john mayer ROCKS

contrary to what one of my fellow concert-goers says, I thought the concert last week rocked. Shoddy sound mixing aside, John Mayer gave a great performance that had the hundreds of giddy girls in the audience swooning and screaming, nearly blowing out my eardrums. But then again, maybe I shouldn’t have been screaming so loud either.

breaking the silence

And now to relate to you my spa experience.

The weekend before last, we took Sana and Kathy up to Tremblant to celebrate their birthdays. The trip included an excursion to a Scandanavian spa outside the village, which offered a relaxing experience in the form of a series of hot and cold treatments. The idea was to do 15 minutes of a hot treatment followed by around 10-30 seconds of a cold treatment, followed by “resting” for another 10 minutes, and then repeat the cycle 3 times over. The spa facility itself is nestled on the side of a hilly slope, with a beautiful view of the river and tucked away from the noise of the main road. Signs posted everywhere asked for silence to maintain an atmosphere of serenity.

Upon changing into our bathing suits, we decided to go for the Finnish steam room first. Initially, it was a somewhat weird to be sitting in a roomful of complete strangers in total silence, sweating profusely and trying not to inhale too deeply because it felt as though the steam could burn the inside of your nose. But just as I was getting used to it, one of us indicated that it was time to go.

I was dreading the cold treatment already – it was already no more than 10 degrees outside, we were in our bathing suits, and we had to completely immerse ourselves in cold water. Someone suggested checking out the man-made outdoor waterfall, so we did. Kathy was the first one in, and as soon she was under the waterfall, she let out a scream. So did Arshia. So did I, Sandy and Sana, and we all splashed around in the water, screaming and yelling all at once.

We had just stepped out of the shallow pool and were still huddled together and chattering excitedly among ourselves when I saw the door to one of the solariums swing open and bald, stern-looking man stride out towards us with a look of utter dismay and anger on his face. We fell silent as he approached us.

“Ladies!” he said heavily, putting his hands together. “Could you please not scream anymore? We want to keep it silent here!” He gestured at the signs and glared at us.

“We’re sorry,” we said in unison, all of us looking very shame-faced, and he turned and walked away.

“Oh my god guys, I’m so embarrassed,” Kathy said, with her hands clasped over her mouth as though to suppress any remaining screams that wanted to burst forth.

Feeling quite mortified myself, I closed my eyes and imagined how it must have been perceived by the other patrons – resting tranquilly, listening the soft music from one of those “music inspired by nature” CD’s looping over the speakers and then being wrenched out of their serene state by ear-piercing screams that sounded like bloody murder. I winced silently.

We hurried away to a more secluded side of the facility to take our 10 minute rest and remained pretty well-behaved for the duration of our stay.