Scalding Shower
We've been training at the Academy's other club called Tennis Mar for the past week. The place is run down, shabby, but has training courts which the coaches drill us on. Unsurprisingly, the facilities are just as old.

I was taking a shower in the ladies' changing room after practice this morning, when one of the other girls from the WTA group came into take a shower too. I took my usual cubicle, the one second furthest from the water point. The shower facilities are so old, there is only one hot and one cold water pipe from which all the shower heads work. When one takes a shower, one has to turn on the hot water faucet and the cold water faucet separately, and mix the temperatures manually  for preference.

Well, this girl took the first cubicle point to the water pipes.  It also happened to be the one furthest from visual view from mine. I thought nothing of it and continued my shower.

A few minutes into my shower, as I closed my eyes, enjoying the strong, gushing warm water spray on my back, the water turned into a SCALDING HOT spray. Even though my cold water faucet was turned on, there was no cold water coming from it, only hot gushing fiercely from the shower head.  It took me a second to feel, then realise, as the heat shocked my skin and I slammed my body against the wall in an effort to dodge the boiling water.  I staggered a little into a corner, felt the hot water painfully couching my naked arms and feet as I tried to reach through the spray to switch off the hot faucet.

I figured out what probably happened soon after.

This girl, knowing that she was in the first cubicle, turned on the cold faucet full blast, so that drained the pipe of all cold water coming towards my unit.  And so, all the water I got, for those few seconds, only became scalding hot water. And that's how my back got burnt.

Thankfully, it's not that serious. It was burning painfully right after, but I ran it under cold water and now, after a full day, my skin is okay. Thank God.  I'm past feeling sore, but still surprised at how vicious that was.  She's the best player in the team, but has once remarked to me a few months back how I'm hitting the ball with so much power and pace, that "It's only a matter of time."

And it's strange too, because I seldom speak to her, preferring always to mind my own business.  Part of me wants to believe this was just an honest mistake, that the showers have gotten really warm before.  But they've never been scalding scalding hot.

For the reason I could have burnt my bare back major time, I really have my doubts.