How we love skating ^^

My dear readers, today i am going to share with you all my life story of up till today. As you all know i am into a sport called inline slalom, but its not the only thing i love. i love to slide too! And i love aggro and street skating! hahaha.

We now go back to the year 2000, when i was 10 years old. That time i love to play basketball, one day, a girl i know show me her carfu skate, and i was really curious about skating. i borrowed her skate and start skating. The skate was shit at the extreme, and least not to say the size was utterly wrong, i have to cram my toe to skate. Never the less i learnt how to stand and do little skating with it.
It took 2 weeks just to learn to stand, and almost a month to even roll, cause i am the only one skating? hahaha.

In the year 2001, my father bought me a skate at $99, carlifornia pro. Correct size, got 8 wheels, omg godly, what more can i ask? And 1 year into skating, i know nuts about braking yet. Then my brother got interested too, and we went into street skating with my street skater friends. We both share 1 skate, and we skate daily.

In the year 2002, i have PSLE, so very little skating for the year.But i manage to get clement to skate once that year, and he was quite interested in it.

The year 2003, the turning point of our life. My uncle from hong kong came to singapore to buy me a present, i told him i want a skate. He got me a ULTRA WHEEL FLEXIBLE FRAME SKATE. At that point of time getting a new skate is like sending me to heaven, beacause i mother would chop her head than to buy me a new skate, so i feel invincible in my ULTRA WHEEL. i skated everyday downstairs my home, just street skating. Jump curbs, walk stairs, do some spins. But i skated alone.

By the end of 2003, my dear friend clement ow yong became very interested in what i do, but since he no skate he will have to share with me. Just so happen that i bought a wrong size, 42 skate, anyone with a feet can wear it at 14 years old, so we shared the skate and learn all the tricks together. How to jump 180 degree, how to skate backwards. At that time he can only skate 1 hour a day, so we can only skate 30 minutes each, but we had alot of fun together.

Now we come to 2004, where all the legendary skaters come into my life. We had the hougang bladers. Contain of clarence, me, clement and desmond. The 4 of us formed the legendary hougang bladers. My brother use my carlifornia pro, i use ultra wheel, desmond use the shittest skate i have ever seen in my life and clement have finally bought his skate! ROLLERBLADE STREET VERVE. Desmond was a real demon skater, but if i am to say his story you will have to ask the hougang blader members, for what he did was legendary. We would sneak out at the middle of the night and skate together and do street skating at that time and it was really a very good time we spent together.

2005! OMG, this is the year whereby from us feeling like the best in hougang, to shittest in hougang, to my very surprise some of my classmates are skaters! And for the first time in my life my friend show me a powerslide, i have no idea what the fuck it is, and i thought we were like frog in the well, from then on i learnt that they go to East Coast park regularly and learn skating from sliders. At that time inline culture is the domainating team, the best in singapore. And we were into slide by then. We trained slide everyday by then. At this year we all learnt how to powerslide and front acid( front t brake) which is like godly move. But with our shit skates and wheels, we found out that we cannot carry on because our skate are dying.

But luckily, we found an alternative, which is slalom. One fine day we met this Guy named john, who is a slalom skater and OMG, i tell you his skill is godly, he can spin on a toe, and it is 2005! He teaches us slalom we had many fun. i was the first to own a so call fs skate, the POWERSLIDE CELL FS II. I saved up from my pocket money for like 1 whole year just to get this freaking skate, which broke after i mastered CRAZY(a slalom move) and changed to MICRO UAS 88, which is a freaking recreation skate, to slalom. We still slide though, but we have wheels problem.

Later in the middle of 2005, i found out that there is a shop in ECP, which is called hvper sports, which have a free wheels box, where people put their used wheels, and since i am the only one who can go to ECP cause clement have the 1 hour curfew, i will bring one freaking big plastic bag and collect all the freaking wheels back to hougang to share with my fellow skaters, but by this time, desmond have stopped skating, because his skate is too shit to slalom. So we carry on our training on slide and slalom and street skating.

After our intensive training, our skates are literally unskatable, none of the skaters have a normal skates. Cuffs broken, wheels flat spot, holes in skate. Still remember one day my bro went to hvper to change wheels, and eddie told him that he will sell him a second skate for 50 dollar, but clarence insisted to change his wheels with $88 on his almost dead carlifornia pro. Holy shit, he change to seba wheels and became godly in slide. Wheel barrow! Parallel! Unity?!! hahaha crazy bastard, with my UAS 88 i can only do up to wheel barrow, and we knew Ernest at that time, and he use STREET FIGHTER skates, to slide! OMG hahaha. And this year i joined my very first competition, SLALOMANIA 2005! I got almost last, and i was very sad, but i told myself i will be better next year! And losing gave me more determination to slalom even more!

Soon enough AARON CHUA, one of clement's friend came in to join us the hougang bladers, and he uses my ultra wheels, we carry on our slalom journey.

By the year 2006, we were still in our shabby state, but with clarence doing heel wheeling in his carlifornia, none of have any reason to complain, any thing is possible, i manage to do heel wheeling 20 cones, and clement can do his heel spins. But as much as our body can take, our skates cannot, and they die day by day....

But as much as we are losing hope in skating, this year, our government had did a good deed to the skating community in singapore! SOMERSET SKATE PARK IS OPEN!
So we do aggro too! So it is aggro, slide and slalom at the same time, our skating fire is back! However it did not last long, because aggro kill our skate even faster, parts falling everyday, i was in charge of repair, and all i have are eproxy, glue gun and twine, so its literally : if it breaks, tie it back, if theres a hole, patch it up, if its seperated, gule it back.

As much as i can fix, clarence's skate is already 6 years old, and the aggro part is really the last time the skate can ever let him use it again, the skate cannot carry on its journey, as much as the skate had stayed with us, it was time to say good bye, the cuff was gone, broken into 3 pieces, i swear to god i tried my best to patch it up, i knew it was impossible, but i tried my very best. i glued the cuff back into one piece, and tied it back to the skate, and use eproxy to cover the cracks, however my 3 hours of work only lasted 1 day, after skating at ecp for the last time with carlinfornia pro, the cuff was shattered into uncountable pieces, and no glue or eproxy could ever patch it up.

So you think clarence have no skate? He can't skate? Well, the skate was kept for another few months, and that bastard will just not let it rest in freaking peace, he carried on skating in that dead skate. I have never seen a skate as bad as that skate in my life ever again, and they day it was thrown was the day my brother got his new skate, SPOGA, a distant cousin of the carlifornia pro, which looks the same, feels the same and perform the same. But it didn't last even a month before the frame and skate went their seperate ways.

Finally my brother saved up 400 dollar to get his first freestyle skate, TWISTER ORANGE. And i tell you, getting a skate is a big event, just like getting married, 400 dollar for a 14 year old is like everything, went to every shop in ECP, and finally arrive hvper. Guess who we saw? Benjamin~ The only freestyle slalom skater left in singapore, working in hvper, and he recommended the skate to clarence, benjamine took the cahnce to talk to clarence because see one guy who slalom is like seeing a guy who can speak the same language with him, and thats how we got to know him. After begging for discount for the whole day, benjamine decided that they were fated, and he changed the twister frame, to seba frame, all for 400 dollar! woots!

This year, we were finally sponsored by MICRO SINGAPORE. At that time, the sponsorship contains 1 seba skate, for 2 years we would be in micro. And we gotta go to SHANGHAI for our very first international competition~~ Woo LA LA. But we have to pay half of the ticket. But WTH we care, in our state if we were to even skate at all we would need new skate, we were in desperate situation, to carry on our slalom journey, it is either sign or good bye, because our skate will be dead like clarence in no time, because i am tying twines to my skate and clement's, soon we will have to glue. So we joined the team, getting my first IMBA SKATE the SEBA HIGH BLACK!
i feel like i can own the world. However we were not able to get clement in for the sponsorship and aaron can't get it too, because the team only need 2 so only me and my brother joined in. The whole team consist of ROBIN, BENJAMINE, ME, CLARENCE.

With our skate, benjamine became our caring teacher, telling us everthing about slalom, the rules, the ways to train. But without much training we were into our first competition international, SHANGHAI 2006.

The first thing we learn there is how to get thrashed, china have 10 years old kids killing us, everyone is at war, no one knew what country singapore is, and no one give a f***. We went on with our shitty performances and got our last few places. It was an ultimate test of passion because we were literally throwing our face there, noob skill performance. Lost but not heart broken, we carried on slaloming and hope for the best in 2007.

But before in 2007, we manage to get clement and aaron in, on one condition, they will have to pay the skate by installment until full payment is paid for their skate. And so we had the team that was well known, Team Micro Singapore.

So how was the slide team formed? Why are Benjamine, Robin, Clement and Aaron not in the team anymore? Well, it will be in my next post, THE STORY OF MY TEAM.