Thursday, July 05, 2007
at 9:29 PM

hmmm went sports climbing for sabbaticals and boy it was fun!

before the course started all of us had this bad bad impression of rock climbing and artificial ice climbing cos it sounds really boring. but it seems like these two days hav changed our minds (or mine at least =D)

on the first day we did rock climbing. the morning was spent on theory lessons where we learnt about all the safety measures and equipment for rock climbing and belaying. then after lunch we hit the walls! was one of the first few to try the 25-metre wall. it was rather easy at the beginning but some 10 metres up there was a portion of the wall that is slightly overhang.. and i didnt make it past that! so i simply gave up and watched the others climb. belayed yaozhong while he was climbing and turns out that belaying is rather tiring as well..

after taking a long rest decided to try the 15-metre walls. more overhangs this time but there are also more tiles for us to cling onto. managed to climb to the top although i was totally exhausted later. but after i came down i was told that i almost died! well not exactly so but its due to ky(my belayer) forgetting to attach the carabiner to the ATC and me forgetting to check that too. it only makes belaying harder actually. so the instructor 'punished' us by making me climb the wall again! hahahaa

and so the day ended and we went bowling at safra yishun! wore house shoes and played with house balls. it was a total disaster, not only i scored <100, i even fell down on my first frame! apparently the soles of the shoes are in pretty bad shape, i couldnt slide as i approach the lane and thus i tripped over.. bowled the rest of the game in total malu-ness hahaa. and it was quite a retarded choice to go bowling anyway!

2nd day was even more fun! started with artificial ice climbing in the morning, and this time i was really the first to try it! artificial ice climbing is much more tedious and tiring than rock climbing. we had to stick axes into the styrofoam wall and kick our spiked boots into them too. then we pluck out the axes and stick them back at a higher spot in order to climb higher. sticking the axes in aint difficult actually, its plucking them out thats tiring. managed to climb to the top (its around 10 metres) but i would actually hav fallen off if not for the belay rope holding me up. came back down and was dead beat. artificial ice climbing was fun but super tiring! xP

after lunch we did abseiling. 20 metres up was a nice view! but it was so scary at first when you jump off from the ledge. i was quite humji so i didnt do the soft lock thingy haha. blegh. nothing much abt abseiling actually. then we had bouldering! it was quite fun! the instructor taught us a few techniques of climbing but no matter how we tried to apply them we cant get them to work.. so we basically just fooled around and tried to complete routes set by the instructors. ha quite fun i guess!

so that kinda sums up the sabbaticals! now we're all certified level 1 rock climbers =D =D

went bowling again haha.. this time did slightly better than ytd but still nothing beats using my own ball and shoes! i love my scout reactive hi-flare <3 feel like getting nvs by ebonite which is not yet released but i'm not as rich as donald hahaa.



something is wrong with the chatterbox. i cant tag!

shuyi: hey! my bro pays more attention to his gf =X ha and yup i was mugging arithmetric and geometric progression x_x
yingzhi: thank you! its okay you forgot, i'm still glad you wished me anyway =D take care!