unintended consequences

The jungle has come full circle. KYUEMians have finally (some say a tad belatedly) descended to the law of the jungle.

Some find this the classical paradox of all time - that an ideal implementation of a democratic process virtually decrees that morality be sacrificed. Democracies mean you are allowed to switch alliance, betray, jump ship, call it what you may, it still amounts to a renouncement of all the values that have brought you where you are. And ALL in the spirit - or in the guise - of democracy.

Democracy is a privilege for the responsible. The fullscale US implementation of democracy, shoving it down the throats of terrified local inhabitants at pain of death by bayonet, simply does not work because the locals are unaccustomed to having democracy as a way of life. If a society attempts to practise democracy before it is prepared to accept democracy, it lies open to wholesale exploitation by narrow, parochial interest groups whose main agenda is NOT democracy as an end - but as a diabolic means. Witness the Iraqi insurgency where democracy may sweep in a breed of radicals under al-Zarqawi who will enforce a breed of Islamis fundamentalism that is at odds with any existing democratic tenets.

Democracy is a powerful tool; more so if we entrust the wrong people to be the vanguards of such a noble cause.

Which thus brings to mind the fundamental issue. Is KYUEM a receptive society for democracy?

The results will not supply the answer. The process will. The proof in the pudding, this time, is in the making, not in the eating.

Coming back to my blog after a hiatus of 2 weeks - which have no doubt been well spent (unfortunately, financially AND emotionally - I would have to draw the line at "physically"), I feel the weight of the worlds' events on me and realise I have probably changed the course of history by a mere footnote.

I have also realised that history is exclusively comprised of footnotes.

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, a weary cliche iterates. Sometimes you feel that your efforts are in vain and you're not appreciated for however little you attempt to help others. Rest assure, the smaller your contribution may apparently be, the greater your sacrifice. In forsaking the role of glamorous jetsetting philantropist to silently slave on in your mundane job, you are changing a part of the world no one else would bother to. Never imagine no one is noticing. The beauty lies in unearthing things no one is noticing and doing them well and taking pride in the fact you are doing something no one else is capable of.

These are a smattering of things I have learned in my sabbatical from blogging - things that you may snigger at, but things I do not snigger at, and that unwavering belief in one's principles has taken many men further than their contemporaries dared to dream.

What have I done in my sojourn from blogging? (Notice my annoying habit of never repeating the same term twice. Psychologists label it an attention-seeking ploy; I believe it is force of habit.) Last time I blogged I was sick like hell and dead as a doorknob. (Linguists have yet to explain that curious juxtaposition of words for this particular metaphor. I am inclined to believe it is mere alliteration, to soothe the collective eardrums of society) That was two Sundays ago.

MONDAY (13/12)>: National Service, 2nd year since inception, first to sleep in barracks. In case it slips your mind (and, coincidentally, mine), I was a graduate, 1st EVER batch National Service, Kg Ovai Papar and on to Kampung D Universiti Malaysia Sabah, and suffice to say it would have been a negative experience if it were not for the people I met there. To Jeremy, Yap, my bestest male friends there, The Bravo Gang of Gals - Caryn, Salina, Jacinta, and All You Cook Chicks - and Ben (where ARE you? Finally on your own in Taylors?), Ramon, my experiments in psychology, Jeremy's Tent/Room, the original Gerakan Sepuluh of Bugis boys - you have certainly made NS a walk to remember.

Which, of course, does not in the very least help tell the story...I had an NS reunion at Kg Ovai planned, complete with authentic NS Canteen Food by Mak Mi and kitchen chain gang, but wonderful busy schedules intervened and I was left friendless that morning..So predictably, I picked up the BB Gang - Cheryl, Daniel (both my neighbours and the funnest family I have ever known), Ah Wong, and Wilson of Cheryl fame (no points for guessing why), and my brother, and my half drained petrol tank.

FIRST time I drove to Kg Ovai. As in, on my own, in the drivers' seat, coz back then I didn't have my license. This time it was the flood of memories that impaired my driving - all the way God prompted and I remembered. I remembered the crucial junction in the road where I sent my last SMS to my friends before I lost all handphone contact for 2 weeks. I remembered Action Supermarket, where we used to shirk on the pretext of "Kenegaraan Activities", choosing hairbands for Beverly, and watching the shock on the Semenanjung trainees' faces as we bought halal chicken pau. I remembered the first time I rode the bus in, with a bunch of ashen-faced trainees, knowing my ass was at that moment interchanged with my brain when it came to clever pick-up lines for my first day in camp.

I remembered me. Before, after, and a blur grey void that has the taste and texture of a sour orange. Nutritional, but the price has been high.

We were there 2 hours - and WOW! The Awe Factor outstrips everything. We vs Them - We stayed in Tents. They stayed in Barracks with - get this. Beds. We were lucky if we SAW a bed, let alone bedded in one. We had a rock-strewn ground for a "drill parade square". They HAVE a drill parade square, complete with swanky new admin buildings and toilets, presumably for the photo opportunities. They were building a huge lecture hall in the hitherto vacant land next to the river - I tried to stifle a snigger. WE get to stay in UMS for 2 months. THEY get to stay there all 3 months beyond the reach of all telecommunications devices.

Well, as a conciliatory gesture to Celcom - maybe not all. 019 and 013 users, rest assured, all camps in Malaysia have coverage. Still remember the frantic nights when me and Yeap hung out for hours near the huge storage container on the hill, the ONE place Maxis occasionally had spotty coverage.

JUST when we were all set and ready to snap our obligatory pictures of the new barracks, here came the camp contractor. Out, sternly, out you all go and stop being so shutter-happy. (Trigger-happy? Shutter-happy? Doesn't quite compute.) So after barely half an hour there we left in the same state we came. Astounded.

TUES (14/12): Boringest ever day of school holidays. Holed in at home, studied History, not that History's boring, but when you consider the pulsating regime of the past week, you wonder when the bubble will burst, and this is one of those days. Tried to wangle my hospital attachment pass, secretary was unresponsive as usual. Took the cake. Hurled a few complaints at my dad, who personally knew the Deputy Director General - hey presto. One stern phone call and 2 emails later, I was requested to report for work next morning, pronto. Muahaha. My hospital attachment. Fiiiinally.

WED (15/12): HOSPITAL ATTACHMENT BEGINS. Attention to all medical personnel: Member of general public with paltry SPM qualifications on the loose in Accident and Emergency Wards. If encountered, please handle with care. Volatile if not attended to. Prone to sudden bouts of yawning especially in the midst of important procedures, e.g. insertion of IV drips and tubing. Do not hesistate to boggle with jargon if confronted.

Day One, Medical Attachment. Armed with knowledge that it is never as exciting, As Advertised On TV. Till this day, I am eternally surprised why TV producers spare no effort in sensationalizing and blowing job descriptions out of proportion to produce punch-by-punch TV, every second ideally action-packed. Why can't they just portray the mundane day of a mundane middling doctor as it is? Some astute TV producers have already done it, with runaway success.

It's called reality TV.

Okay, yes, apologies are called for - a one week hiatus in production of highly riveting sitcoms like this one is a capital offence in some countries, punishable by stoning with surplus remote controls on huge pyres. Allow me to plead my case before you deliberate with the jury and read me the (no doubt rigged) verdict.

I just worry when my readership will dwindle to the point no one cares I'm posting.

Yeah...got sick, miraculously NOT the moment I came back from Mt Kinabalu, but rather, one day later. I have a good excuse for this, as always. I met a bunch of Seremban teachers on the mountain whose idea of an uber cool holiday in KK, as narrated by the "friendly, gushing hotel receptionist", was a walk in town to find the elusive Filipino Market.

Now, people, how does that sound to the kids? We splurged your scholarship money and deprived you of 3 kilograms of medical textbooks so we could walk around a city that, funnily enough, resembled a Malaysian one? I had different ideas for them. It was great reciprocity - I hitched a lift in their chartered van to KK (RM 11 saved!), THEY hitched a lift in my green Unser for one whole day in KK while I drove them to Tourist KK.

Faster than you could say "Tourist KK", I picked them up on Friday morning - it may help to put things into perspective that barely 18 hours ago I was still descending the bleeding mountain - my legs hurting me so badly the only thing I could reasonably do was drive. Scratch that. Drive automatic. How convenient.

First stop - Signal Hill, or in their words, "that green patch we see every morning from our hotel". Maybe it's because I have ONLY explored Penang and Sandakan extensively, but it seems every town in Malaysia has a little Bukit Bendera, Signal Hill, Bukit Istana, a rose by any other name is just as red. Or fragrant. Shakespeare must be turning in his grave. In essence, before I'm allowed to digress any further, it's the highest point in KK town, and due to the size (or lack thereof) of KK, you can see the cliched birds-eye sweep from the hill. To them, it was magical; for us it was baloney. When will we ever learn that charity begins at home?

At the foot of Signal Hill is the City Bird Sanctuary, possibly the only capital city in Malaysia with a mangrove forest smack in the middle of town like a big black paint blotch on a van Gogh. They spent many interested minutes peering at the horseshoe crabs there - I must say God must have been mucking around with his kindergarten watercolor set when he designed them, the hues and the whorls blew me away. Plus, they're so...small, something you've grown accustomed to crushing under your feet. Only magnifies the remorse once you sit up and take notice.

Next stop, Tuaran Mee and Leong Foon Susu. Word of warning - If you are a halal stickler who simply refuses to dine in an establishment without halal signage, wrong state, old chap. In KK, the rule of thumb: No pork? Check. No wine? Check. It's halal. Such is the ambience in KK that you order in MALAY in most Chinese shops, courtesy of the exclusively Filipino/Indonesian workforce. Songkoks and tudungs bobbing about in Chinese shops comes as no shock. Semenanjungs regularly experience culture shock when they go eat mamak food and realise most of it sucks - most Malays are either busy eating Chinese food or in Salim...Salim...oh Salim...the mere escape of these syllables brings to mind an institution.

Off to another institution I go. The daily bath. See, I never told you about the medical attachment today. Let this be a hard-earned lesson next time you read my blog, which at this rate, shall be renamed Delayed Transmission soon.

My legs feel like they have been tied to ballast and thrown down a four-thousand metre cliff.

4095.2 metre cliff, to be painfully exact, pardon the unintended pun.

List of 10 dumb things I have already done in the fiscal year commencing 8 December 2004 and currently in its 2nd day, namely 9th December 2004:

1. Brashly agree to climb Mount Kinabalu, on short notice (how does one week of training sound to you when you stand at Timpohon Gate and watch the names of the people who do the WHOLE trail in 2 hours 40 minutes - to quote the world record holder - adhere like a malignant tumour in your head when you get the sinking feeling that it will take five hours for you just to get to the halfway point? Which is what exactly happened to us. We dared each other to beat the record, maybe with the aid of a few tequila shots. So for the first hour, we - the fast group - sped up the mountain like hell and actually reached the halfway point of the first phase of the journey in two hours. Which leads me, oh so conveniently, to my next point.)

2. CRAMP FIFTEEN BLEEDING TIMES. Any other human being would have welcomed the rare opportunity to thus extinguish one's life by leaping of the mountain on, say, the 6th cramp. No, not stubborn Nicholas Pang with the proverbial few loose marbles. As I have previously mentioned, with copious attention to my membership in the "Fast Group" - all you fat people out there take that! You can also be a member of a "Fast Group" one day and I don't mean the quick diet quitters! - we basically did half the first phase in 2 hours, which was at least 1 hour ahead of the slow group.

Oh yes, puzzling your head over halves and phases, aren't you? Allow me the opportunity to enlighten and enliven. The typical Kinabalu climb is done over 2 days, divided, as you may have so cleverly observed, into the First phase - take note all you rote learners! - and the Second phase. The first phase is, as cleverly pointed out by the rote learners, climbed on the First day, and likewise, the second phase. The mountain trail is 8.8km long - First Phase means climbing to the edge of the vegetation zone. In laymens' terms - the Second Phase is sheer rock climbing. No plants to shelter you/hold on to/illegally harvest/turn into bookmarks.

At the end of First Phase, which is the first 6 km and normally takes 5 hours for the able-bodied (fill in your own gender or sexual orientation, knowing how politically correct the world has become) you put up in heated (Laban Rata) or unheated (Gunting Lagadan is the most famous and most well-stocked, but Panar Laban and Waras Hut also exist) accommodation for one night.

Well, pretty hard to call it a night.

For the next morning, you have to wake up at 2am, hollered at by the guides, to climb the Second Phase in pitch darkness. Well, yeah, of course, the flashlights help, but just how much is a matter of perennial debate. Thus, half the climbers do not bring flashlights. Being at the end of the vegetation zone, Second Phase is a (normally) 3-hour scramble and walk up the (do the math, 8.8 km - 6 km is kinda close to 2.8 km - the longest 2.8 of your life, I assure you) steepest rock faces available in Malaysia. Let go of the rope and it's a direct flight, straight down, onto the head of an unsuspecting local villager.

Of course, due to the many (some say, unneccessarily many) crevices in the rocks and the flourescent white rope, it is perfectly safe. We (the Fast Gang) got so pissed we ignored the rope altogether and carved our own path up to the summit, walking - Look, Mom, no hands! - on sheer craggy rock surfaces all the way to the top.

Well, it's not exactly "walking" when you are faced with an incline of roughly 45 degrees all the way...and when sadistic...there is a tiny vertical section, straight up, RIGHT at the beginning of Phase Two. Well, it's over by about 5.30am, which means you get to WATCH the sun rise on the peak, bathing Kota Kinabalu dan kawasan yang sewaktu dengannya with a silver pinkish glow that can only come from the heart.

Yes, I cramped 15 times, bleeding first phase. Only from 5km - 6km. FIFTEEN times in one kilometre. They still have pictures, replete with self-righteous, nervous laughter, when I ordered my friends to take of my pants on the trail in public view to rub Deep Heat to relieve the pain. That was the 6th cramp and I was close to committing suicide by hypothermia, sitting in the same spot for 10 mins trying vainly to ease the pain. I recall yelling something like "I don't care if the Prime Minister's entourage is passing just take of my damn pants and put the damned ointment on!"

Hmm.

It DOES sound a lot better/authentic in Chinese, doesn't it?