Maiden ski experience

It's my first time, and I've fallen left, right, centre and back. Yes, I've fallen so many times, on so many different positions that I've quite lost count.

The first time I tried ski, R signed me straight up for a one-an-half hour instruction course. Teaching a complete beginner is differennt from knowing how to ski well. And it frees him up to go ski freely in the difficult slopes without having to handhold me. So why not.

After the brief introduction with my cute instructor, he immediately ask me to do a little glide down an extremely gentle slope. Actually, the slope is so gentle and short I'm not sure I could call it a slope at all. But I still panick when my ski sense the slightest difference in gradient and down I go.

The class was quite a torture. First, the ski boots and ski felt so clumsy on me, they really make my movement very uncomfortable. Yet, as a complete novice, instead of smoothly gliding down the snow, I was made to do quite a fair bit of "walking" up the gentlest of slopes. And of course, each time I'm supposed/expected to glide smoothly down, I tumbled down instead and have to a) wait for the poor man to pull me up; b) do the torturous climb up again. The constant bending of the knees is also a huge strain. However, being a complete kiasu Singaporean, I endured through the discomfort without any breaks, wanting to make the full use of my lesson.

However, it was only during my 2nd ski trip that I manage to ski on my own without help or handholding. After practising the whole morning, gliding down the slope holding R's hand, I miraculously managed to ski without help in the afternoon (for reasons I would rather not mention here). The feeling was great. Instead of taking half an hour to go down a short stretch of snow, it suddenly only took less than five minutes. You forget the fatigue and strain in your knees and want to go for more.

It helps to get used to falling on the snow. Probably like unicycling, when you know that it is actually safe to fall, you are more daring to go ahead without the fear of falling. And sometimes, after a terrible fall (as long as I don't break any bones), I quite like the feeling of lying on the soft snow, looking up into the sky.

Still consider myself a novice. Posture still not quite right yet. Need bigger guts to ski down steeper slopes. But I'm already looking forward to my next ski trip, which may be years from now :(

The fact that the scenery on top of the ski slopes is always breathtaking helps to whet my appetite to improve my skiing skills.

White Christmas?

Yeah! I spent my Christmas in France. It's the first time in my life to experience Christmas during the winter season, like in the fairy tales. No more warm and rainy Singapore, no more street busking trying to sell balloons to the Christmas shopping crowd in Orchard. I had even spent Christmas once before in Melbourne - a true summer Christmas, bright, sunny and terribly hot.


The burning question from my friends is: so did you have a white Christmas? Much as the photos here suggest, the landscape was hardly white, due to unusually thin snow during this early winter. It did not snow at all and we had to go high into the mountains to enjoy the snowy landscape.


The countryside in the early morning was also surprisingly "frosty", giving a very nice feel of a white Christmas, but the ice shied away within hours from the warmth of the mid-day sun.