My first handstand

Another challenge. Coach taught us to perform handstands last week. None of us could do it properly. There were two main difficulties. First, balancing oneself upside down is new to the body and brain, so instinctively the brain instructs the body to reverse by sending fear signals, at least that was how I felt. Second, our untrained arms and core muscles are not strong enough to sustain the handstand position too long.

Like David Lim said, you need to set yourself a stretched target, challenge yourself a little.

All you can eat farewell lunch

On the day when the few of us colleagues were treating TW for a farewell dinner (TW earned a scholarship to do a masters in engineering at Stanford), WM sneakily came up to me and said he was also going for studies. That's a modest way of saying that he picked up a scholarship as well and to top if off, he is going to Oxford. But he said he did not wish to publicise the fact he is one of the latest to hop on what I call the F-2-S scheme (Farmer to Scholar) scheme. I realised later the rest of our lunch kakis were all in the loop about it but were all 'sworn' to secrecy. I then realised he told me because the rest of them took the secrecy part too seriously and no one took the initiative to organise a farewell for WM.

The problem was after treating TW to dinner at The Merchant Court, the prospects of another hotel buffet were not optimistic. But how could we neglect our lunch kaki WM who has entertained us continually with his 'chut patterns', for example, claiming to forget to bring along his car keys when deciding who to drive out for lunch, stopping to re-tie shoelaces in the middle of a badminton game when he is losing, and always having a prior appointment when there was a gathering.

So it was our time to get even. We organised a eat-all-you-can but at Pek Kio Food Centre. Was he pleased? Take a look at the photos below but I think he was happy his friends, albeit only four, did not forget him.




As it turned out, WM couldn't eat so much anyway, so we were all very happy.

Awards night

Received an award from Minister of State on behalf of my organisation last Friday. The dinner cum awards presentation was more than 3 hours long! The event was held at Suntec Ballroom and the three course dinner was the modern fusion western style food with fantastic names. Tasted merely normal.

Reading "A Mountain to Climb"

Mr David Lim, the leader of the 1st Singapore Mount Everest Expedition, was a guest speaker at our compant's Retreat. Participants of the retreat were given David's book "A Mountain to Climb" to read before his talk.

Like David mentioned early in his book, most people do not understand mountaineering, and I suppose I was also one of the guilty ones who took the Expedition very lightly and viewed it as another one of those wayang things people do to gain attention.

The book is very well written and engaging, and there are many revealing stories on team dynamics which I found to be very true and insightful.

I had a brief chat with David after his talk and I only had time to ask him two questions.

First, the decision to leave out a member of his team Kim after Kim had, on the very last training climb, displayed a uncharacteristic agressiveness and assaulted another team member. This was ironical because Kim was very popular with the rest of the team. Khoo Swee Chiow however was left on the team despite Swee being not a team player and was chastised more than once for selfish behaviour. When asked, David said that the Expedition was called the SINGAPORE expedition and the goal was clear, and that was to send someone up to the summit. David likened Swee as a Diego Maradona -- when there is only 5 mins left in the match, and you need a match winner, you send Diego Maradona in, regardless of whether he is a team player. So he says it is up to the leader to decide whether the benefits of having such a star player outweighs the negativeness or toxicity he brings to the team.

Second, I asked him whether he had any regrets on not summiting himself; only Swee and another person Edwin eventually reached Everest summit. David replied that as the team leader, he had to consider who had the best prospects of summiting and he chose the team based on this. Furthermore, he had torn his cartilage (via sever coughing) so physically, he just was not suitable. He jokingly said that he is thankful (on hindsight) that he never went up because then he did not have to think about climbing down. This may sound strange but after reading his book, I realised that not only were there dangers climbing up, descending was equally if not more dangerous, because it was easy to slip and the climber would have been very very exhausted by then and could make a mistake easily.

The difficulties in climbing Everest is beyond physical strength and endurance which are given requirements. The question mark is whether the climber can aclimatise in those altitudes -- Mt Everest is 8850m above sea level. So the climber has to get to, say 5000m and stay for a few days to adjust, then to 6000m or so until one can endure going up to 8000m. Even then, one cannot stay long at the summit, at most an hour and you have to descend.

The second difficulty is logistics, moving the tons of food and equipment and bringing these up and setting camps and different altitudes, by climbing! So the sequence is like, you bring extra equipment from base camp (BC) and move it to higher ground at Camp 1 then you return to BC. Then you bring more equipment and food to C1 and take some to C2 then you return to BC. So this shuttling of equipment goes on until enough equipment, especially oxygen tanks, is stocked at the last camp before the push for the summit is done.

The final obstacle is the weather which can mean the difference between a successful climb or simply death. David mentions in the book that many bodies are left untouched on Everest because it is just too difficult and tricky to retrieve a body at those altitudes and the uncertainly of the ice and snow.

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The point about team dynamics touched a chord in me. In national service, you see similar types of behaviour especially those individuals who will stop at nothing to do a little less, and if possible, to do nothing at all. They think nothing of taking advantage of others as long as they themselves are not inconvenienced. In the past, I used to wonder how in the world can such people exist but I have come to realise that this is just the way they are. But there is a silver lining in this. It lets you know more clearly which are the people whom you can count on as a friend and reciprocate in return the friendship.

My National Day shirt

Very happy to have bought this shirt that proudly declares my love for my country.

National Day - Some remarks

I am sure if the organisers had a choice, they would have postponed this year's National Day Parade; but of course they could not. Coming right after the Beijing Olympics opening extravaganza, our little celebration paled in comparison, in scale, complexity, colour, pompousness and almost everything else.

After watching the Chinese PLA soldiers march with the olympic flag for the flag raising, their soldiers tall, erect, mean and really soldierly looking, our own SAF boys looked like, well, boys. Especially the item where our SAF MPs brandished their rifles during the precision drill in their 'so-cool' shades, they almost looked like a concert item in the JC. So that's why we need a 3G army, its probably the only edge we have.

That's where our SAF's pride came in to prove the point, the Black Knights in their predominantly red and white F-16Ds. I can see them strutting their stuff from the comfort of my home. Dana didn't like the noise the jet engines emitted and barked after the planes.

The fly boys got creative this year, creating a heart shape. I think it was dedicated to their wives (I think I heard the commentator say), which would include Zoe Tay because her husband is one of the pilots.
The parade commander was impressive this year, and remembered to command the guard of honour to fire THREE rounds of blanks.

I also liked the fact that the organisers included "We Are Singapore" in the song list. Its my all time favourite.

Congratulations to WY and wife

I don't how he did it I but WY's wish came true for his baby girl to be born on 8/8/08. A few days ago, he invited me to have steamboat dinner on 7/8/08 with his wife saying having steamboat dinner a day before will induce the baby to be born the day after (the steamboat). Well, it worked!

Congratulations to the proud parents!

This is baby Chloe :)

Late love

I only recently became a convert to the joys of eating durians. I remembered I hated the smell of durians when dad bought some when I was very young and I have since then not touched a morsel of the creamy flesh. The transformation came during my ICT. There are many durian trees at our exercise area and during lull periods, the men would simply pick the durians up, open them and eat them on the spot. I did not try any of the kampong durian but my interest was piqued because I rationalised there must be something I missed - why would everyone love the fruit so much.

So one fateful night, I asked my dad to buy ONE durian and and I tried a small bite. It didn't taste that bad after all, although the odour emanating from the fruit (when in the car) smelled like LPG. I managed to eat two seeds that night.

The next week, we had durian each night over the weekend. Here are the photos. The first set of durians were the 'yellow prawn' variety and the second set were called 'love fruit'. Strange names but the quality was good. The fruits were purchased from a fruit shop at Kallang Bahru.