Singapore on Ice

So somehow eight months blew by with my skates sitting in the back of my closet. The lining has actually cracked and there was a spot of rust on the blade from the humidity. I finally went to Singapore's only ice rink today with a friend to see what it had to offer. It's small (studio size) with a few rows of bleachers down one side and a music room in the corner. Pretty standard set-up. They don't have hockey here and the figure skaters skate on public ice with a flood every 3-4 hours (tear). Yup, it's like Russia with nicer coaches and 99.9% less vodka. The rink is a little sketchy but I've seen worse in California.

I have to say it felt really good to get out there. I might have overdone it a little because I went home and passed out for hours. We'll just call that a "happy nap" and not a "you are not 19 anymore nap."

Skating in Singapore

So when we first arrived here I was taken to view Singapore's ice rink. It turned out to be a studio rink (like the one we had behind the other two rinks at Minto that one really used) and it's inside a shopping mall. Since I haven't been in the country long enough at a time to have a normal schedule I just never got around to going to check it out again.

I did attempt to contact skaters here but I couldn't find any. There were no schedules on any of the skating club pages and no contact information either (and most of their links to anything were broken). The skating rink itself has a site with operating hours and again no schedule. I decided to write to them and ask what sessions I could drop in on. They did not understand what I meant by a "session." Nobody books ice. There are no hockey sessions, figure skating sessions, tot skates.... nope. Just one big long public session. Even if you are in lessons, they still let the public on the ice. They refused to put me in contact with any skating clubs. Fine, I said, I'll just rent the ice. They said that would be $800 an hour and would come with a birthday party room [headesk].

No wonder skating isn't popular here, it's a royal pain in the ass.