BKK/KK 2017

One travel post to rule them all this year, and to end it off. The first 6 days this December I spent in Thailand, more specifically Bangkok and Khon Kaen, on what was primarily a climbing trip. But that doesn't mean we didn't do other things hahaha. Thinking back, there were minimal "blank moments" and everything was pretty much packed into one smooth happening [figuratively speaking only as the rocks were anything but smooth]. I wish I could include every detail [hmm ok maybe not all of them...], but instead, here are the things I find most worth remembering :)

Prologue (1-2 Dec)

The plan was to fly into BKK, spend some hours as tourists, then get on the night train to KK and start our outdoor climbs bright and early on the second day. And then we managed to book train tix for the wrong night, even with three pairs of eyes looking at the same laptop screen. This I still find pretty funny lol. Hence, we ended up with one more day to spend as tourists in BKK.

So of course we decided to go (indoor) climbing on that extra day. [Much to the horror of some ppl I mentioned the plan to--so much for a chance to just shop and chill but nope that's not how we roll] Before that, a few other things worth mentioning coz it's BKK after all, such as this particular tom yum from The New Rot Fai Market Ratchada. But first, there was the getting there.

Now I really KNOW the importance of having "public transport with its own right of way". This pic was taken in a pretty screwed position, with every car trying to make a U-turn effectively removing one lane from an already congested road.

3 km/h is a frustrating speed to travel at under any circumstance, not to mention when one is hungry. Story goes that we decided to take a Grab since it was about 30 baht more expensive than the equivalent BTS (the BKK MRT) ride and we wouldn't have to walk 10 mins out to the station. Bad decision. I should've seen the signs, especially when the driver accepted the booking from 3 streets and "4 mins" away, only to arrive close to 30 mins later. It took an hour after that for us to cover a distance we could've walked in 30 mins. At least we learnt the lesson with no major consequence and from there, it was "trust public transport only" for getting to the train ride/flight out of BKK.

And back to the tom yum. Along with the accompanying drinks, this gets the joint title of "best thing eaten on this trip" with one other dinner to be mentioned later. It's also the kind of thing one snaps a picture of to send to friends back home who are not on holiday hehe. Just look at the picture! There's maggi hiding at the bottom, soaking up all the just-the-right-level-of-spicy goodness. On hindsight, one thing I'm not sure of is why we decided to challenge ourselves by shelling the prawns and crab legs with chopsticks, instead of our fingers (dunno is it subconsciously preserving them for the climbing days ahead or what). Anyhow, the seafood all tasted good once we coaxed them into the open. When paired with large cups of iced Thai/green milk tea... Heaven. Hmm actually, "large" isn't accurate; when J returned with the drinks it honestly looked like she was holding brightly coloured flowerpots, the genuine ceramic kind.

To give a sense of scale, the larger mussel is palm-sized.

This was followed by a good sleep and the first of 4 consecutive climbing days, but indoors instead of out. In practically an immediate reaction to our gaffe with the train tix, we'd gone to google for climbing gyms in BKK. Like plan to climb for 4 days so MUST climb for 4 days. Or prob coz none of us shop much anyway. After lazing around until we got tired of lazing (just as well, we'd be waking well before 7am on every day that followed), it was off to the first climb.

It's not common for me to get sold on anything just from online reviews, but that was exactly the case for Rock Domain Climbing Gym. I don't rmb ever being so keen on visiting any climbing gym. The best part is that the real thing exceeded expectations! 2 levels of boulder walls with varying profiles, even including a sloped/inclined area and top out zone for us to practice mantling for the next few days lolol. Routes had a slightly foreign style, but there were sooo many to satisfy all kinds of itchy fingers! Unfortunately, some restraint was necessary so as not to prematurely destroy any body part. At that point, I'd thought it'd be possible for us to come back on our final day to go all out and actually try hard on some of the fun stuff. Wellz let's see what happens...

Team Quechua, a subsidiary of Team Cockfosters.

Oh yes, we also made good use of the top-notch facilities (shower and café). Climb + chill + shower made for a very good (holi)day indeed. Thinking about it now, that was also my final hot shower of the trip... That night, we finally boarded our misbooked train and exhausted the night's supply of water over dinner, no thanks to some tongue-numbingly spicy minced chicken. Other than that, I thoroughly enjoyed the small, cozy bunk space and actually managed to fall asleep.

What We Came For (3-5 Dec)

Fast forward to the next three consecutive climbing days in the Zoolander boulder fields! First things first, Zoolander is a new area which the friendly people of Khon Kaen Climbing Club are working hard to develop. Develop (roughly) meaning mapping out boulders in the place and finding lines (the outdoor equivalent of routes) to climb on them. There is an established bouldering area in KK with thousands of routes from years of development, but that was unfortunately made off limits to climbers just shortly before our trip (damn). It's a shame, but it made room for some new experiences. Coz in Zoolander, we got to help develop climbs on some never-before-climbed stuff which in its own right is pretty cool. One just has to take a walk through the forest to know the area's potential--something climbable every few steps.

Now on to the actual bouldering! It was more than 2 years since the last time and I'd really missed it. Interestingly, my favourite climb of the trip took the form of a V2 slab. Why is very simple... coz use less fingers xD I really enjoy climbing outdoors but my fingers could've done with a little more toughness this round (in terms of both strength and skin). As compared to all my previous outdoor experiences, the footholds here were pretty generous (with decent shoes and footwork of course). There's this common perception that natural boulders have really shitty footholds so you can't always trust your feet, and this makes things scary. I've found that to be true elsewhere but here's the opposite. [At least for me, if you ask my trip mates they might tell you different haha] What's really scary is having good feet, but being unable to trust the hands.

KK's got an elephant too! No #Deniseforscale this time but it had pretty interesting lines. Ascend the "elephant head" up the trunk for a scarily slopey top out and iffy landing or the "elephant ear", crimpy-shouldery up the right side. Squished photo coz the elephant's face is practically touching another rock.

Because these were all newly developed boulders, some even never-before-climbed, they possessed two slightly less than desirable traits. They bite, and they break. Firstly about the biting. While I do remember meeting some rough rock (e.g. grit stone in the Peak District), there hasn't been anything nearly as Sharp, with a capital S. [To my friend J though, the holds are merely "textured" so I really have to take my hat off to her and beseech my fingers to toughen up before the next trip.] Thankfully, sharp holds aren't necessarily life-threatening. What's really heart-stopping is when a handhold breaks in the middle of a climb... which did happen to me near the top of one boulder. I am generally confident in my footwork, and on this trip, much more so than my hands. As such, I also ended up not topping out on a few boulders :x If I were a purist I'd prob be really upset with myself but I can live with it hahaha, prob better not to risk a slip and breaking something on the upper half of my body.

I guess the sharp holds made a huge impression. Won't lie, the pain really got to me. When I pulled onto that first warmup V1, my mind just went, "Ouch??" But then if you ignore the sharpness and look purely at the climbs (some V1-4s attempted), they were actually pretty sleek and technical. There was this one V2 which I attempted prob too many times just to try and not chicken out at the top out. While eventually unsuccessful, the specificity of the moves was really what I enjoyed (see below). Same thing with another overhanging V3 with crimpy holds and perfectly located footholds almost like in a gym setting. Would've very much liked to try that one again without burning fingertips and breaking off a foothold at my best attempt.

Coz blogger's video function sucks, here's the starting sequence of a V2 in screenshots. Took us an exceedingly long time to even start at first, after that it was all a matter of sticking the crimpy holds and finding the holds at the slopey top out, which I failed to do.

On that note, gotta talk about that slab. We were introduced to the "Blade Rock" on the morning of the final day, where my fingers were pretty much already screaming. The boulder was so named because that's really what it looks like--a bad guy weapon. The interesting thing about this one was that it's flat, so there's no climbing over or on top of it (downclimb to get off). Not sure how it got there, but it could be that it broke from the main rock on the opposite side of the path and came to lean against the tree at the perfect slab angle.

Side + front view of the Blade Rock, about 4m tall. Squashed photo again coz I practically had to lie on the opposite rock to get most of it in frame.

There were a couple of easy lines on the extreme left of the blade and also the option of traversing the entire length from the right and up the leftmost edge for a V2. After scouting (and looking pretty much exclusively at the footholds), I knew I could flash the whole thing. No video/photo unfortunately, coz despite being fairly close to the ground, there was some areas where you couldn't really put a crashpad. So kiasu and have 2 spotters better than falling backwards. All those no-hands rests along the way were also greatly appreciated haha. Going up the left edge was pretty cool too, utilising some OK footholds and some less-OK ones, and trying not to barndoor out into oblivion. Of course, falling on this rock would've meant a cheese grating no amount of spotting could've helped, so I'm glad nothing like that happened haha.

The last experience in the boulder field involved cleaning boulders which is pretty much what it sounds like, short of scrubbing with soap. Basically, boulders in their natural state can be found sleeping under mounds of dead leaves, guarded fiercely by thorny undergrowth and the occasional spawn of Aragog. To lower the chance of nasty incidents (climbing shoes are useless against the slippery dead leaves for one) and actually climb, some of these things have to be removed. So on this trip, I added shears to my bank of experiences with farm tools. After some sweeping and snipping, there was also the matter of removing actual bits of rock. Remember how new rock breaks? It takes some climbing for the rock to stabilise, i.e. people to break more things off, leaving only the strong, truly climbable parts. Thin flakes are particularly breakable, but they're mostly harmless except for a mini heart attack. What's not harmless is a face-sized block of rock coming off and hitting one's face. As we saw then, these things do pull off, especially if one is heavy and happened to cut loose while holding onto them. So it's best to remove these things before even getting on.

Some pruning going overhead and J's not using the wrong end of the broom there, she's testing some chossy bits.

The rock we cleaned really looked soooooo good, with a nice rail going all round it like a ring around a planet. But at that point, I couldn't even bear to load on anything anymore. Think my fingers would've instigated a bloodbath, so I did not try :( Next time! But I can't be sure... now KK's returned to the end of the extremely long queue list for climbing trips, hopefully I'll be climbing long enough to come back someday.

France? UK? Malaysia?

The other mentionables include our journey up to Nam Phong National Park. It was 4 Dec where the climbing day started at 8.30am (meant leaving at 7.30am (meant getting up at 6.30am)) and by 3pm we were already faffing just a tad too much. So on a recommendation, we took a trip up to the place which housed the original bouldering areas of KK (not exactly to the boulder field though). The drive took us down winding roads that called up memories of the European countryside, and also a good way along this hugeass reservoir. The best part was that we somehow ended up at a perfect viewing point--a real viewing point--just as the sun was setting. Was a real nice touch there.

I prob used up my next 5 years worth of sunset luck on this one. Yes, that's the reservoir not the sea.

Also we did visit the zoo [after paying zoo entry fees every day coz the boulder fields were within the same huge plot of land], specially to see the "lemurs". It turned out to be one lonely lemur lounging at the bottom of its cage and my heart sank a little at the sight.

Last but definitely not the least from the KK leg: the other best dinner of the trip. Would it be strange to say that I had the best sashimi ever in KK? Yep, our hunt for dinner one night led us to one fairly up-class Japanese place which by sheer chance was offering 30% off everything on the menu. So we strolled right in in our climbing things. Three great surprises in this dinner. The first was that the wasabi served was without doubt the REAL thing I'd never before tasted. There's this viral video of a sushi chef teaching an angmoh guy to eat sushi, and he describes the wasabi as sweet. It's true. Real wasabi, unlike the powdered fair we usually get, tastes sweet and has enough kick in a droplet-sized smear to evoke the same sinus-clearing effect. Second was that sashimi. I've never had to take more than a single bite to finish a slice of raw salmon before. In this case, each thick slab took three whole bites to finish and they were the freshest, fattiest sashimi I've ever eaten. I now realise I have no picture of this, but this just goes to show how amazing it was. Last: this dinner cost S$12 per person ;)

No picture of the sashimi, but the main dinner is just as photogenic. It's called the HYPER ROLL.

Epilogue (6 Dec)

Yea, we thought we'd be going back to Rock Domain to try hard on this final day but well sometimes we think too highly of our physical capabilities. So it was shaping up to be a longgg day ahead when the train deposited us back in BKK at 6am when practically nowhere was open AND our flight was at 9pm. So what happened was that (after a futile attempt to find some hostel to crash for the morning) 3 zombies ended up hobo-ing at a Starbucks, huddled around a tablet playing Sporcle xD At 1pm, this games cafe (Throne of Games Cafe) we'd been eyeing opened for business. And then we managed to spend the following 5 hours in there before having to rush to get to the airport. All thanks to Voldemort and his cronies haha. The game was Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle, a co-op deck building game which was in no way easy towards the end. Highly recommended, what with all the breath-holding and "I can heal you just whack, KILL HIM" moments. In the end, we didn't even get to defeat Voldemort properly before hightailing it out of the place. But based on our projections, he'd be dead within two rounds and that's an indication of how late we were already hahaha.

In this game, Ron (whom I played throughout) is powerful, Hermione is a money-mine, Neville is a healer and Harry is nothing special.

So that was it, the last afternoon spent in the most unexpectedly worthwhile manner. Anddd just like that, holiday was overrr. Wasn't the most restful trip ever, but we had our fun and I can't wait for the next one already :D

While we're still young :)

Food for thought

"So this is a climbing gathering?"
"Sort of. But we're just eating today."

The above was part of a short exchange with an acquaintance, and also describes pretty succinctly what I partake in outside office hours. So 9 months after work started, regular friend activities have simmered to a constant of eating and climbing. [And saving Middle Earth at a leisurely pace (have been on the way to Mordor for 4 years and counting).]

When I go out, eating is always involved in some way or other. If the friends I climb with are my climbing friends, then almost all my other friends count as... my eating friends. Could be lunch friends, dinner friends, REP-alumni-free-food friends or the rare supper friends, but it's true that meals seem to be the basis for most gatherings. I.e. meetings = eatings.

In that case, my climbing friends seem to be the most multipurpose bunch though it's not just because climbs come with at least one meal by default haha. There's lots of other fun things to do together with friends. The interesting thing is: which friends.

So I've noticed that whenever I want to initiate something (go somewhere, play something...), there's always an easiest party to direct the jio to. It's also the same concept behind deciding whether or not to jio someone out for lunch/dinner when I'm in their area. Without incentives like free food, I tend to follow the path of least resistance. And this path brings me back to a selection of people/groups that I observe to be narrower than before.

Well, I definitely can't afford to go out every day (both in pocket and energy) which kinda limits my after-work activities. But there's this other factor. It's like there's this sort of consideration pie that's shared between family, colleagues and friends, but friends only get to take their share after the other two groups. Right, because peanut butter seems to randomly pop into my head every now and then I shall just use it in an analogy. Peanut butter is easier to spread thick than to spread thin i.e. it takes either more effort or more peanut butter to cover an entire slice of bread up till the edges. At least quality peanut butter feels like that. If peanut butter is (for lack of better description) "capacity and desire to interact", bread is friends. All the friends that mattered at any point in time. [Crust would be acquaintances then but not crucial.]

Ok explicit enough not gonna delve into the specific examples that are running through my mind. I guess this is why meals form the basis of most meetups. Aside from being necessary for survival, it's the easiest thing to do. Everything else--including climbing--requires more effort which naturally means deciding how to spend it. Everyone has their practices, but during meals I tend to actively create a "best" portion to save for last that I know I'll definitely enjoy. Same applies to peanut butter and bread if the peanut butter is running low.

~~~

Been meaning to write for a while, but see la, snooze until October already. Writing muscle has been put to a fair bit of use at work that's why.

#home

And I thought they were just trying to be cool when they put a # at the front of this year's NDP theme. # as in hashtag right? Turns out I was the ignorant millennial who missed the other more important meaning behind the #: our addresses... our physical homes.

At least 80% of the population has this in their addresses (HDB dwellers, condos maybe). In Singapore, our land-scarce island where most of us live in high-rise homes. It's that kind of thing that's so simple yet so true it makes one think "oh ya hor why I never think of that."

I've this Spotify playlist of NDP songs that I like to listen to in the lead up to 9th Aug, mostly when traveling to and from work. Sometimes 真的有 feel, especially when I walk home from the MRT. The ~25 min route takes me through Pasir Ris Town Park and along the Sungei Tampines before hitting Drive 1 and passing by Central. It's a very pretty route.

Taken last year. The greens on the slopes have since been removed but I think in preparation for the Remake.

Living in the far eastern end of the island, I'm thankful that my home is safe. Thankful that Pasir Ris isn't just some ulu dunno what kind of rundown place at the end of the MRT line. There are other cities where things are already different just outside the city centre. Here, if I so wish, I can walk home past 10pm and enjoy the cool night without having to worry about getting mugged in the park. Not to mention not having to worry about le sis who has taken to coming home late as most young people tend to do at some point. Bonus, lots of greenery and water and lights in the night that make the place sooo beautiful. There's many other things that could be said (which forms part of what I do at work), but these are the everyday things that regular Singaporeans can appreciate.

Happy 52nd Singapore! This is #home.

Growing out

[Skipping the 2015 throwback for now.]

Whenever there seems to be a common theme arising around all things unconnected, I come right back here to think about it. Today, it's about growing out of things.

All Potterheads will know that today is Harry Potter's 37th birthday. Born as the seventh month dies, rmb? And in real life, this year also marks 10 years since the final book was released. A quick check on wiki confirmed my hunch that it was actually released sometime around this period as well. I used to read them all the time, all of the HP books. [I like the movies too, but it's always books first for me.] There were the times where, for some reason, my parents wouldn't immediately buy the next book for me (before I caught up to the latest) and waiting was always torturous. Every year, I'd re-read the entire series at least once, all the way till (I think) uni started. At some point I just stopped. Might've opened some of them to read my favourite sections from time to time, but never all the way through. The thing is the books read differently now... sort of like the magic stayed in the past.

Oh yes, I recently graduated! Just last wed in fact, after passing 6 months of "the rest of life". It's hard to expect beforehand what to feel when you're not the freshest grad going for convocation. Turns out I did feel excited (and distracted the whole day before), and eventually, there was even this tiny hint of finality amidst it all. I rmb dreading graduation for almost 11 out of the 12 months of 2016. Then in the final stages, something just switched. Could be because I really disliked studying and it was exam period hahaha. But on top of that, I somehow felt that it was time to move on. So I have been asked about the transition from student life and the like... While I do miss those carefree days, it wasn't like I was dragged kicking and screaming into working life. It's actually been ok. Not like how I thought it'd be for most of 2016.

Then, there are other noticeable things. Like how one hears of people clearing out their old kpop stuffz after crazing for some years haha. Also how I don't seem to care so much about local boulder comps any more. Those always used to be something to look forward to, even if I didn't compete, going down to cheer for anyone else was enough. Watching finals till the end and helping out at NTU comps (however shag) were all part of it. This year, comps have come and gone as usual, but some without me knowing or bothering to find out. It's still fun to join comps, but the fun is derived from elsewhere... sort of like the same kind of fun you get by doing things other than work on weekends. I remarked to a friend about this before, about how climbing comps suddenly became much less exciting affairs than they used to be not too long ago. In her words, we just grew out of it. The comps are constant, every year. But we grew out of school, and by extension some of the things that used to be a large part of life back then.

I guess that's how you explain why you suddenly stop enjoying something the same way when there wasn't really any reason for any change to happen. It's just the process of growing out of things.

Well, it's a new month tomorrow! Onwards to August, my favourite month of every year.

June!

Every year before this it'd have been "June! Holidays!!!" but unfortunately that is no longer. Haha twas an exciting month nonetheless, right till the end. Things are worth remembering and memory's spilling over, so it's time for some plain old archiving.

The first notable thing from June should be visiting Platform 1094 aka the "Harry Potter cafe" or, more appropriately, the Harry Potter-themed cafe #copyrights. Anyway, one of the first things that left an impression was that... ... they were playing LOTR music. After hearing the entire track of "The Breaking of the Fellowship" (sans "In Dreams") I couldn't help portioning some attention to the background music and naming all the tracks I could. All in my head though, my friends weren't interested xD [Yes, there were actual HP tracks playing from time to time.] Food was ok at best. Drinks were amusing though: most we could tell were regular cocktails... but new name new identity! The bday girl ordered this sour blue drink that came in a transparent cauldron-shaped cup along with a plastic-tasting straw. Showtime: the waiter slid a spoonful of flaming substance into the drink so that there literally were blue flames dancing on the surface of the blue drink. Sprinkle some cinnamon powder on top and voila! you get a rain of tiny, falling flares and a nice insta video. The waiter waited awkwardly at the side for us to finish sprinkling more powder for more social media goodness, before capping the cup and extinguishing the flame. My drink brought back memories of the butterbeer from the Harry Potter studios back in London... Was pretty nice, though I suspect it contained a fair bit of ice cream soda after spotting stacks of bottles at the back of the place. Price was not amusing--not-so-cheap thrills I guess. tl;dr worth the novelty, but wouldn't go back. Prob should give the cafe a little more credit though. Considering that I did no advance drafting for this post, the length of the para speaks of how memorable that whole thing was, even if it happened an entire month ago.

Next up there was this slightly intense period at work. Such that one fine Sunday morning I found myself otw to Climb Central, laptop in hand and eyeballing my drafts on the bus so that I could climb in peace afterwards. Also got to experience turning off the lights at the office for the first time. Heh still nowhere near the late nights of the uni days, though I never want to come under those same conditions in working life. Staying in the office with the team till 2340 on D-1 was a milestone enough, and from post-D0 till the end of that week I pretty much felt like an understuffed pillow. In case you missed what we launched on D0, here it is! Best viewed on PC for all the interactive features to work! I'm proud of it. It feels like I've achieved something fairly significant since starting work roughly 5.5 months ago :) Took me a while to recover from that episode though, coz my sleep debts rack up interests of 150%.

Shortly afterwards, I noticed that FB was being v enthusiastic in surfacing my "on this day" memories. Turns out these were from 2 years ago, over a stretch of 10 days, when I'd taken to FB daily to prove my status of "alive and well", from wherever I happened to be in Europe. While I definitely meant to, I never wrote about my solo cross-country trip in the summer of 2015. If there's one thing that deserved to be written about from back then but never got to see light, it's this. So I've decided, that's next up here! Already copied the full 10 days of memories, ready for a major throwback.

Much monkey business in the final half of June, causing an inordinate number of trips up to Novena which I otherwise barely have reason to visit. Back in May I'd acted on a compelling urge to sign up for SOMETHING and ended up joining this year's installment of Velocity Urban Attack (must thank the REP ninja for posting his intentions on FB). Got the early bird too, that's how little dithering there was... Then I spent the following few weeks wondering what I'd done, coz my shoulders haven't exactly been in a very healthy state. Was genuinely pretty unnerved one week before my qualifiers, esp after going down to scout and watching sooo many people fail early in the course. Felt better though, after visiting the HDB Hub gym (again, props to aforementioned ninja) and finding out I could at least still handle monkey bars :D Turns out, compulsive as it was, it was a pretty worthwhile decision! Against all odds, I made it into finals (qualified 15th out of 15 girls) just by completing the first 2 obstacles. Then again, the obstacles were harsh this year. Harsh enough to eliminate many people at the second obstacle, regardless of gender. And that's how I ended up on the right side of the bell curve: just from being able to do a baby campus on wooden rungs of almost-finger-length thickness. Climber's advantage! And then... err.... couldn't get past the third obstacle (google "ninja warrior body prop" to see what it is, got no photos of myself) coz of my perpetually malfunctioning pushing muscles and joints. [Video of my v short run is on insta, or ask me] In any case, by the finals run I'd already gotten to play on the whole course for a couple of hours in total, much more than I'd have gotten without qualifying. Satisfied the adult monkey in me! Pretty happy about all this, considering that just a few weeks previously I was still afraid of doing pull-ups. Well I've had my fun, so I guess it's time to recover once and for all. Haha all this monkey business (long climb on the same weekend included, man that overkill) does take a toll, and I can't keep taping my shoulders forever. No more bouldering for now :/

Most people know that climbing is a weekend staple for me (when I'm not injured). But throughout the month, I've been in various conversations that drew attention to the other weekend staple of mine, the one I never really paid much attention to coz it's always been there. Since I was born (it's been happening since before I was born), every Saturday night is reserved for visiting my grandparents' place in AMK where my entire dad's side extended family gathers. It's always been a regular weekend "routine"... until I heard that others get to see their extended families once every year on CNY. Only then did I realise what kind of luck I was born into. My cousins are not strangers coz I see them every week and literally grew up playing with them. At dinner, everyone--cousins all now part of the adult-sized bunch--has to squeeze shoulder-to-shoulder at the same wooden dining table which a few years ago was so much roomier. Dinner itself's always worth looking forward to coz there's always good food and general entertainment inclusive of vulgar jokes. True story but I will not repeat them here xD That not-so-big AMK flat keeps getting smaller and rowdier over the years. Sign of a close and growing family (and I don't just mean sideways)! It's no time for deep thoughts, but I just wonder how it took almost 24 years for me to realise that this is no mere routine, but a treasure.

Last but not least, the exchange season has started. I'm not going anywhere unfortunately *sobs*, exchange is for younger people. But I still have school-going friends: some are leaving, and others are coming home. For REP in particular, everyone gets to go for one full year away and that same year does not pass in a flash for those who are not overseas enjoying life xD [Happens that today it's exactly 2 years since I came back (on my mum's bday!)] Well, another full year is coming to an end. And for some reason, although it really shouldn't apply to me, I'm looking forward to the start of the new sem :)

靠 feel

Caught this interview floating around on fb: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/5-governments-5-hdbs-5-moes-tay-kheng-soon-on-decentralisation-8843960?cid=fbcna It's lengthy, but one paragraph stood out: "Why did Lee Kuan Yew worry about having more trees in Singapore? Because it makes money? No. Because he could see that the kind of densities that we are living in, the kind of concrete we are exposed to, it’s not a good thing. Therefore, we must soften the environment. It was something that came out of his own emotional reaction to the environment."

Happens that I recently attended a talk, and the only thing I remembered from it somewhat relates to the above paragraph. Twas pretty much a research presentation (think FYP presentation but with an audience larger than ~3 ppl) highly focused on methodology and numeric results. On what topic? The perceived densities of urban spaces. As in, while the true mass over volume may be constant across different scenarios within the same space, what the human feels may differ depending on what makes up the mass. [They didn't actually use m/V, more like line of sight i.e. how much one sees and at what distance.]

So here's the interesting part. The study found that when even when more space is taken up by greenery (such as when walking down a boulevard with trees bearing down on you and blocking out the sun) as compared to concrete (pavements, tall buildings beside, no shade), perceived density reflects the opposite. Perceived density is like a measure of liveability -- unless one is some sort of small creature with many legs it's prob harder to live where one feels overly boxed in. This led to the conclusion that green spaces, though denser they may be, are more liveable.

The science way definitely proved that, after running hundreds of volunteers down simulated streets, getting their scaled responses and finding correlations. But then must hand it to LKY la his foresight really damn good. He saw the same results like 50 years before any sort of these technologies used in the experiments came into the light. I guess as a visionary he's really exemplary, but all of us normal people can also feel when things are right to certain extents. We don't need a detailed scientific study to tell us we prefer trees to concrete, right? [Not dissing the study, it is ongoing but this was one of the more confirmed outcomes.]

Not everything works this way (esp not designing a plane/being hungry in a supermarket), but when we feel that things are right (or wrong), it might be worth heeding the feel. And doing what we feel works. Well it's worked for SG, just because someone thought it right to plant trees.

[I'm not about to do anything drastic HAHA. Just interesting to think about separate happenings that fall under the same theme.]

Relativity

Presenting the latest collection of short stories, I guess it's the best way to compile topics that haven't much to do with one another -- like fish, climbing, and time. The thoughts get deeper further down hahaha, happy reading!

Ikan Bilis Ignoramus

During the weekend in Kluang we stopped by an ikan bilis wholesaler so my mum could restock. As I wandered around looking at all the different kinds [this suaku hadn't seen dried anchovies in so many different forms before], the seller was explaining how whole ikan bilis cost RM(x) per kg while cleaned ones cost RM(1.5x) for the same, with x denoting an amount I've forgotten. She then went on to say that the higher price was to compensate those who spent time and effort beheading the fish. Therefore, the uncleaned fish were "cheaper". 

I clearly rmb feeling something fishy about that whole reasoning... but it failed to register at that point, thanks to the heat and sleep deprivation. Lol the wholesaler even mentioned that cleaned ikan bilis weigh a third less than whole ones after removing the head, bones, and squishy black stuff inside. Yep, thanks to my lagging brain I'd already beheaded and gutted hundreds of the small fish, before it hit me that we could've gotten someone else to do it for practically free. But then again I don't normally get much chance to unravel the inner workings of ikan bilis. Had a few suans shot my way while at it though. Hahaha I'd actually thought I was going pretty fast... until I looked up and saw that my pile of heads barely reached half of my mum's and grandma's. I may not speak my dialects well, but I understand them fairly ok, especially when my mum announced in hakka that for every fish I cleaned she'd have cleaned three. My grandma sniggered too, but at least she praised my immaculate fish -- quality counts!

Also interesting was how I got to put my finger armour to the test. During a long break from climbing the excess skin sheds from underuse, and with it goes the notable ability to handle hot stuff. This meant that I definitely felt the heat of the freshly scalded bitter gourds while helping to stuff them (for hakka yong tau foo). But my fingers held up well against the ikan bilis. At the very beginning of the cleaning session, my mum got up to get gloves to protect her hands coz apparently the fish bones were sharp and pricking her. As I was experiencing none of this assault, I carried on gloveless... until I felt the needle bones of one of my final few fish pierce through. So they were sharp after all, but my skin was thicker HAHA. Looks like the armour has many uses other than allowing me to stay longer on the wall and help people open their stingrays at bbqs xD

Climber Finder

I seem to have some kind of fortune when it comes to finding people to climb with. When I started in Y1 I joined the club alone, but I made friends there and we progressed together through those shaky newbie days. On exchange, I met my first climbing friend halfway up a stairwell in London, and she led me to people I climbed with regularly till now. When I jio-ed in REP, people came, and people stayed. Even out of nowhere in the most random of situations -- helping facilitate an unaffiliated camp for money in the summer -- a climbing friend awaited. When I started work I always knew that I'd one day jio my colleagues to climb (and have done so, it's great fun!). Usually, there'll be people interested to try it for the first time or else they might have done it once in OBS and want to give it another go. But lo and behold, there's a colleague who'd started climbing before I was even aware of such a sport called rock climbing. Stun.

This might seem a little like bragging, but that's really not my intention. I just feel from all my experience that this is a sport where friendships come easily. Climbing is unlike many other sports which are predominantly team-oriented. Of course we all come from schools/clubs/countries which we may represent in competitions, but nothing stops a climber from climbing with another climber wherever they come from. It's a sport that bonds rather than divides. And now that our sport is growing, it may be easier to bump into random climbers in random places. But given that I've only been in this sport for 4+ years, my situation seems a little 夸张.

Haha, it's as though certain specific lucky stars are constantly shining down upon me, while others adamantly face away. If only this strange luck of mine could be transferred to other aspects like say... keeping injury-free. [It's no joke given that the breaks I've had to take total up to roughly a year #sibeisian, but that's another story] As it is currently, I spread my ~6 climbs per month amongst different people, but I look forward to every session. Mostly it's because of the awesome people I get to spend these good times with :)

 

Time

Since Y4S2 I've been fascinated with the perception of time. How not to be, when the whole of 2016 went like: blink one time, end of the week, yawn another time, end of the month. Like tumbling through some sort of final year wormhole, until Y5 vanished and 16th Jan arrived.

For all of us who started work on 16th Jan, we've crossed 3 months in the workforce! Huh wait... Only 3 months? Feels too short a time to have contained everything that's happened so far, but it is. A few friends have reported similar sentiments. But strangely reaffirming is the fact that I've had colleagues remark the same thing I've been feeling -- that it's as though I've been around for half a year or so at least.

It's like time is always on the move from day to day, not quite in a rush but definitely enough to create a conveyor belt kind of feeling. But zoom out and it's only been a fairly short ~3 months, quite the opposite of how 2016 went. Why ah? It's not like time flew > Mach 1 in 2016 coz final year was too much fun, and it's not like I'm suffering now. Loading-wise, Y5 was hiong enough to sort of rival my current work pace. So that overused adage clearly ain't everything. Thinking about it, if fun (or lack thereof) isn't the culprit, then it could be 2 other things.

Things (whether at work or outside) normally overlap/run in parallel but the time spent doing them is perceived in series. Coz even if there's many things to do it's still not technically possible to be doing 2 different things at the same moment in time, at least at the newbie level I dunno how it's like higher up. [Drinking tea while reading doesn't count, y'all know what I mean haha] The constant switching between tasks gives the illusion of things being done one after another, but this is just the micro aspect of larger things that don't actually come after one another. The time and effort we perceive to be spending in series actually feed into different parallels that all stack within the same time periods. Hence, my friends, this is my theory of why we're only at 3 months even for some of you fantastically overworked people. 

Also important is that I think I'll be working here for some unknown length of time. It's not like a summer internship racing the clock down where with every passing week we get so much closer to the end. Ah it's definitely not like a looming graduation, which for me came like one of those ghosts that suddenly crawl at high speed towards you on your screen. Endings are like islands in the sea of time; without them we don't really know where we're headed and how long it'll take to get there. And so we keep cruising/swimming/drifting, whichever floats your boat. Well who knows where the end is now, but I highly doubt I'll get to it very soon. 

In the meantime let time flow slowly if it wants to, so I can enjoy my youth longer haha!