Back to basics

I've been quite an ardent fan of the channel 8's 名厨出走记 Love On The Plate programme that is aired every monday at 8p.m. Even if it might be a momentary feeling of treasuring the food that appears on my dining table everyday, and that food is so easily accessible to me, it's still that spark at the moment of immersing myself for 1 hour in that programme reminding me of how fortunate I am. The Chefs like us, pampered in this brilliant first-world city where money is all that we need to get things done, head on to rural villages in various parts of the world in the mission of bringing them new dishes and recipes to add to their diets. It's amazing how they adapt quite well to the nature and doing everything on their own as opposed to the ordering of assistants in the kitchens back in Singapore. I can never imagine myself, ever, surviving in a village. I would either starve myself to death or grow warts down there because of the lack of sanitary pads(okay that was random), or cry myself to sleep because I'm getting stung by mosquitoes to death, or whine because there is no music for entertainment except for the rustles of the leaves in the occasional breeze, or no handphone to call anyone instantly, or proper roads to walk on, or proper shoes to wear, or cars to sit in; the list is non-exhaustive(you get my point). It's the forsaking of everything that have been deeply embedded in us from the moment of our births.

The paradox of technology making things more convenient for us yet creating more complexities in our lives.

Then again, it's because of this that I miss the Batu Caves rock trip last year so much and am craving for another natural rock trip. It was a good 5 days away(at least during those times that we were climbing) from civilisation. I actually enjoy very much doing my business(big and small alike) in the wild. It's so much more convenient, seriously.

I didn't know how to appreciate nature very much during Sec 3's OBS discovery programme, feeling very much homesick, but this climbing trip I put in the effort to open my deaf ears to the wild, to listen to the sounds made by crickets, to watch for the branches above my head, to trek up and down slippery terrains. The sounds and sights of nature baffle me. The mystery that it contains is beyond one's imagination.

I doubt I've ever mentioned this before, but it's one of my greatest climbing dreams to scale a cliff/mountain at that height in the picture(ignore the guy). It thrills me; the mere height sends my nerves wrecking, my breathing right into ecstasy mode, and forearms screaming to give way anytime; the risk of each foot placing, of trusting every muscle in me to accustom to every movement I'm ever going to make, makes my senses so very much acutely aware of the surrounding, and it's all of that, that makes me feel ever so alive in this metallic emotionless void world I have been bred in.