Eh?

I'm finally free from tuition on Friday evenings. Tan suggested skating at ECP; this was something that we'd agreed to do ever since graduation last May but also something that never materialized, that is, until tonight. So, after a 2-hour wait for her to get back home from work, I picked up the relatively new pair of skates and made my way down to Lagoon's carpark.

Unsurprisingly, Lagoon's carpark was quite full by the time we reached (around 8.45 p.m.) and it was near impossible for both of us to find a lot each immediately. 3 minutes and 2 carparks later, we found ourselves to be parked right behind that row of red-bricked chalets. Put on our skates promptly, sidetracking, it wasn't as prompt as I'd like it to be since I had to tighten the laces every; my fingers were going sore from all that pulling, nearly anyway.

Got our asses down to the cycling/skating track where I attempted to give Tan a 5-minute crash course on heelbraking. We practiced together along the sides of the track, until she felt confident enough to go further, much further.

Set off in the direction of Macs (I haven't had dinner btw), and 30 seconds later, a man on a bicycle going in the same direction as us decided to come behind us and pedalled to a stop, giving the both of us a few  glance-overs the whole time. The other lane was empty, fyi, and he could have overtaken us with his eyes closed but that was exactly what he did not do. We got out of his way eventually and continued in the direction of big M. Weird people.

When we finally got to Macs, I decided that it was too crowded and Tan was a little terrified of the 'slopes' that she'll need to roll over to get into Macs, so, change of plans and we rolled on to Big Splash instead. Arrived at Carls Jr after a bit more of skating, and I'm pretty sure I said a helluva words to persuade Tan up the slope after the pavement that links Big Splash to the cycling/skating tracks.

Chatted mindlessly for a fair bit about life, people in it and all that glorified emptiness and I guess I was only halfway through the fries (my appetite's been way off due to a sore throat I've been having for the past 48 hours) when they arrived at the fast-food joint, and made an awful lot of noise at the queue. I was interrupted halfway through a fry and maybe 2 words about the next poor victim of gossip.

I looked up and saw two angmoh guys, and one of them (let's call him Redshirt) suddenly asked (in verbatim), "Excuse me, but do you think rollerblading is actually a sport?" And his friend (WhiteAdidas) quipped in a friendly manner, "Are there any competitions for skating in Singapore? We're actually interested in inline-skating!" Hmm, let's get this straight. For someone who knows nuts about skating, why would he/she even be interested in competitions? Try harder please.

Another friend (Blueshirt) joined in. Turned out Blueshirt's been queueing for drinks for his two buddies, and guess what, they conveniently placed their drinks on our tables and sat down. More small-talk, by this time I was more or less done with the fries and had just moved on to picking onions slices out from my burger, with a few of them bouncing onto the floor.

I asked him where are they from; and WhiteAdidas turned out to be Scottish, Blueshirt's English and Redshirt's Welsh. I was trying to make out differences in their speech features and couldn't be bothered about what Redshirt was talking to me about. I think some of that phonetics lectures' madness has somewhat gotten into my head. I love ludwig's classes! Ha.