjust to the slower speed ahead, zig-zagging my way through crowded parts when I couldn't reduce speed in time and to skate without falling, esp on the most slippery parts of the rink. I was quite satisfied this time round, as I continued improving despite a long break since the last session and given that the situation today is hardly the best: damn crowded rink and slippery surfaces everywhere the ice has melted. I hope that the rink would not be so crowded the next time round so that I can pick up speed and probably learn to do some patterns. :p