Housekeepers and Nails, You are Warned

Have you ever noticed that something interesting happens when you touch something hot, such as a steaming kettle? Other than getting burned of course; there will be a flash of premonitory pain, so brief that it’s hardly a pain at all, more of a warning that a true pain is to come. And then the premonitory pain will subside, and there will be an instant in which there is no sensation at all, and in that instant you’d snatch your hand, away from whatever it was that was too hot. But it would be too late; the true pain was already coming, and there would be nothing you could do about it except ready yourself for its arrival, like a housekeeper forewarned about the imminent arrival of a guest, like the way the tide recedes just before a tsunami strikes. A tsunami of pain.

But this post isn’t about pain.

The above was simply to set up a premise to explain the following;

That it is much like coming to a realization; almost hearing the wheels within your head turning, meshing, and moving along a path which you know can only end in a conclusion. Knowing that some brilliantly stray thought has been snagged in the net your ever active brain has cast, and then, silence. For an instant in time your thoughts are no longer thoughts, but simply knowledge, and things in which you are assured to be true. And then it hits you the same way a hammer falls upon the head of the nail it is hitting. Like an explosion of truth expanding outwards, filling your brain with awareness; realization.

At least that’s how it happens for me, my face temporarily morphing itself into my blur look, followed by an exclamatory oh!

So what’s this all about?

It’s not about pain, and it’s not about how I come to a realization either.

Ultimately, it is about the realization itself.

How very often we have heard someone great say that they were called into the area of their ministry, and how I so envy those with such a clear direction to follow. And so by hearing this, we pray for a direction, by asking something such as; “Where do you want me to go, what do you want me to do?” We ask for specifics, and not to say we never get them, just that we don’t always. We ask the ever so common; “Do you want me to go into the music ministry? Or education? Or even full time ministry? What do you want me to do?!”

I asked for specifics, and not to say I never get them, just that I don’t always. This wasn’t one of those times that I did.

Then after months of prayer and much thought, while outside training my parkour, a memory suddenly pounded on the inside of my brain, stating something so blatantly obvious that I almost decided to find and punch something extremely hot as my punishment. It was a lesson from the Westminster Shorter Catechism that my father had gone through with me; the very first one in fact. It stated that “Mans’ chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him fully.” So eargerly I had set out into fulfilling it, wondering which way He wanted me to do so. I had been acknowledging that my purpose is to glorify God, and typically had been asking Him what He wanted me to do, or where He wanted me to go.

But then, hammer to my head, it hit me; my purpose is to glorify God. No more, no less. Pure beauty in simplicity.

I no longer needed someone to tell me where my field lied, for the choice was my own. All I had to do is keep in mind that I am to glorify God, pick a means in which I think I can best utilize to fulfill that end, and do it to my very best.

He does not care so much as to what you use to glorify Him, but more so that you do.

So housekeepers, you were warned of the arrival of this guest.

I can already hear the nails falling down in unconsciousness; the result of being hit by a hammer.

Big on My Little Spree of Puns

Looking for a way forward,
He decided to backtrack.

While thinking, the light bulb above went out.
The light bulb is the least of his problems.

Bomb Diffusing For Dummies was just released.
Reading it was a real blast.

Bored out of his wits,
He wrote this post.

Ripples

While still in the mood for poetry, I decided to drag up one of the first few poems I wrote.

I stand here starring through the mirror,
Pondering my very existence,
Wondering if my life is influencing even the smallest of things.
But I am a speck of dust, falling upon the ocean,
Creating a ripple ever so minute,
Swallowed and erased by waves and storms,
Silenced.

Nevertheless, even the tiniest speck of dust
Creates a ripple.

Living Poets Society

I've been asked how to write a poem.

It's simple.

Or maybe not so simple.

Whatever. You chose.

First, you think of something that means to you. Like something that happened. Or something you're looking at. Or an emotion. Or an emotion derived from looking at something. Or an emotion derived from something that happened to something you're looking at.

I'll stop now.

Second, you think of an interesting way of phrasing it. I often start with random prose only to realize that its structure can be changed to be a poem. So I change it to be a poem. Think of yourself as a rhetorician. Someone who churns out new phrases, ones which haven't been thought of before. Like a phrase-monger. Or, resort to using old phrases. I'm sure half of what I've written has appeared somewhere else in bits and pieces. Statistics and probability almost requires it.

Lastly, you pour out your ideas onto a page as expressively or un-expressively as you chose to do so. Its your writing. You give it life, you breath into it the meanings you want. Poems do not need a cadence or a rhyme to it. It just needs to flow from your heart. Or it can flow from your head, though I've yet to see a poem describing the beauty of a gauge boson.

Just keep in mind that there are no rules. That's the sheer beauty of poetry.

To express yourself with no limitations, no rules.

Reality Bites, But So Does Irrelevance

Warning: This post is intentionally designed not to make any immediate sense. However, if you do have an epiphany and somehow make something else out of it, please share your insights. I look forward to confusing the living daylights out of the next unfortunate victim to read this. Which for all I know may very well be me.

An effort of delicate subterfuge, no matter how valiant, is still lost upon a man who sees fit to fail to see that some of the rhetorical questions of life are not actually meant to be answered. What use is trying to rob a man of his sanity when he has none? So steal from him the sanity he hasn’t. It still does not succeed in making the deceived any less deceived; at least no more than a mosquito has the assurance of immortality. So instead of subtlety, use blatant deception instead. After all, one often chooses to bite into a sweet cake of lies, even while bearing the knowledge of its malevolence. So deceive the deceived, stay mute in the presence of rhetorical questions, and leave mosquitoes for dead.

*This was inspired by a dream in which a giant mosquito was trying to trick me into letting him bite me. Which was of course the same dream where I was enjoying a tofu burger when Doraemon fell on my toe. Who then tried to abort his baby, but didn’t get far because the giant mosquito bit him, and sucked out all the blue paint from him. I woke up screaming ‘albino’, and to my absolute horror, a ghostly white Doraemon was right there, calmly sucking blood out of my left arm.

Then I woke up again.

For real.

Swim

Am I a contemplative person? Am I a person that may someday unravel a mystery greater than myself? Or am I a person who is simply trying to fathom the sheer greatness of knowledge, simply trying to understand and grasp at things only just beyond my reach. In this infinitively vast world, I am only one among many others. Perhaps I may be one to do something great, magnificent, substantial. Or maybe I might be one to slip by unnoticed by the world, insignificant, invisible.

Have you ever gazed out of a car window, looking at other cars go by? To realize that with every pair of lights that passed, another life, another existence, passed by also?

I have often stared out the same window when I am angry. Wondering whether the world knew about my pain, my strife, and the many troubles that life decided to bestow upon me. Almost willing the next person that passed to turn my way, to see my tears, and to know that he was not alone in this world of strife.

All I saw was a person among his friends, violently bobbing his head to another mindless number played over the radio, temporarily oblivious to sadness.

I saw a man, smoking, hoping to blow away his troubles with every puff.

I saw another teenager, smiling wistfully.

I saw a flash of young man, driving as fast as he could away from his troubles, knowing that he was driving towards them at the same time.

I saw a mother, ecstatic with joy, enjoying the carefully crafted surprise that awaited her at the end of ride.

Then I saw a girl, thinking frantically. What was on her mind? Was it random facts she had crammed in last minute for an exam? Or was it an ever so complex relationship she had gotten into. Or was it perhaps how she was going to pay for the medical bill of her terminally sick mother. I do not know. I suppose I will never know.

And so hundreds of cars whizzed by, each bearing another life, another purpose, all with a destination not quite like my own.

That was when I realized that I was really just one other person in this world, my troubles unnoticed, insignificant. And if I were to unravel a mystery greater than myself, I would have to be contemplative. And so I asked myself, am I contemplative? Do I swim on the deep end of the pool? To many I may appear to do so, but perhaps I am only swimming on the shallow end of an even deeper pool; one that spirals downwards forever, filled with flashing lights of cars that pass by.

Umbrella.. ella ella, eh eh eh

I've been asked what the picture at the top meant.

I replied with the poem at the side.

I was then asked what the poem at the side meant.

So I'm posting here.

I've come to realize that every single one of us carry many troubles with us in our lives.
Yes.
You, me and the person next to me and you.
Sometimes they get so heavy that we no longer want to move, and we just sit down, brood, and end up getting nowhere. We end up stagnating.

So I conceptualized, for lack of a better word, a philosophy.

People often associate rain with sadness. I think it has something to do with the water falling. See you have people who come up with statements that go somewhere along the lines of "I walk in the rain so no one can see me crying". Ah ha, I was right. People associate rain, with crying. And, well, you either cry when your sad, or really really really happy/relieved. The latter is of course needless to say, rare.

But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about hiding your sadness by surrounding yourself with more sadness. I'm talking about walking with your burden. I'm talking about moving forward even though you have troubles. I'm talking about steadily progressing onwards, even though your emotions befit the rain. It's not about walking in the rain. It's about walking with the rain, umbrella or not. We don't always have one.

I've come to realize that every single one of us carry many troubles with us in our lives, but not every single one of us carry on even though we have troubles.

So that's my philosophy. To keep moving even though we have problems. The world isn't going to wait for us. It's not going to stop and wait for us to pick up the pieces before moving on. It just keeps moving, so we have to either keep up with it, or get left behind.


Rain Walking.

Rain symbolizes sadness.

Walking symbolizes moving forward.

Put the two together:

Moving forward with sadness.

Rephrasing it:

Moving forward with life, even though you're sad and troubled.

The Pinnacle Phenomenon

Why on Earth has Sam not updated for a week?!

Because he has been challenging South East Asia's tallest mountain. Yes, I climbed Mount Kinabalu! Of course I had the trusty companionship of Jason and Christina.

Phrase of Day 1: See what I have to put up with?

We started the day by waking up at the last minute, packing into a taxi, and rushing to the airport to catch our flight. Breakfast turned out to be the annoyingly faithful yet ever present Mc Donalds. Caught our flight, landed, and took a bus to our lodgings for the night. Overall, uneventful. Though in East Malaysia, there is a disturbing lack of Mc Donalds. The dominating fast food there is KFC.

Phrase of Day 2: Are you okay?

We woke up at, uh, well I've in all honesty forgotten. Took a minibus to Kinabalu Park, stowed the extra stuff, then took another minibus to the entry of the Mesilau route. Not before buying a 5 Ringgit walking stick though. That thing saved my life. So it started off as rather hot, uneventful, and filled with what else but countless steps. We hiked upwards for about 1.5 kilometers, then wasted the effort by hiking down the next 1.5 kilometers. Overall the first 6km were relatively easy. There was a point where we climbed a really long flight of stairs, only to turn back and discover we were above the clouds!

Christina and her "Mee Hoon" tree

It was an exhilarating feeling to know that your own legs had something to do with the magnificent view. The awesome view however, gave way to an extremely hard 2km. It was like my legs had punctured and was running on minimal amounts of chocolate and energy bars. It wouldn't have been as bad as it was, had my head not decided that it was about time I suffered from altitude sickness. And so suffer I did, in the form of a headache. Well a headache implies a dull throbbing pain. It was actually more like a brain aneurysm that popped with every heart beat. And due to the lack of oxygen, it was pretty fast. I was soooo thankful when our guide offered to carry my bag! He was awesome. We then (thankfully) arrived at Laban Rata where we would stay the night. The food there was, uh, reasonably edible but was up to *insert random number* times more expensive. It was the first spaghetti I ever ate that cost 25 bucks. Well everything up there is hand carried so I partially forgive them. I would be more forgiving had they put less oil and made it taste more, uh, like spaghetti. But then again food is food and when your hungry, trust me, you eat. I didn't think I'd be able to make it up to the peak the next day. After all, a head*brainaneurysm*ache is really no joke. Not to mention the exhausted muscles. We knocked out (more like collapsed) at 8 and according to Jason and Christina, I sleep talked! Don't quite know what I said though. Creepily, somewhere in the middle of the night, someone stole my walking stick. Whoever it was stole something I had become emotionally attached to. *begins to break down*

Phrase of Day 3: Just keep going. Take small steps...

We woke up at 2 am. Crazy hours but if you want to see the sunrise, it is more than worth it. I was amazed that my head didn't hurt. Apparently I acclimatised while I slept. We washed up, layered up, and then headed down for breakfast. Being a quick learner, I opted for the one thing that couldn't go wrong wherever you were. The efficiently constant Maggi Mee! We then went outside and had a prayer. I was wearing one of my lovely nylon T-shirts, followed by a long sleeved, and a jumper my dad lent me. It was the same jumper he used in his Europe studying days. Talk about pressure! I fortunately kept it clean by adding a windbreaker on top of it. After that on came these baddass leather gloves, a beanie, and a scarf. We were warm, and ready. We set off at a steady pace and quickly cleared the foliage. We then took this thin steep ledge with nothing but a rope and your feet to keep you on. If you fell there, you fell alright. After clearing it, I was pretty exhausted again. It made the last 800m feel like an eternity of steps. The air up there was so thin, that I was panting as if I was a hyperactive dog, to the power of 10! Minus the energy though. Every 15-20 steps, I'd have to take a breather before pushing on. That is how bad it was. The 800 meters included a smooth rock face angled at about 40 degrees. It of course meant that the wind was crazy. So after much struggle, we finally reached the much anticipated summit. At Low's Peak was when I noticed that I couldn't feel my fingers or toes. In 2 degree temperatures, it was a cruel thing when some voodoo shaman decided to play a game of blow wind blow, with me. It was great though I almost sacrificed my fingers to take photos. The 3 seconds I needed to take my camera out made my hands feel about 100 times colder than they were. Exhaustion and oxygen deprivation produced the following video.

This is our guide Richard Aneh. I think he looks like Adam

My "grinning like an idiot" look, derived from chilled winds, lack of oxygen, and an overdose of successA candid shot of Jason which managed to appear quite poserish

My hurried descent


Why else was I rushing?

No, no. It wasn't just numb fingers, toes, hands, and whatever else. I honestly had to take a piss, bad.

On the way down though, I couldn't help but take some pictures of the South Peak.

Look closely at the note, then the picture Muahahahaha. Yes, it is THE mountain on our RM1 note!

Midway down, there were a pile of rocks and I couldn't resist but do something artistic. Now that, is a great balancing act at 4000m above sea level.
After awhile the rocks fell down when they became the new target of that aforementioned shaman. They were in a stray bunch and my scarf flew of my neck and got caught in them. Something about it looked even more artistic and I was about to take another picture, but then Jason caught up with me and told me it probably symbolized some offering to a mountain god. That was when I decided to remember that my bladder was bursting and hurried down. Needless to say it was incredibly tough but a bladder craving for release can really do wonders. Ironically I felt as joyful getting back to Laban Rata as when I reached the peak. Haha. We then rested for a while and ate brunch. After my legs recovered slightly from the crazy morning workout, we began our decent. I shot ahead and hooked up with a Filipino boy named Franco who was waiting for his parents to catch up. We ended up sticking together for the rest of the decent. Speaking of sticks, he lent me one of his cool ski pole like things!
Franco, what would I have done without you.

When we reached the bottom we split up. He had an hour of waiting to do, and I had Poring Hot Springs waiting for me. So me and Christina picked up our certs (Jason already had one from climbing before), then we went to eat lunch with our guide. After lunch? Hot Springs! Needless to say it was an awesomely relaxing experience. We then collapsed, and this time I really mean collapsed onto our respective beds and slept like logs for 12 hours.

Phrase of day 4: My legs feel like crap!

Woke up, and had trouble getting out of bed. Not like I was tired, it was more of that my legs could literally not support me. It was insane and funny. It was like a hilarious rebuttal the shaman decided to throw at me for escaping the wrath of his winds. After a torture session of stairs, we ate breakfast then went to see some rafflesias! Okay, rafflesia, singular. Only got to see one but it was still awesome.

After that we headed to town and checked into a beach side inn. It was great. We then headed to town where we got full body massages. Now that was the epitome of awesome. Hurt like crazy but I guess we all have a slightly masochistic streak in us, don't we?

Phrase of day 5: Never again. Ever. Or, maybe next year.

We caught the flight and came home. Nuf said.


It was an overall incredible experience I would not have given up for anything. And I've even learnt two things.

One is that determination extends so far beyond just telling yourself you can do it and doing it. Its committing to something and really sticking to it through thick and thin. There were many times where I thought I really couldn't carry on. But all it took was a little encouragement from Jason and then we'd be moving again. It wasn't easy. There were times that I felt crappier than the rotting log I was sitting on, but by pushing through that point of almost giving up, it was both amazing and rewarding. It taught me to persevere, and at the same time help sustain others around me who may be struggling with something.

I also learnt that when you can't feel your fingers and toes, and your bladder is bursting, the way you move is almost synonymous with efficiency.

I call it the pinnacle phenomenon