Datuk (Msia)

Last December, I went for a 2 day 1 night trek up a 870m hill in Malaysia. I was enthusiastically told that during the night one could get to see a sky full of stars, but as luck had it the skies were cloudy after sunset. Not to be dampened, I set an alarm for 2am (slept in tents near the summit at around 10pm), which proved unnecessary because the cold wind and hard groundsheet kept me awake at intervals. I can testify that at 2am, 3am, and 4am, the stars were still obscured from view. The flip side was that it didn't rain at all.

Now, there were around 30 of us on the trek, divided into 5 tents, and we occupied the space of one and a half classrooms. As such, everyone not asleep could overhear what the occupants of another tent were saying. At 10pm, 4 out of 5 tents were silent. Conversation and laughter was going on in one tent, and the occupants were quite oblivious to the fact that they were either disturbing or entertaining occupants of the other tents.

I personally found it highly entertaining. (Couldn't sleep at 1o anyway) In two ways. One, they were so innocent in making so much noise and disturbing some others that I found it amusing, especially when they burst into acts of cooing and piercing laughter and all the other attendant sounds we may expect from a robust social interaction involving four females and a male. Thus whenever they burst into laughter I couldn't help but laugh silently too, because I could just imagine people in other tents grumbling to each other.

Two, some of the content was kind of amusing, and the situation as mentioned is such that outsiders in the other tents always have the possibility of saying something in reply, as though they were a natural participant of the conversation; if so, then the ensuing silence as they realise that others can hear them would have been an interesting one, and I can just imagine them replying something back, and so start a inter-tent dialogue which hopefully will then go on to disturb those who weren't already disturbed, and maybe then things will snowball to a case where everyone was talking and no one was sleeping.

That didn't happen. But I must remark that when one girl abruptly asked, "So have you ever thought of suicide?" I was indeed quite amused, it coming after a wave of merry talk had barely subsided. And other things: they were trying to persuade the male to sing the One Little Two Little Three Little Indian song for some reason unfathomable to me.

The trek was marketed as an introductory one but, consistent with my overall lack of physicality, I found it fairly tiring. In fact, the last time I was so exhausted was when I was being tickled and laughed so much I couldn't breathe, and when I was doing the military route march. There were parts which inclined up to 70 degrees and hands had to be used, but the main factor was the speed at which the group travelled, which was the speed of a brisk walk most of the time.

Nonetheless, it was enjoyable. It's always nice to push your body to keep going. To exercise willpower. I found the second half of the trek uphill less tiring than the first, maybe because my body is more efficient in the second gear, that is, the gear where you burn up fat for energy. (Or some such thing) Or maybe because the greater the challenge, the more I resolve to rise above it. Or both. As my entire t-shirt and face was drenched in sweat I thought of a number of things. I thought of Michael Loux's introductory book on Metaphysics in my bag. I thought of how it'd be like for the forest to swallow me up, for there were parts where I couldn't see the person in front or behind me. I thought of how a Christian friend of mine would draw on God for inspiration, and that itself gave me motivation, because I felt that faith in faith as an empty arbitrary, concept itself is sufficient for one to overcome one's limitations. But mainly I thought of forcing myself to take deep measured breaths and to keep pushing.

Brief social commentary. I was in a group with 3 male friends and 2 other females we were assigned with. There wasn't too much interaction between us and them, or between us and other groups. Not surprising, since it's only a 2d 1n trek. Though I do kind of regret being less interactive, because I could have gotten to know more things. There was a male nursing student, for example, and I wanted to find out more about his interest in nursing.

A number of strong alpha-males. I observed that males, when in groups, tend to act funny and cute and laugh rowdily. I suspect it's a way of showing males from other groups how tight their cohesion is, as well as a way of attracting females because of that. Females in the group, on the other hand, tend to laugh at almost every single thing the males say. I suspect it's a way of creating a bond with the males in that group, so that they have some protection. My group is not above such human activity. Brief social commentary over.

At 4+am, we (that is, the group I was with) decided to go up the summit from camp. It was kind of exciting because we went without the others and it was still very dark. The short climb up was not free of dangers, because a fall somewhere would mean a fall down the hill. Up on the summit it was cool and windy, and we watched as the terrain slowly came to life. It was a quiet and peaceful experience. I must say I now have more than a vague idea of what Cormac Mccarthy's characters are experiencing in The Border Trilogy when they sit on top a mountain and looking at the landscape below them.

Here are some photos of the trip, some of them courtesy of Colin Tan.









Rest point.



That's me either thinking looking at some ants on the ground or pulling myself together.

At the summit during sunset. It was foggy. And fairly cool.

A barely-there sunset.

Eating instant noodles and canned food for dinner.

Tent area.

A town below us, from the summit.

Daybreak.

At the top of the hill. Quiet, windy.

I like this photo for some reason.

This is my pick for best photo. You will note that the lights didn't look as bright in reality. It was the camera that did the trick - but you can't say that it's like Photoshopping because the camera merely collected more light than usually enters the eyes. That is, no editing was done.

I like it because it looks like two persons looking onto a world that is being obliterated. Looking on in companionable silence. Looking on in equanimity.

Nonhuman animals

If you're an educated person, there's more than a slight chance you would have encountered some form of argument against eating meat. If you have had such an encounter, be it through newspapers, documentaries, or articles online, there's more than a moderate chance you would have continued your meat-eating ways.

I've had my fair share of encounters. I still continue my meat-eating ways, with one notable difference: I've resolved to cut down on beef, because by some estimate producing beef is one of the more inefficient activity that has negative consequences to the environment and to humans.

I do feel guilty eating meat, though only when I think of the articles I've read or the documentaries I've watched, not when my mind is busy with the company of friends or something else. I feel guilty because many of the arguments I've read are compelling. The way I justify my meat-eating ways lies not in refuting those arguments, which probably should be the way to go if one wants to defend one's practice of eating meat, but in thinking that I'm not necessarily motivated to do what's right.

A lot of us think otherwise. We may think that for any person A, if A thinks x is wrong, A wouldn't do x. If you think this way, then you should either refute anti-meat eating arguments or give up eating meat altogether.

In any case, here's an excerpt from one of the well-known writings on the topic.

It is not merely the act of killing that indicates what we are ready to do to other species in order to gratify our tastes. The suffering we inflict on the animals while they are alive is perhaps an even clearer indication of our speciesism than the fact that we are prepared to kill them. In order to have meat on the table at a price that people can afford, our society tolerates methods of meat production that confine sentient animals in cramped, unsuitable conditions for the entire durations of their lives. Animals are treated like machines that convert fodder into flesh, and any innovation that results in a higher "conversion ratio" is liable to be adopted. As one authority on the subject has said, "cruelty is acknowledged only when profitability ceases." So hens are crowded four or five to a cage with a floor area of twenty inches by eighteen inches, or around the size of a single page of the New York Times. The cages have wire floors, since this reduces cleaning costs, though wire is unsuitable for the hens' feet; the floors slope, since this makes the eggs roll down for easy collection, although this makes it difficult for the hens to rest comfortably. In these conditions all the birds' natural instincts are thwarted: they cannot stretch their wings fully, walk freely, dust-bathe, scratch the ground, or build a nest. Although they have never known other conditions, observers noticed that the birds vainly try to perform these actions. Frustrated at their inability to do so, they often develop what farmers call "vices," and peck each other to death. To prevent this, the beaks of young birds are often cut off...

Since, as l have said, none of these practices cater for anything more than our pleasures of taste, our practice of rearing and killing other animals in order to eat them is a clear instance of the sacrifice of the most important interests of other beings in order to satisfy trivial interests of our own. To avoid speciesism we must stop this practice, and each of us has a moral obligation to cease supporting the practice. Our custom is all the support that the meat-industry needs. The decision to cease giving it that support may be difficult, but it is no more difficult than it would have been for a white Southerner to go against the traditions of his society and free his slaves: if we do not change our dietary habits, how can we censure those slaveholders who would not change their own way of living?

The same form of discrimination may be observed in the widespread practice of experimenting on other species in order to see if certain substances are safe for human beings, or to test some psychological theory about the effect of severe punishment on learning, or to try out various new compounds just in case something turns up. People sometimes think that all this experimentation is for vital medical purposes, and so will reduce suffering overall. This comfortable belief is very wide of the mark. Drug companies test new shampoos and cosmetics that they are intending to put on the market by dropping them into the eyes of rabbits, held open by metal clips, in order to observe what damage results. Food additives, like artificial colourings and preservatives, are tested by what is known as the "LD50" - a test designed to find the level of consumption at which 50% of a group of animals will die. In the process, nearly all of the animals are made very sick before some finally die, and others pull through. If the substance is relatively harmless, as it often is, huge doses have to be force-fed to the animals, until in some cases sheer volume or concentration of the substance causes death.

- Singer, All Animals are Equal

This article was written two decades ago, so conditions may have improved. Or maybe not. One of the things mentioned is the Draize test, Wiki here. In any case, even if farm or animal experimentation conditions have improved markedly, Singer's stand runs deeper: if we would not allow human imbeciles or infants to be farmed commercially, for whatever reason, or used as subjects in scientific tests, but allow animals to be so used, then we are guilty of speciesism. Speciesism is akin to racism. If we object to the latter, we should object to the former. And if we do object to speciesism, then the way we live our lives will have to be changed drastically.

The article can be found here, though some finer details are left out in that version.

I am inclined to the thought that centuries from now, people will be shaking their heads at the way we treat and think of animals, in the same way as we oppose human slavery now. Yes, we've heard this and all of the above before. What are we doing about it?

Tehehe

Ten years ago, we would sometimes eat duck rice at a hawkwer centre near school for lunch. We would pass under a building, dark and mostly empty. And then Goh Jianda would, sometimes on our request, other times on his own volition, laugh his trademark loud and sinister laugh that will echo against the walls and send us into juvenile squeals of laughter.

Ten years on, I've added him on Facebook. It tells me he is studying aeraspace engineering at NTU. I vaguely remember him telling me he wanted to do that, probably in sec 2 when we weren't in the same class, when we were just a tad more serious.

Goh Jianda, if you're reading this, I hope you haven't forgotten how to laugh.

On Friday I took a random stab at a free music performance by The Cheese Monkeys. I figured I wouldn't like Bubblegum Pop much, but they gave those old pop songs a jazz/blues veneer which I think works because some of those songs get too melodramatic at times.

I will never be able to play music on stage because I will never feel comfortable smiling and moving my body to the music - things that would make a world of difference for a live audience.

You will want to check the Waterfront website every now and then for free performances. I think it's a great initiative; I must remember to write a supportive email sometime. I'm looking forward to the Mosaic Music Festival in March. I will definitely be catching The Trees and the Wild. They're a great Indonesian band.

Here's a song in the meantime.

Update for updates

It's kind of amusing how one group of people I play mahjong with think this song is horrible, but another group thinks it's so good they hum to it as we play.

For the record, I think it's a great song. It has a certain lightness of touch to it, a lightness that combines very well with her poignant tune and lyrics.

I haven't been too diligent in writing new posts here. That's partly because I haven't been diligent at all this holidays. But it's also because ideas usually strike me when I'm out of the house: walking to a destination, waiting for the bus, and so on. When they strike me I form the sentences in my mind. On occasion I pen those sentences down, which sometimes get transferred here. Other times I just file the notes in an in-tray, which will be forgotten until I sort through the tray. Because I haven't been diligent at all this holidays, I haven't sorted through a lot of the tray. At the same time, just because scribbled writings are in my in-tray doesn't mean they will definitely get transferred here. Sometimes the feeling's already lost, and I don't feel like transferring what I wrote on paper here. The result of all this is what you don't see here on this blog: new and frequent entry posts in the past few weeks.

I do have a number of things I want to say though. However this has to be augmented by some visual illustrations from cameras. Because I'm kind of lazy in hooking up my camera to the PC, or in downloading and sorting the files from another friend's camera, I can't say the things I want to say. But I feel I would feel like hooking up the camera soon, so photos will get transferred and I will then be able to say what I want to say, which hopefully will result in a new entry soon.

Just keeping you updated.