I GRABBED a butt and got a fist in my face this morning at the swimming pool.
It's not what you're thinking though.
I was keeping to the blue line in my lane huffing and puffing through my 300m speed intervals. He had just gotten into the pool and decided to swim in nearly the exact same line as me, despite the pool not being full. He was approaching me at half my speed, I was looking down on the blue line in total focus and concentration.
BANG!!
Not the first time it has happened to me in the pool. Nearly every time I go for a swim I collide, or just avoid a collision with someone. This, I feel, is something peculiar to Singapore swimming pools.
Why? I've swum in pools in Germany, Canada, the US and Australia. All of them usually set aside lap swimming lanes, using lane rope to mark out about two to three individual lanes for lap swimmers (i.e. swimmers who swim laps continuously rather than chill out at the wall).
These lanes then each have a sign indicating the speed (slow, medium, fast, faster) and direction (anti-clockwise or clockwise) of the lane, and swimmers are meant to pick a lane based on how fast they think they go and follow the given direction. That means making sure you're always swimming to the left of the line on the floor if the lane is clockwise and vice-versa.
Obviously if you're the first person in the lane it's quite a no-brainer because you're in no danger of hitting anyone. But, if you're joining a pool where the lap swimming lanes are each already occupied by at least one person, the usual etiquette is to find the lane most suited to your speed, wait for the person to reach the wall, try to get his/her attention, ask politely if it's okay to join the lane, then follow the direction of the lane. If it so happens you have to overtake, do it as you would in a car. Make sure there aren't any oncoming swimmers, then overtake on the outside of the swimmer in front of you.
Simple stuff. The risk of a head-on collision is greatly reduced. Lap swimmers get to do their serious swimming worry-free. Fun swimmers can continue to frolick in the rest of the pool without worrying of getting a fist in their face or their butt being grabbed.
If the Singapore Sports Council, who looks after the public pools in on this island, could do something about it, I would be eternally grateful.
And so will the guy whose butt I grabbed this morning.