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Faces on the Subway: Regular Joes by day, daredevil skaters by night

SINGAPORE — Three days a week, a group of 15 men in their 20s and 30s — consisting of a nurse, chef, property agent, army regular, small business owner, air steward and IT support engineer, among others — would look forward to the evenings when they would make their way from all over the island to the Somerset Skate Park on Wednesdays, or the Xtreme Skate Park at East Coast Park on Tuesdays and Sundays.

Glenn Goh (extreme left) and his group of inline skater friends. Photo: Nuria Ling/TODAY

Glenn Goh (extreme left) and his group of inline skater friends. Photo: Nuria Ling/TODAY

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Every day, hundreds of thousands of passengers take the MRT, traversing across the island for work, school and leisure. The spate of disruptions and incidents, which the operators and authorities are looking to resolve, and the inconvenience caused to commuters, have brought into focus how the rail network has become a big part of our lives. So, too, are the countless faces we meet on the subway, some growing familiar over time and each with a story to tell.

To kick off our Faces on the Subway weekly series, we speak to commuters who start their day while it is still dark, or call it a night when others are already fast asleep — people on the first or last train.

SINGAPORE — Three days a week, a group of 15 men in their 20s and 30s — consisting of a nurse, chef, property agent, army regular, small business owner, air steward and IT support engineer, among others — would look forward to the evenings when they would make their way from all over the island to the Somerset Skate Park on Wednesdays, or the Xtreme Skate Park at East Coast Park on Tuesdays and Sundays.

On weekdays, the motley group will swop their office wear or uniforms for baggy shirts, pants and rollerblades, and spend the next several hours doing spins and grinds on their inline skates.

Sometimes, while doing their “soul grinds”, “topside acids” and “backside royales” — to name a few rollerblading tricks — they would lose track of time, which would result in a mad dash for the last MRT train to get home.

Mr Glenn Goh, 31, an application support engineer with the Health Sciences Authority who has kept up the routine for a dozen years, said: “If you have something in mind, like you want to land this particular trick that is new to you... you will be doing this trick over and over again. And when you are doing that, time flies... before you know it, the lights (at the park) are out, which means it is time to slowly return to reality.”

Inline skater Glenn Goh. Photo: Nuria Ling/TODAY

The group call themselves Taman Jurong Blade Club, since most of them live in the western part of Singapore. They found each other at the skate parks and decided to give themselves a name, which then came in handy when they wanted to print it on their sports attire.

Mr Goh said that aggressive inline skating, which is what they do, helps him to relieve the stress from solving the “101 problems” a day at work.

He describes the activity as the “underdog of extreme sports” because it is not as popular as skateboarding or freestyle BMX here. “You need maximum concentration (for this extreme sport) so you won’t get injured. When I concentrate on the tricks, I forget about the stress I had that day. It’s the place for me to vent all my frustrations.”

Mr Goh got to know about the sport when he was researching how to move backwards on his rollerblades more than 10 years ago. He and the younger group members said that many of their parents did not understand at first why they have to hang out so late so many days of the week.

Mr Goh’s parents took a while before they were convinced that “it’s all healthy”. “The normal impression that people will get of (those) who hang out at (skate parks) is either that we take drugs, or we are from gangs, or we are up to no good. But this is just like any other sport. It’s just exercise,” he said.

For Mr Tan Jun Heng, 22, the “newest” member who joined the group more than two years ago, he found that it helped him to develop discipline. “If you are disciplined enough to push yourself to make greater progress, do new tricks, new styles... it spills over to other aspects of your life,” he said.

CLOSE BOARDING CALL

Glenn Goh (second row, extreme right) and his group of inline skater friends. Photo: Nuria Ling/TODAY

As the night winds down, their adrenalin is kept going not just by the stunts they do but the race to catch the last train and the connecting ones on different lines.

By the time they cool down, change out of their skates and attire, and grab a snack, it can be close to midnight, and there are times they cannot reach the platform on time. This happened, for example, on Christmas Day, when the group was practising at Xtreme Skate Park and the nearest boarding point was Bedok MRT Station.

Missing the last train will mean having to pay more than double the amount to get home, even when they split the taxi fare among themselves.

Mr Tan, for instance, had to pay about S$8 on the shared fare, instead of the usual S$2 to S$3, to get back from East Coast Park. To spend this amount three times a week on transport home is “not very affordable”, the full-time student said.

Last Wednesday (Dec 27), as some of them made their journey home from Somerset Skate Park, they were busy checking the train timetables. They made it just in time for the last westbound train at Raffles Place, and the carriages were surprisingly full. There were shoppers, uniformed workers who looked like they had just finished their work shifts, and travellers from Changi Airport.

Photo: Nuria Ling/TODAY

Standing in the cabin, the skaters could finally unwind more and discussed some of the tricks they managed to do that day. They started taking out their phones to share YouTube videos of tricks they can tackle the next time they meet.

Mr Goh said: “If you (accomplish) a trick before ‘lights out’, then you go back a happy man.”

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