Extra curriculum activities

This time I am sharing a selection of Singapore enabled free time activities.

One of the first water activities which I made acquaintance with was wake boarding. On this artificial island it should come as no surprise that there is of course a man made lagoon with machine run cable pulling wake boarders around. Cable operated approach made it easy to try and try again to get the surfing going on. For a good part of the first hour I was underwater after repeated unsuccessful attempts at staying upright. Somehow the lost balance was eventually found and managed to start enjoying the sport. On the next visits I have since changed from the amateur board to more intermediate board. There is clearly a learning curve happening here, but not yet on the level of the guy shown on my video clip.

Another water related -- and yet as artificial -- sport is flowriding on a man made wave. They are pumping 30 000 - 100 000 gallons of water (depending on the size of the wave) per minute and adrenaline driven fools like yours truly are aiming to ride the wave with a flowboard. Once again a balancing act -- this time asking for bit of a different angle and posture than on the wakeboard and thus starting the fun of falling down from the beginning all over again. As you can expect: a whole lot of fun.

One of the niceties of living in Singapore is to be able to pack my bags and leave on a short notice to a long weekend trip to one of the magical diving sites around. A week ago I went to Tioman Island on South China Sea off the coast of Malaysia. Through quite convenient and ridiculously inexpensive bus & ferry connection I can get below the surface in a matter of hours. After hustle and bustle of metropolitan life, there I was diving through underwater caves with sea turtles and blue spotted rays while trying to find perfect buoyancy being surrounded by schools of coral fish. I've gotta do this again soon!

One final example is about flying. Singapore has this thing with superlatives: everything has to be either the biggest or largest or longest. For example this city has the largest Ferris Wheel in the world and it is currently building the biggest indoor stadium. On that note we have the largest windtunnel for indoor skydiving. Once again an absolutely stunning experience to be suspended in midair and trying to control your position in 3D space with tiniest of movements. Overall this was one skillfully executed service offering, with thematic instruction videos and clever upsell scheme after having enjoyed the thrill of flying. Once again the guy in my video is not me, but I underwent similar experience.

Naturally there is a wide variety of other activities to be pursued. In addition to the activities mentioned, so far I have

1. rented a bike for a day to see if the bold statements about this city being entirely connected for pedestrian and bicycle access without having to wait at any traffic lights is exaggerated (which it is apparently due to so many construction sites)
2. practiced wall climbing in uncomfortably hot weather (me being the odd westerner trembling on the lowest wall holds while thin yet muscular localites scaling the walls without breaking a sweat), 
3. participated in some martial arts classes (dojo luckily was air conditioned, but weirdly no showers provided. Don't these people sweat at all?)

Still on to-do list I have things like climbing Mount Kinabalu in Borneo (and enjoying the world's highest via ferrata -- apparently Malaysians know their superlatives as well) and taking the mandatory photo opp at Angor Wat.