What an awkward-sounding title again. It came to me randomly as I often find myself being conflicted in my thoughts, as always.

January had been a really really extremely crazy month for me. Those 31 days felt like an entire quarter as I was caught in a whirlwind of travel and a role/manager switch. It could be better, it could be worse, but this had been my 4th change so far (in the same company), none of which had been voluntary or given a proper notice for. It was literally just, re-org time let’s do some musical chairs and here I am in a completely different scope of work which I did not sign up for. To be honest, sometimes I feel like my life is pretty much like those management associate/graduate program where I get to ‘move around’ departments to learn new stuff and figure out what I like. Yea, that’s my consolation I try to convince myself everyday as I failed to convince why my boss thinks that I am good (or perhaps the right person) for this scope of work. Oh wells,  I don’t know if I am ‘allowed’ to whine, given that the job market is really tragic right now and everyone is telling me to be ‘thankful’ that I still have a job. This had been my longest job to date and given that for my past few jobs, the job description I applied for doesn’t exactly match with the reality of the role itself, so this wave of musical chairs.. I guess it is something that I should be used to but that doesn’t stop me from whining and feeling sorry for myself. Oops. Sorry for the rambing.

Okay but nope, that entire paragraph has nothing to do with “thrill seeking” or being a “scaredy cat”; just me being a sulky cat. HA.

So recently, there have been a lot of reported death incidents in the ski field. I think there have been at least 3 cases in the news so far, plus a lot more ‘injuries’ around me and the public space (i.e. celebrities), which makes me wonder if it is still safe for me to keep going back to the ski field. This year, I went for a ski trip in January (it was mid Feb last year) and I had a less-than-optimal experience. I clocked only 3 days on the fields and probably only tried 5 different lifts and the runs/distance clocked was kind of pathetic compared to last year. I know I shouldn’t put these numbers out or do this comparison thing but I was just traumatised by the experience and probably upset with myself for not doing better.

Well, there were many things that went kind of wrong and things just spiralled downwards in a way. We signed up for lessons for the first day, and I was thankful to be ‘gifted’ with a private class since there were no other students. Sadly, being at a level of above first-timers didn’t give me the care and concern I thought I could get as a really bad student. Bad in terms of skills. It was also my really young instructor’s first season teaching, and I struggled with the basics like forgetting how to ‘step up’ the upslope plus I couldn’t even get up standing after I’ve fallen on the slopes. The worse part? I couldn’t even remove my skis after I fall. For some reason, my skis were locked in too tightly to the boots and even with a lot of strength, I couldn’t snap it out. I thought it was me being weak, but there was one that my instructor failed to snap it out too (while on the slopes). The whole session, I was trying to just get back my footing after 11 months and trying to figure out how to parallel ski while being fearful of falling, as I would struggle so hard to get my feet back up again. Also, if I had to compare to my previous instructor last year, this instructor didn’t bring me up to new slopes and for the whole 2 plus hours, we were just doing the same slope, with different heights. The instructor I had last year (at a different resort), brought me up the mountains and allowed me to try a wide variety of ski lifts (including the pizza box) and guided me through longer runs which was scenic and fun. This instructor I had, was just ‘drilling’ me and the worse part was when I first fell, he didn’t come over to check in on me because perhaps he thought I was capable enough to figure out how to stand on my own. I was struggling for a good 3 to 5 minutes or more, before he came over to help. Perhaps the issue was with me being too weak or he was probably still hungover or something. I didn’t exactly enjoy myself much for my first ski morning. Anyway, so after lunch I went to adjust my skis to make them less tight, but I was somehow too stressed over falling while skiing on my own that I didn’t ski much. I took a wrong turn (my friend’s bad instruction) and went down a much steeper run from the supposed gentler slope she was telling me about. I ended up pizza-ing my way down as I didn’t want to take any risk which may cause me to fall and I might risk being stuck since I don’t have the core strength to get back up without removing my skis and my skis might just not fall out (like my AM session). I have this crazy bad habit of overthinking, and everything just goes in a downward spiral.

Gifted myself a rest day the next day as I was slightly traumatised, plus I wanted to see the snow monkeys at the park. So the biggest joke was that.. one year ago, I told myself that I only wanted to buy ‘day passes’ instead of the consecutive passes as I am not sure how many days I wanted to ski or whether my body would just fall apart from exhaustion. I rented my gear every day instead of consecutive rental too. As a result of my friend’s constant nagging of “How often do you get to ski. You are not getting younger and you have already come all the way here!!”, I ended up skiing every day, and ended up spending more money as I bought separate days instead of consecutive. So this year, I decided not be as stupid as last year, but I ended up missing one full day of ski, which I think was a result of my crappy day 1 experience. Oh wells, or perhaps I’m just as indecisive as it can be.

On Day 3, I did a ‘private’ lesson with a friend (who went for beginners for day 1), which was pretty idealistic. For some reason, I thought that my friend could catch up after 2 days of skiing and that we can have lessons on parallel on day 3 but oops, she kind of needed a lot more help and the instructor (who was much better) had to focus 70% of the time on her instead. I didn’t complain as I was the one who had that idealistic thought. In the end, the instructor was kind enough to bring me up an extra run, bringing me to try a new run for the first time. At that point in time, my confidence level was so low that I didn’t dare to explore any new run on my own. He was much better and I didn’t fall so I didn’t manage to figure out if this instructor would help me out when I fall. So, after lunch on day 3, we joined our other more seasoned snowboard friend for 2 runs and on the first run, I fell while getting off the chair lift. Joke. Oh, on the first day, first chair lift, I dropped my ski poles too >< But that’s not the main highlight of my downfall.. On the last run of the day, I brought my snowboard friend to the new run that I tried in the AM (with the instructor) and.. and.. and.. I fell into powder. Knowing that I am not capable of standing up with my skis on, the first thing I did was to remove my skis after a fall and.. because it is powder and my first time falling into powder, I couldn’t get back up again. The powder was knee deep which meant that I ‘fell’ every 3 steps I took. I was struggling so badly to even move and I was really questioning how on earth do I get back up on my feet if there’s no way I can get my boots back onto my skis – everything just keeps sinking. So.. my snowboarder friend who was with me tried to move towards me (the powder) and then she got stuck as well. Apparently it is worse for snowboarders cause their feet is stuck to the board and it is even harder to remove the board. That was it – two of us sitting down in powder, about 10m apart and wondering what’s gonna happen to us. The run we are at was not popular so there weren’t many who ski past us and those who did, avoided the powder so.. the hope of getting help from anyone was non-existent. Initially, I was telling my friend that we will just walk down but that wasn’t gonna work as I keep falling every few steps and I couldn’t even make my way to her. Finally my friend was like, we need help. Well, this isn’t like the usual commerical ski resorts with an app to call for help so we decided to contact our other friend who thankfully decided to stop early. She went to the hotel frontdesk who told her to just go to the ski area to look for someone. At the ski area, she chanced upon the instructor (from the morning) and told him that we were stuck. My snowboard friend also tried calling her instructor to ask what to do..

Weirdly, within minutes, there was a snowmobile driving towards us and at that moment I was like.. am I going to be rescued? My friend did wonder like.. did help really come so fast? So.. the ski mobile stopped at a distance from us (I guess it was because of the powder) and the somewhat older japanese guy (looks like 60s to me) went over to help my friend strap out of her board and guided her the way towards the harder non-powder snow. For some reason, he just told me to walk over (I think it was 10 to 20m away), and didn’t think I needed help at all. He tried to harden some snow for me (by stepping down and creating a path) but for some reason I still continue to fall with every few steps. Before reaching the snowmobile, he suddenly drove off. At that moment I was like, oh maybe he is going to get more help since there’s 2 of us and then my friend was like.. he’s gone. In my head, I was like.. he’s coming back right? My friend said “I don’t think so. He just asked if we were injured.”, and when I said no, he just drove off. At that point in time, I’m not sure if there were tears in my eyes but I was in disbelief that ‘help’ came and went by? I wasn’t sure if I was even capable of getting back up onto my skis and make it the way back down the mountain. A part of me went mad and confused and angry but my friend was like, there’s no choice, you have to ski down. I tell you, I was bloody hell shaking when trying to get my boots back onto my ski. Nervous that I can’t do it and wondering if I’ll be stuck there in the cold. To add on, it was nearing the closing time, and it was pretty gloomy, snowing and getting cold cause we weren’t moving. Anyway, I did eventually get back up on my skis and I was so nervous during the ski down that I might fall into unknown powder again. Halfway through my way down, the instructor caught up with me and asked me if I was doing okay, before zooming off to catch his vehicle. They had transport to go back to their accommodation but they can’t miss the timing. Anyway, I did manage to get back down the slope, but I was super exhausted and mentally traumatised by the events. I still remembering just stoning in my hotel room trying to process the entire event and shock of not getting the ‘rescue’ I thought I needed. To be honest, I was lucky that I didn’t suffer physically from this ordeal (my beginner friend fell into the trees on her first day), just mentally from the trauma of not knowing what to do in powder snow plus the lack of help I got. I don’t think this is the typical experience one would get at a more commercialized and organized resort, but I guess it is also forcing me to overcome the random adversities and not rely/depend on others? It has been 3 weeks, and I still think about the incident and wonder what else I would have done at that moment. I guess I’m just thankful to not suffer an injury and perhaps I should just pay for more lessons in future and hope for a good instructor from day 1?

My last and third day of ski was just average as well. I had a lot of mental ‘baggage’ from the previous day, and I was just too afraid to fall. I couldn’t really master parallel on the steeper parts of the green slope (I think I somewhat succeed in the gentler part), but to be honest I was exhausted both physically and mentally. I was so ‘done’ with the ski season and sulky me came to the conclusion that this ski slopes were not beginner-friendly enough for me =/ That being said, I didn’t end the trip thinking that I won’t be back. I will still be wanting to ski again, but I would also need to find a place that have flatter runs for me to practice parallel. I think I know the technique but when I go too fast I chicken out and retreat back to pizza. Who knows what will happen 12 months later? With this crazy reorg at work, a random/short trip in March would no longer be a possibility.

I still feel sad that the outcome of this trip is far from perfect but.. there are still a few wins from the trip! The snow was perfect and the view on a clear day was really the best.

If my photos from my film camera look like this.. one can only imagine what the real deal is 😉

I hope I don’t give up on skiing. I hope my knees continue to be decent and I hope I improve and enjoy myself more next season.

Cheers and happy february ^^