Climbing of Gunung Nuang

In my younger days, I had never done any mountain climbing. The nearest, part of the mountain range that I came across was the hill adjacent to the far end of Pei Yuan secondary school in Kampar. During recess time, we used to gather and hop around on those big rocks near the foot of the hill but never dare to venture further beyond that where the Kampar hill proper is within reach just a few hundred meters away.

A mountain always looks forbidding to me because one never gets a chance to see through what lies in between the foot of the hill and its tip. The undergrowth and trees that intermingled within, shrouded any barely visible jungle path and the bright sunshine. The thick leaves on the tree tops cover the sky and present a shadowy, and gloomy surrounding which seems to be filled with too many hidden unknown elements. Strange noises from insect, birds, monkeys and other wild animals, the gentle breeze on fallen leaves and the rubbing of branches  add further mystery that deter any stranger from venturing into such an unfamiliar territory. At that time I just could not imagine someone who would like to trek for days to Gunung Tahan and Taman Negara park. It would be a dangerous attempt  that could land yourself to the menace of blood sucking leeches, stepping on poisonous snakes, accidentally bumping into bears or even man-eating tigers! Mountains did not fascinate me in those years and I'd rather take a cool nice dip in ponds or lakes where one could just float close to the water surface, feeling more cozy that way,  even with the unfathomed depth lying below!

I changed my attitude towards mountains lately, perhaps very much influenced by the companionship,  comradeship and  also enjoyed the togetherness of conquering mountains with a few of my friends and buddies. Another probable reason being, it is much easier to strike a lottery than to spot a tiger in the wild nowadays. After the first ever Gunung Bunga Buah climb near Genting Highland, the momentum had driven me to set foot on Gunung Nuang near Ulu Langat. Its close proximity to the city makes it easily accessible from Kuala Lumpur.

I recounted the climb and wanted to relate and share my experience here with some photos:

On the holiday of 1Malaysia day, CC Wong and myself set off at about 7.00 am and parked our car at the entrance of the park. Registered ourselves with the park authority before starting the climb. It started with a stretch of road and CC termed it aptly "The never ending road". The road led us through some "Orang Asli" or aborigine houses and bamboo forest, on the way there were some huts built for the resting of the trekkers. The distance was roughly about 5Km and we took about half an hour to complete the journey, it was a pleasant walk under the morning sun, take a look at those photos below and you will understand what I mean.

Before long, we reached a few streams that we had to cross after arriving at a water catchment area. I took off my shoes to avoid wetting them, othewise it would be uncomfortable for the long journey up and down the hill. I roughly counted we had crossed six streams in between some rocky paths!

CC is a veteran trekker and he had climbed even to the mount Everest base camp. This was his sixth times climbing Nuang and yet we lost our way for almost half an hour near the first stream though somehow we managed to trace the path backwards and followed the big water-piping that eventually led us to camp Lolo. We climbed all the way further up the next destination, Camp Pacat. As the name implied, there must be leeches. Surprisingly so far I encountered only one leech near the crossing of one of the streams and I was just in time to get rid of it before it started to bite. Comparing to the Gunung Bunga Buah trek , I would say leeches here are actually rare!

From Camp Pacat onwards, the climb was steep and upon reaching Puncak Pengasih, that was one of the peaks. To reach the other peak which is of the same altitude, we had to go downhill through a wet and muddy path and climb another 45 minutes to reach the Nuang peak.

We finally reached there, snapped a photo of me for the record. One could enjoy a good idyllic view of the Ulu Langat dam from above the mountain.

We completed the entire trip roughly in the region of 8.5 hours. They are saying that if one could climb this mountain, you could practically climb all mountains in Malaysia. I took the challenge and now I have more confidence and am looking forward to climb more Malaysian mountains in the near future.

A complete and non-stop playlist for my favorite songs

We already have software program that downloads movies overnight and watch them for free! How about all those programming wizards out there to come out with another one that a user just names the favorite song and its preferred original singer in a list then you could have them ready on our PC to be heard the next day? I am not talking about the kind of iTune package that one has to pay USD0.99 per song but I am more into the kind of software capability which could retrieve and select the best quality WMA or MP3 files from the various multiple sources available for downloading a particular song. The program will evaluate the noise and recording quality after taking into consideration of interferences over the internet transmission and its environment etc.; after that it would make the best choice on our behalf to download them all into our computers while we sleep through the night. When you wake up the next morning, you have your Don Mclean's "American pie" and "Vincent", the Three Dogs' night's "Never been to Spain", CCR's "Proud Mary", Little Anthony' s "Tears on my pillow", Gene Chandler's "Duke of Earl"... the playlist goes on and on, presenting a repertoire of non-stop songs and music readily available near your bed side, inside your car and perhaps even in the office. How about that?

I used to prepare an Excel file with the content of which I fill in the titles of the favorite songs during my free time. I wanted to come out with a complete favorite playlist. You know it would take a long time to remember and state all the songs you wanted to listen. It is very much dependent on your memory, your mode there and then of the day which you suddenly have that pining for just a particular songs to be played along! Right now, "The house of rising sun", "Yellow river", "Those were the days", "Alone again naturally" come suddenly into my mind! Do you see what I mean?

I came from a family which could be considered as quite musically inclined. My brother CM Lee told me one day, it would be very nice to be a musician that could earn money and enjoy the work that you are doing at the same time, even though one might not become rich for being a musician! He and I  own a complete set of drum, electric and hollow guitars, keyboard and pianos back home! It would be very nice if and when all the family members are ever home for the festive seasons,  then everyone of us each pick our own most skilled instrument to play a gig session. We are no professionals but we are music enthusiasts that used to play with the worship team in our respective churches as guitarists.

Music is an integral part of our life. And sometimes I just marvel at how humans with the invention and aid of such instruments could produce such beautiful-to-the ears sound waves which sooth and touch our hearts and souls! I imagine one day when a host of angelic musicans of the heavenly orchestra, treating us to an occasion where we all immerse ourselves in enjoying a party of splended and most awesome display of the greatest sounds in this universe.  All of us regardless of skin colors and ethnic origin  gather before the throne of the most high God and start to worship and sing the song of praise  " Oh God, how great thou art!"

A day in the village with sticky seeds on pants!

I remember those days my dad came home with his pants full with sticky seeds of the weeds all over. My mom would pick them out one by one patiently before washing. It was a tedious and unpleasant job of getting rid of them. My dad must have adventured into some wilderness with his friends. Did not remember exactly for what purpose he made the trip but I believe he must have gone on a fishing trip that required him to walk along the sand dunes of the ex-mining land, waded through some streams and also trekked some areas with lallang and tall undergrowth. He and his friend had gone to that fascinating and mysterious region of wilderness located just opposite my grandpa's home. A meandering river and the mining activities kept the landscape there ever changing. My memory could only register a vague image of the scenery of that place which was fast changing too many times over the years! I did remember seeing the row of long tender bamboo fishing rods that were laid on the side of the house, perhaps it was for the sun to dry up the equipment before they were kept in-house for future trips.

The strip of land over there was a "happening place" for the village folks. It was rumored that those big deep ponds further inland were once infested with crocrodiles, someone claimed they saw but no one actually caught or killed any one of the beasts. It was also a favorite spot for the villagers to do fish farming and a kid in the neighborhood was drowned in one of those fish ponds. It was a young boy by the nick name of "Little monkey" and that was a sad episode of  life in the village where the youngs were often left alone while the parents were at work and the whereabout of their children was hard to be monitored!

I used to follow my mum and those women in the village nervoulsy to the side of  those big ponds (with crocrodiles?) for the "dulang washing", which is an ingenious method using the centrifugal force of the swirling water to get rid of those mud, sand and stones, but retain the heavier tin ore at the center of the washing bowl called "Dulang"! This old fashioned way of dulang washing profession had fed many of the families in the village though now it had become obsolete that perhaps one could only see this dulang bowl item for display in the muzium!

There was a stretch of vast sweet potatoes land located right before crossing over the river where the happening place was. The sweet potatoes fields were planted for its leaves to feed the pigs, which were kept and reared at the backyard of practically every home in the village in those days. The sweet potatoes field there also served as the natural playground for us where we used to fly kites, catch dragonflies, crickets, butterflies and ambush birds!

We used to see helicopters hovering over that piece of the land in the evening from far away! One day I was told a helicopter crashed in that area but I had not got a chance to see the crash site for myself despite my curiosity!

There came a time with further discovery of rich tin ore deposit in the land by an Australian mining company! The 24 hours rumbling of the giant size bull dozers, "big stomach" scrapers, excavators and dump trucks cleared the land, transformed the entire landscape again beyond recognition. The whole western side of the village was supposed to be relocated for the mining operation to take place but fortunately it did not happen.

These little pricky sticky seeds on my pants brought me back to memory lane once more! By the way, I asked the name of this grass with the sticky seeds on facebook, my "learned friends" said it is called the "love grass"!

Busy for the month of September

I was not busy with work but rather busy with some schedule to prepare for the upcoming event in the early part of October. To put it simple, I registered for the inter-companies run in Pasir Gudang in Johore on 3rd October 2010. I could not understand why I have to take this 5 km run so seriously afterall it is just something routine that is being carried out every year by the group for its employees, no big prices and nothing special about a privately held cross country race run on a tarmac road either.

To give some background on this, I had moved in since a year ago to stay in a place very near to the beach where I could do some cycling and jogging whenever I feel like it. Most of the time I do it in early the morning 6:30am or about 7pm in the evening. My daily schedule would be doing a evening ride on mountain bike for 20 km and jogging for 3 km in the morning before going to work. The initial going was a bit tough for me because I had stopped exercising for the past 5-6 years when I worked overseas where the weather was simply too nasty to do such a thing compared to what it is in a tropical country. I take up this challenge partly to boost my own ego and also try to catch up with my brother-in-law, who is a few years older than me but is a good veteran runner in the marathon race. He is probably ranked top 10 in the country veteran category.

I had climbed 2 mountains, namely Gunung Bunga Buah and also Bukit Nuang,  and did also a trekking to the Pelangi waterfall in Sungai Lembing within a period of 2 months before the race as part of a cross training program for strength and stamina! Even during the week long Hari Raya holidays, I jogged 5 km with my brother-in-law just to keep fit and at the same time to get some advice and training tips from him on running long distance races.

There was supposed to be a session for my remote controlled nitro-plane, which had been fully assembled ready for the virgin flight in Dungun arranged by my friend cum coach Jaafar . I postponed the date just to give myself more time to be trained and ready for that particular event. In my mind, if I could not even win a race in a closed event organized by the company, how could I ever win one in the open race? This perhaps explained why I have to take that race so seriously! In fact I had been coughing for about a week since coming back from the camping trip of Pelangi waterfall. I was a bit worrying that coughing might interfere my breathing during the race. Fortunately it did not and I ran the race well though not perfect!

I eventually finished off  in the 6th position in the veteran category. From the race, now I know where the standard of my opponents is, so that I could do the catching up. I vowed to come back next year to improve my position to top 3 in the run.  I probably need to prepare myself and participate in the half marathon training in order to cope with those guys who had beaten me in the race. That is my target set for year 2011!

Life as it is!

A strange feeling and unfamiliar setting make me wonder whether this is the same world which we used to live many years ago. When we look around us, things suddenly appear to be different as though it all happened just in the blinks of your eyes. We once used to wonder how your future spouse and children are going to look like, will they ever be pretty and charming, or your off-springs would behave and inherit some traces of similarities of yours? Abruptly the time came that we had the added family of in-laws and  life started to center around our own family of spouse and young kids! They are the ones with these distinct real faces appear right before you to accompany us for the rest of your life. Changes did not stop here, very soon they outgrew their shoes, shirts and toys, and they reached the age of adolescence with their own friends and making own decision and choices despite you telling them otherwise. We woke up in one of the mornings and found ourselves well qualified for the partial withdrawal of our EPF fund, which marks the great number of years that we had been through!

We looked forward to attend birthday and wedding parties that always filled with joy and happiness. The time had come that we had to visit the bed-ridden beloved ones in hospitals, and bidden them final goodbye in funeral services. Long lost friends, classmates and contemporaries occasionally called to meet up and you took note and captured glimpses of their aged bodies, wrinkled faces, and traces of grey hairs. That prompted you to take a quick look at your own face in the mirror on how those years of toil had eroded your youthful look!

We  felt the sadness and loss in years when the elderly of our family and those from the side of the in-laws disappeared one after another, you are slowly moving up the rank of seniority. The only consolation could be you finally get to enjoy the golden age discounted travel tickets on buses, railways or airplanes! You over joy every time upon the renewal of your employment contract which proves not just your earning capability but also you are still wanted!

We became sentimental of the past and nostalgic of the good old days where things were done differently. An old song would always make you remember the exact moment and time of what you were doing then. We become interested and yearn to involve in those hobbies or interests which we could not fulfill for whatever reasons during those younger days.

Suddenly you feel the strong urge to defy this age gaining process and wanted to prove that you are as fit as before. Climbing all the high mountains, visiting places and taking part in activities and races that demand physical strength and superiority.

The recent passing away of the eldest aunty of my wife and also the Singapore minister mentor Mr. Lee Kuan Yew's beloved wife Kwa Geok Choo seems to be just another ordinary day-to-day incident. But somehow it has reminded me time is so short and life is so good, we must always appreciate the time we spend with our love ones while the sun still shines on us everyday!