Saturday, November 25, 2006

I rode what killed Steve Irwin...

(Australian Accent)

G'day, mate!

For canoeing trainning today, I tried one of the scariest nightmare boats any canoer of less than 2 years of experience could ask for. I've been trainning with Tiger Kayaks for almost my entire ~1 year of Kayaking, but this boat is of an entirely different species.
She maybe of the fiercest stabability, but she sure can glide well on the water.

She's The StingRay.

Yes, StingRay was a real creature, alright. She was a rough lady in the water and both me and my partner had a hard time coping with her for the first half an hour. During that time, we understood what fears Steve Irwin had to go through in his final seconds. But once you get use to her, she can be a tamed pet. A tamed pet, I tell 'ya. And the good thing 'bout this lady is that once you can master her, you can master any other Kayak Boat available! Gorgeous, ain't she?

Honestly speaking, I personally felt that the hardships onboard that boat was actually quite fun due to the excitement and adventure. The larger risks on capsizing. The restricted direction range. The slim-lined body for greater gliding power. I truely praise the Lord that we actually managed to survive today's trainning without capsizing! If my discriptions are vague and if this boat sounds like an extremely easy boat to master, well wait till you get a chance to give her a spin...

(Serious Accent)
Oh, but arriving at another subject on canoeing, we canoers also know that some mere cleaniness-loving members of the public actually dispise us from being in MacRitchie. If you're one of them, let me just state a few words about what you call in general "the people who are polluting our water supply". Now look, it's true that we are paddling in one of Singapore's major water confinment facilities. And due to boarding and deboarding our canoes, we might end up mixing a bit of mud around the shore due to walking in the water. But we understand your concerns (Hey, we're also drinking the water here) and we do all in our power of disipline to not waste the water. For example, by right we should be using pontoons laid along a particular peniculiar of the lake to board and debboard the boats at to limit contact with the lake bed. If we need to use areas that do not have these pontoons due to traffic hour (many schools use this facility), we try to spend as little time in the water for boarding/deboarding as possible. And if we capsize out at water, we are instructed to swim with the boat immediately to the nearest shore, quickly empty water from the boat and get back onboard to complete the assigned trainning programm.

And besides, the water in the facility gets treated by the P.U.B. before it reaches your tap. I can assure you that no matter what we do in the water, the water that reaches you will NOT give you problems. Singapore's water quality is one of the best in the world and it's one of the only countries where you can even drink water from your kitchen or toilet sinks.

If you're worried for the natural flora and fauna of MacRitchie, don't give a sweat. The monitor lizards here are concidered VIPs and are left alone with their own buisness. You see, it is as often as once a fortnight, or maybe more often, that we get to see those lizards swim from the Southen end of the lake to the Northen end so as to get around the park faster instead of making one great loop around. This route which they take cuts perpendicullarly into our racing lanes. But whenever a boat's course is likely to colide with the monitor lizard, we instintively either stop and wait for the lizard to cross before proceeding or turn BEHIND it and carry on paddling quickly. Basically, if you saw these lizards on a busy canoeing day, you could actually see 5m radais around these lizards without boats in them!

Oh, well. Maybe non-canoers might not understand a thing I just said because they don't speak plain Canoe, but hey, this is my blog, isn't it?

And if you've noticed on the right, I've added another airline at Leugimear International Airport. For those who don't know, 'Whose Line Is It Anyway' is a really funny show and I truely recomend watching all the results in the search. You'll see for yourself that it's good. Well, most epesodes, at least...

God bless!

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