Singapore Skydive Festival: ’Xcuse me while I kiss the sky

SINGAPORE – I am in a Russian helicopter above the dark skies of Singapore. And I am about to jump. But before I leap into the void, put clouds on my tongue, and pray there are no holes in the parachute, allow me to give a bit of background.

I came to the Lion City to participate in the Singapore Skydive Festival, part of the “Celebrate Singapore” series of events. The Singapore Tourism Board (STB) invited The Philippine STAR to cover this four-day sky-jumping event set in a grassy field in the Marina Bay Waterfront near a smattering of buildings – the drop zone. I was lucky (or unlucky depending on one’s degree of acrophobia) to be chosen for this daredevil of an assignment. To think that I’m a man with 10,000 assorted fears, one being heights.

Whenever I am in an airplane, slight turbulences would automatically replay scenes from Final Destination inside my head. Sometimes, it would be John Lithgow’s part in The Twilight Zone where he plays a man with a severe fear of flying. Lithgow watches a monster chew off bits from the airplane wing, and he goes nuts: kicking, screaming, and not taking advantage of the in-flight entertainment. I always stare outside the plane to see if there are premonitions of crashes or monsters. Usually, I just see myself stare back – an even scarier sight.

Amusement park rides and glass elevators are other dreadful inventions. So is the bungee jump. So is suicide.

When I got to Singapore, guide Wee Tee Wong from the STB briefed me about the task at hand. I quickly learned that the tour is not for a person with acrophobia or who imagines there are monsters that munch on 747 wings.

We went to Sentosa Island via cable car, and took a ride at the Carlsberg Sky Tower, which is Asia’s tallest observatory tower at 110 meters high. Great view of the Singapore skyline. Also in Sentosa, we tried riding luge karts downhill. Upon reaching the bottom, riders could take a cable car ride back up. No breakneck speeds for me. Just a leisurely, extended trip that made our luge guide (Jemma from New Zealand) almost die of boredom. Even ants on the ground outran me – helmet, strap and all. The speed freaks will love this Sentosa attraction set to open in a couple of weeks.

Another part of the visit was the reverse bungee jump ride called the G-Max in Clarke Quay. Riders are strapped to this metal contraption and then pulled up really, really fast – as if Zeus from Mount Olympus is giving them a wedgie of mythological proportions.

And as if to underscore the perils of skydiving, we also visited Journey of Faith – an exhibit of artifacts from the Vatican. It featured religious paintings, sarcophagi, papal thrones and garbs, and reliquaries reputedly containing small pieces of the true cross. I wondered if it were a sort of sign. I mean, I was there looking at a scale model of St. Peter’s Basilica with its constellation of saint statues. I also saw a Vietnamese painter’s rendition of the gates of hell and Beelzebub with the rest of his posse going medieval on sinners’ asses. Now, that’s one country club I don’t want to be a member of. I’ve avoided forcible membership (temporarily) by not falling off aircrafts. Which I have managed until that moment I agreed to go to the skydiving grounds at 9 in the morning and sign up for the fateful leap. What was I thinking?

When Wee Tee and I arrived at the venue, there was already a smattering of people waiting for their turn. Dark clouds were threatening rain. But the organizers assured us that once the skies got a bit clearer, they would give the go signal. I sighed with relief. Maybe they would call it off, which would give me time to head for HMV and buy Squarepusher CDs.

But as if by cue (and to use the words of Sylvia Plath), a piece of sky squeaked through. Drat.

I was introduced to Guntmar Kerbl, an Austrian skydiver who is the head honcho of Aerial Trendz, the group behind the skydive fest. He worked in Los Angeles as a software engineer, dabbling in visual effects. But for this guy, nothing could have more effect on him than skydiving.

“It’s better than sex, man,” he quipped.

Kerbl said that in last year’s festival in the Lion City, there were 264 tandem jumps (where passengers are harnessed to skydiving instructors), 1,300 individual jumps (“fun jumpers” they are called) and seven B.A.S.E. jumps. “No one landed in the water (laughs),” he assured. “No accidents out of the more than a thousand jumps we had last year.”

The tandem jump costs around 400 Singapore dollars. On paper, it seems like a walk in the park (not a plunge into the abyss). One climbs into the white Mil Mi-8 helicopter, which was recently used in delivering relief goods to Aceh, Indonesia, thus explained the UN sticker stuck to it. The chopper, which has two turbine engines and could hold 35 people, ascends steadily until it reaches a height of 12,000 feet. Then the jumpers just move row by row into the door, leap into the air, and open the parachute all the while whistling R. Kelly’s I Believe I Can Fly. Chicken feed? Not if you grow up watching Wile E. Coyote riding ACME flying contraptions that always, always malfunction just before he snags the Roadrunner, leaving the stupid coyote falling into the cartoon cliffs. Crash!

Kerbl must have smelled fear emanating from my person, so he assured me again how fun skydiving is. Yeah, right.

“We want Singapore to become your all-year-round skydiving center in Asia,” Kerbl enthused. “There is a couple who came here from Zimbabwe to go skydiving. Another came from Chile. We have people coming in from the rest of Asia and Europe. One guy wants to do three tandem jumps! We have people calling and inquiring about skydiving courses. Singaporeans want to do something really fun.”

Believe it or not: a 72-year-old Singaporean woman signed up for the jump.

Uneasy Rider

When the rains let up, the first batch was able to do jumps. We watched them hurtle down from the helicopter, hover above us, and then land softly in the open field. No hitches whatsoever.

Afterwards, it rained again. Steady. Protracted. So the rest of us had to wait, which I didn’t mind at all. I had a conversation with former Belgian soldier Michel Van Biers who did his first skydive in 1959. He has since done 5,000 jumps, and counting.

“You must remember that man was not made for jumping airplanes,” he quipped. (How obvious and how frightening.) “But for me, every jump is a new adventure. I get a kick, a rush of adrenaline.”

Low clouds and too much wind are bad, he continued. “You can’t even see the ground, but the trick is to face the wind when you land.” Better said than done, I muttered.

The organizers introduced my tandem master: Rod Simunic from Australia, a towering man who might pass for George Clooney. This man – a daredevil on weekends and a computer geek the rest of the week – had already made 2,000 jumps. Simunic did his first one in 1996 and he was “scared shitless.” (How assuring.) But skydiving for him has become a passion. He has even done skyboarding – balancing on a surfboard while parachuting.

The tandem master showed me the four harnesses that would connect me to him. “Each harness can lift a car, so don’t worry. We’re going to be strapped together, so we’re going to be as close as two grown men could ever be (laughs). So, stick with me.”

Simunic said that he would fasten me on the moment we board the helicopter, although not too tightly. He told me several things that would make his life as a tandem master easier (and to prevent mishaps, such as the passenger encountering the full extent of the Law of Gravity).

“When you’re ready to jump, you must cross your arms, tilt your head back, and bend like banana,” he said. This, he added, was “the signal” that I was ready to do the plunge. “Right after we jump, I will tap you on the arm, which means that we’re doing okay and that I’m awake (laughs).”

At that precise moment, I could relax and – in Simunic’s words – “fly like Superman.” We would have about 45 seconds of freefall before he opens the parachute. Then he would give me the controls so I could experience how it was to fly around. Like a human kite.

“When we reach 1,000 feet, we will ‘practice landing’. Now, you must remember, when we hit the planet, generally the planet always wins, so lift your legs up when we land so as to avoid carrying my weight and the weight of my gear. If there is one time in your life that you must exert effort – this is it, man!”

Might As Well Jump

Waiting is usually such a bitch. Not in that case. The long wait was a welcome treat. I almost dozed off under the tent while it was drizzling all around us. The organizers were playing it safe for the participants: they knew how dangerous (or at the very least, not enjoyable) to go skydiving when the sky is pissing. No compromises on their part. If it were in the Philippines, the organizers would’ve risked it. Bahala na si Batman.

At about 12:30 in the afternoon, the weather improved. A cue for the organizers to let music blare from the speakers. Praise You by Fatboy Slim made me think of Nietzsche’s immortal maxim: “What does not kill you only makes you stronger.” Then it was Walk This Way by Aerosmith. I felt the rush of blood to the head. Great rave-up song. Hmm… I wondered what songs work for such occasions. If the organizers played Song 2 by Blur, good. Rock You Like A Hurricane by the Scorpions and Freefallin’ by Tom Petty, good. Ave Maria by a nameless soprano with a stratospheric voice, not good. Hindi Kita Malilimutan by Basil Valdez, ominous. What about the maudlin song with the lyrics “But now, I’m fallin’, fallin’, fallin’ fast again.” Foreboding.

Loudspeaker: Those who belong to batch two, please assemble in front of the field.

People: Yoohoo!

Me: Gulp!

Now, I’m Free, Freefallin’

We all walked into the field and waited for the chopper. My tandem master was the essence of cool. While the other pairs practiced the drills (bending like a banana, etc.) – obsessively and compulsively – Simunic talked to me about “the worst tandem jump of his life.”

It was with a heavy-set woman, he remembered. When they were on the ground, everything was fine, but upon jumping, that was when the trouble started. “She panicked and repeatedly punched me in the face,” said Simunic. “‘Hey, I’m here to save your life’, I told her.” “When the parachute opened, she fainted. So I had to find a way of landing without her getting injured. I managed to find a patch of ‘soft rocks.’ When she woke up, she just took off without saying a word.”

If Simunic was a laidback tandem master, another (a guy with curly blonde hair) was the exact opposite. I overheard him tell his partner, “Let’s do it this way: you jump ahead and then I’m going to follow you 10 minutes later with the parachute and then try to grab you in mid-air. That would make a great video. Unfortunately, we could only do it once (laughs).” If ever that guy had a nickname it would have to be “Mad Dog.”

When I saw the helicopter, that was when my hangover kicked in. (The night before I drank Tiger and Heineken beer with my brother in a jazz bar in Boat Quay.)

I asked Simunic, “What if I vomit on you when we’re up there?”

“Then I have no choice,” he answered nonchalantly, “but to vomit back.”

“Besides,” added another tandem master, “this here (pointing to a small button on Simunic’s parachute bag) is the eject button.”

Everyone laughed, except for Mad Dog’s partner. He must have thought: “I could be on Orchard Road, shopping, instead I’m jumping from a helicopter attached to Ozzy Osbourne.”

Skydivers In Flight, Afternoon Delight

I am in a Russian helicopter above the dark skies of Singapore. And I am about to jump. The interior of the helicopter resembles a truck container, with a large, rectangular opening that Simunic described as, “the world’s best television screen.”

The chopper is moving steadily up to the desired altitude. We are sitting inside (around 30 thrill-seekers) while the leader of the pack (a man in an all-white jumpsuit and with a parachute bag as compact as a Hello Kitty knapsack) motions to the pilot. Except for the Belgian guy sitting on my foot, I feel okay. No shivers or panic attacks. Not yet. Simunic shouts above the drone of the chopper engine, “The best part of riding a helicopter is the take-off. It’s quite a thrill. The worst part is landing in it (laughs), which fortunately we aren’t going to do.”

Before we hit the altitude of 12,000 feet, Simunic straps me on tightly, and I feel like Gulliver tied up by a bunch of Lilliputians.

“Do you feel uncomfortable?”

I nod, turning as pale as Dracula.

“Good,” he says.

The leader gives the signal. The pack moves forward. The leader jumps, followed by the people in the first row (individual jumpers from a skydiving group). Simunic asks me if I still want to go through with the jump. I nod. What a brave thing for someone who prays as hard as a Quiapo manang when aboard a roller coaster.

The second row jumps. Cool. The third row jumps. Cool. When it is our row’s turn, I freeze up. I am standing on the edge of the chopper, looking down on Singapore at 12,000 feet, snorting clouds, having trouble breathing, and I want to chicken out.

Sorry, folks. But I don’t feel like jumping anymore. I have watched too many episodes of The World’s Worst Accidents Caught On Video. In one episode, a jumper wasn’t able to control his parachute and landed on a crocodile farm. The horror! The horror! Thank you. Good afternoon. See you on Orchard Road.

So, I bend backward, but Simunic thinks I’m giving him “the signal,” so he lunges forward. Our strapped bodies plummet like bags of flesh, bones and emotions: for him, euphoria… for me, absolute horror. He probably feels like Neo in The Matrix, while I feel like Dorothy in the tornado scene in The Wizard of Oz.

Simunic tilts our bodies downward and we fall headfirst at blinding speed into the general direction of the ground. Clouds rush past us. Wind pummels my face like Joe Frazier’s baby hooks. I look down and see infrastructures the size of anthills. Direction: toward us. “Eeeeeeeeeee,” I hear a grown man scream like a girl. And it is me.

When we hit freefall, everything slows down. Simunic gives me the thumbs-up sign and I calm down. It is wonderful to see Singapore with one’s head in the clouds. Look, there is the so-and-so building, Simunic points, there is such-and-such road. When he opens the parachute, we are dragged by the winds upward – another pant-wetting experience. But from that point on, everything turns rosy. We hover for several minutes, while Simunic tugs at the controls of the parachute. This is like riding a Ferris wheel on acid.

At a certain point, we practice landing. “Lift your legs, man!” Simunic shouts. Which I do with utmost difficulty (me and exercise go together like oil and water, or like Mariah Carey and sanity). After several moments, the ground rises up to meet us and we slide. Like a baseball pinch-hitter stealing second base. Swoooosh! No sweat. My pants are wet, though. Not because I relieved myself, but because the soil was dampened by rain.

“Was that a good landing?” I ask Simunic, as the other jumpers all land safely around us.

The man smiles. “Any landing we could walk away from is a good landing.”