Thursday, October 2, 2008

Ice Skating in Bandung

BANDUNG ICE SKATING RING copyrights Eki Akhwan

My appology for not being able to keep the promise I made yesterday about posting pictures and stories about how we celebrate Iedul Fitr. I had a memory card crash with one of my cameras and lost all the photos that I intended to post today. A valuable lesson learned: Don't put all your photos in one memory card. Always have a spare card, just in case.

That being mentioned, I am forced to post a photograph that I took earlier in the week of this ice-skating ring.

As a city in the tropic, Bandung does not naturally have ice or snow. (It does have hails sometimes as it is located on a high altitude.) But this does not mean that we can't enjoy ice sports (sports on ice?). Thanks to technology, those of us who are curious about ice sports can now try and enjoy them without having to travel far to the Northern or Southern hemispheres where snow and ice are naturally availble.

This ice-skating ring is located on the top floor of Istana Plaza Shopping Mall on Jalan (street) Pasirkaliki, Bandung.

According to Wikipedia, ice skating is "traveling on ice with skates, narrow (and sometimes parabolic) blade-like devices moulded into special boots." The earliest ice skating, according to the same source, took place in Southern Findland about 4000 years ago.

Note:
Just in case you wonder why this photo has an odd frame-size proportion: I cropped the bottom part of the photo because it contained too much empty space. Other things remained as shot.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am not brave enough to try ice skating. Falling on a hard cold surface doesnt sound like much fun.. But I would Like to try Hang Gliding or Sky diving. Have a great day.

Layrayski said...

I'm sorry about the crashing of memory card incident Eki. Ouch. that must've hurt.

Ice skating was something that I wanted to try when I was younger. But of course the ice rinks are only at the major cities here because of the same climate condition that you have (except for the hail).

Rambling Woods said...

Nice ice skating rink. I am so sorry you had a problem with the memory card. One of my other blogger friends had a similar problem. That reminds me that I need to do a backup..

Virginia said...

Ice skating in Bandung, well who would have thought that???!!! How great! Eki you continue to educate and amaze all of us. And as for cropping, I crop almost every photo of mine you have ever seen in some form or fashion.

Laurie Allee said...

Eki, I'm so sorry you lost your memory card!

But what a lovely shot you brought us today. I like how you cropped it -- the composition is perfect. I really like the spinning figure and all that ice. Gorgeous.

Jane Hards Photography said...

Something I miss terribly on the island is an ice skating rink. I used to go all the time to my one back in my native Birmingham. I know all about backing up my work now, especially the business side of my photography.No apologises neccesary for the image. It's another interesting side to Bandung and I love the whirling of the skaters.

nadz-chan said...

well,,
i really eNjoy to tRy ice-sKating,,becaUse it has a lot of fun wHen we tRy it,,
i have a dReam,,that i want to be a figuRe sKating champion someday,,hehe^^