#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!

Student-mode

Recently, while in the lift with le sis, we met a neighbour she was acquainted with. It was a weekday night, so I was in office attire and she was wearing the Singaporean tertiary school uniform (t-shirt, shorts, slippers). The neighbour stared hard at both of us and went "who's the older one?". Le sis responded that I was. To that, the neighbour blinked and then went "ohhhhh, but you're twins right?"

For those who don't know, my sis is a good 4 years younger than I am ;) The above situation is also v common.

Then at the IT fair yesterday (where I was scouring for a new laptop), there was this salesman. Clearly I look like I've just finished my O levels, coz he asked if I was buying a laptop in time for poly to start. Or it could be that he was being exceedingly polite. So I shook my head slightly and he corrected himself: "Oh, starting uni?".

The attire probably played a part -- t-shirt, shorts, slippers FTW.

So it seems, school hasn't left me yet. Or maybe adulthood hasn't found me yet xD
In any case, I don't mind!

Some pain, some gain

Not sure if I've ever mentioned here, but I believe in fate. Mostly coz multiple times now, I've gotten this feeling that life's been neatly planning itself into a prescription. This includes meeting (literally) painful lessons which I'd very much like to avoid.

Rewind a few weeks back to sometime in Feb, where my left shoulder decided to go exploring the world outside its socket. Once it felt like the bone was invading muscle space, I disengaged and leaped off the wall so the shoulder didn't come out completely. Still, it was damaged enough to end my climb right there. SADDED. I think... I'd somehow failed/forgotten to engage the surrounding muscles before moving off from a straight-armed position. Kinda like hanging from the skeleton and trying to pull with one arm all of a sudden.

Most interestingly, this happened at the time I was (mildly) considering staving off climbing for a bit to let my wrists regain some normalcy. But yea, all climbers know that the hardest thing about climbing is not climbing, so while I was indeed considering pausing... I prob wouldn't have done it. *Dry laughter* So life handed me a better reason to stop.

Well, life for me doesn't revolve around climbing, but in any case it's dreadful having to stay away. So even more curious was how everything else kinda fit into this particular chapter and made it lots better than it could've been. It so happens that in those weeks following the curious shoulder incident, I wouldn't have climbed after work anyway (coz busy/sleepy). And on the weekends, there was this coincidental abundance of other fun sporty stuff to keep me happily exhausted.

[Must admit though, I did climb a tiiiiny bit coz of the UMC alumni event. Restraint was hard work. My favourite kinds of routes involve inclines and heel hooks, but my shoulder couldn't seem to tank the overhangs much :( If you like food, it's kinda like refraining from eating that one more serving of whatever sinful thing it is you shouldn't be eating too much of. So I spent lots more time than usual on the flat wall. Or else I sat firmly on the mat and resisted the itch to do some fun (but likely damaging) stuff. Was nice to be back at least -- it's the place where it all started.]

Other highlights of the past few weekends include running around in NTU, running around the CBD, and also running around in GBTB trying to corral runaway children. It's no fun to wake at/before 6am on weekends just to get to places on time [always a loyal pasir ris girl but living here does have its drawbacks]. That's actually even earlier than workdays. Yes, I do question why I treat myself this way at the start of 2h journeys, but lo and behold these journeys have always been more than worth!

Out of all these, I think most deserving of attention would be the Urban Adventure Trek with team Cockfosters. [Cockfosters is nothing vulgar -- it's the name of a terminal tube station in London. But as young ppl, we find these things amusing.] After all, we almost won. Coz it happened that for that set of station activities, being a team of climbers was pretty advantageous ;) Slacklining, anyone? 10 seconds for a full 3 points was a pretty steep requirement, esp for non-climbers seeing the line for the first time. But we aced it! K not saying I'm any good, but proud to say my team member cleared a whopping 17 seconds on the line. Totally should've given us more points for that haha. So in terms of mastery (being one of the rare teams to complete all stations with full points and visit all photo checkpoints), we'd have won... If not for a slight slip up in technology: a single lost photo which cost us the winning point and put us in 14th place.

Live better indeed. Without climbing and all these other sports stuff, I'd become a potato soon enough given the excessive consumption of muffins at work lately.

I like that we just shrugged and went off for lunch with our nice new free towels. Would've been nice to win, but winning isn't everything! The whole thing was pretty fun -- getting up the low wall without help, doing random legwork activities, being smart enough to understand hints. I realised something from all these team events (both sports and non-sports) I've been joining. I can be quite chill about things, and I don't enter competitive events with a competitive frame of mind. It's only when/if the feeling comes that we stand a chance, that I fire up the engines. It seems like my team was mostly like that too -- IIRC we only started running from station to station after the slackline challenge ;)

Getting injured sucks. But wow, in a flash it's been ~3 weeks since my last proper climb and things haven't really been all that bad! Aiming to get back on the wall soon, maybe climb cautiously... Which means, it might be a good time to gather some new kakis from the workplace as well!

Last bit! One restless day after work I took the 1.5h walk to Stadium, and took this pic:

Person who guessed this place wrongly I am disappointed in you xD

So yes, it is possible for me to get to a post-work climb session by walking, provided I have some form of dinner with me. That aside, what was nice was that from my chosen sitting spot, much of the distance covered was visible (as can be seen from the photo). *Thinks philosophical thoughts* I get this feeling sometimes, that in climbing we don't always appreciate our own improvement and that it takes time. Because climbing is a sport of continual challenge, from the micro POV it can become about sending that one hard route now or else leaving the session feeling unaccomplished. Yalor, so that's prob why I kept trying moves that hurt. It's only when forced to step away from the grind that the bigger picture, and the past, become more apparent. It'll prob be healthy for me to rmb that it took all these years for me to get to my current standard, and if I'm gonna continue for years, I need that same functional body to take me through.

Haha I think I've learnt the lesson life wanted to knock into my head and yet tried to make comfortable for me. Enough of using my body in an unsustainable manner, there's still a long way to go.