Mall of Asia's Walk-On-Water Balls Attraction

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person in this world who, as a kid learning about Jesus' powers for the first time, started saying to myself "wouldn't it be awesome to have that kind of power?" One of those awesome things I thought was walking on water, which is now made available to us normal people through advances in modern science, and an unhealthy desire to walk over flooding.

I present to you the Walk-On-Water Inflatable Ball, invented by the Chinese, presumably because floods over at their country make floods in our country look like plumbing leaks.

pictured: human GASHAPON

My sister and I were able to witness the attraction first hand at the Bay area of the SM Mall of Asia, and the picture above pretty much sums up what it looks like. A small pool with lots of kids inside transparent plastic balls, crawling and rolling on water.

The concept itself is novel. Who DOESNT want to impress people by being able to walk on water instead of paddling through, or drowning, as nature intended? Upon seeing this for the first time I was at once able to picture our army using this for my planned invasion of Sabah. (see other sections of this blog for more details on that) . And the kids! They were having so much fun inside those balls. I was almost reminded of that fat hamster from the animated movie Bolt.

Wow. Just wow. A device that can entertain kids AND invade countries. Is there anything that can be wrong about this new invention?

Yes, actually.

One thing that the advertising website does not mention to you, I mean apart from being so goddamn obvious already, is that since it's an inflatable ball that won't let air out, it also won't let air in. Meaning, the time limit for kids playing in that ball is roughly equivalent to the time it takes the kids to turn purple and lose consciousness from Hypoxia or oxygen deprivation. Hypoxia can cause many effects, ranging from not being able to light a cigarette, to permanent brain damage, to permanent paralysis induced by death.

Remember that shit that your parents told you so you wouldn't place a plastic bag over your head and pretend you're a diver/astronaut/astrodiver? Yeah, I guess the inventors kinda overlooked that part. Either that or that they didn't have parents.

one of these kids might have brain damage someday
and hit your head with a brick

Added to that, granted that the operators know the time it takes for a kid to consume the oxygen inside the ball (which varies from person to person, and what he does inside the ball) , that doesn't change the fact that there will be at least fifty different people using that plastic ball on one day alone. And the lowered oxygen atmosphere inside the ball creates moisture around the ball which traps and creates a warm, moist resort-grade environment for bacteria and other unsavory things that come from other people (like cooties). Imagine taking the sneezes of a hundred or so people head on. That's what you'll be doing if you spend five minutes on this baby.

I won't be telling you guys to avoid this attraction. I mean, come on. For the particularly hedonistic lot of us, this is about as close as we can ever get to being able to follow the "What would Jesus do?" way of life. (specially if our preferred answer is "walk on water")

But of course, as the trite overused Spiderman quote goes, "With great power comes great responsibility"

And for this case, it'd be the responsibility to not die from a shameful inflatable plastic ball accident.