Blogging in bed on a Sunday morning

Housemate David did his once-in-a-blue-moon mail check yesterday, and instead of a bunch of bills I got a bunch of bills, PLUS Kasia's mail! The sweet girl sent me a CD of our pictures from the hiking trip in the States, and even printed out some of the pictures.

The sense of yearning within me... it is a feeling of intense longing, to a realm that I can almost sense, just almost. The careless laughter, the outstretched arms against a backdrop of breathtaking landscape, the heat of the sun against the back of my neck, the joy of being right there, right then! But now it is unattainable, and all we have are pictures to look back at, to have nostalgic reminiscences of. The beauty of the moment is sealed, there is no way to go back. The only thing to do is to seize every moment of life, to create more and more of these memories, for that is the only thing we can do.

So here are some pictures captured by the beautiful Kasia, whose photographic skills far surpass that of mine.

Kasia =) hugs

Micah with Bryce National Park. This is one of my favourite pictures, because it captures the vastness and majesty of Bryce. Bryce National Park was one place where I couldn't stop sighing with happiness, because every view, every different angle, was equally beautiful.

An natural arch in the Arches National Park. Notice the tiny specks we call human for scale.

Me, and the waters of Colorado River.

This is Lake Powell, a reservoir on the Colorado River. We swam in the lake, where a native Indian (who looks like a Maori) hit on me, and Kasia almost got swept away by big waves created by a running motorboat.

The Grand Canyon... and I still maintain that you can't fully appreciate its grandness without hiking to the base, not even if you do. I hope to go back someday, and do another trail. Maybe in the winter.

Here's me taking pictures of cacti on the way to Plateau Point at the Grand Canyon, to prove that it is desert conditions that we are talking about. After hiking to the mid point from the base with Kasia, Micah, Vanessa and Michel(e), Kasia and I separated from the rest to take a detour to Plateau Point where we got drunk with nature and even have a video to prove how high we were. Best detour ever.

Me and Kasia finishing the hike from the base of the Grand Canyon. Finally!

Hermit's Rest, the furthest end of Grand Canyon National Park where the shuttle bus can take you. We chased the sun that morning - we woke up at 4 and missed two buses and finally ended up watching the sunrise at the "wrong" place. Fond memories of jogging around the bus stop because it was so cold, exchanging massages to assuage the muscle pains of the crazy hike the day before, and this weird Asian (think he was Japanese?) guy who took our picture at the Hermit's Rest (you can see his shadow) and his request of taking a picture with Vanessa, the girl in pink.

The bus from the back. I was writing in my travel journal that time. The bus accommodates 35 people, but we only had 17, so it wasn't cramped at all. That's Michel(e) from Italy looking towards the camera, his name is Michel but after Vanessa started calling him Michele we all followed suit, much to his annoyance because that sounded like a girl's name.

=)

Great times. Wanderlust is like an addiction - the more I get, the more I can't get enough of. I need to run, to be free, to embrace life with the company of people who, like me, can't get enough of it. Too often I meet people who are just so jaded and so complacent with what they have. They don't hate their lives but they don't like it much either. So day after day they wake up, work, go to bed... and before they know it, the best years of their lives are over, and they wish they'd done this or that, and didn't put it off till later, when they had more time, when they were richer, when they had enough of courage to take the step.

I say, fuck it all, it's my life and I will live it the way I want it. I'm thankful for what I have, and I'm vigilant of opportunities that cross my path, so when I see them I can reach out for them. Whether I get them or not is another matter. At least I tried.

In other unrelated news, I finally had formal training for dragonboating yesterday because they had a boat full of newbies. It feels great to finally know what you're doing, and what exactly you're supposed to do! I wish I had more time to go for practice, they have it three times a week but I can only do once. Body's hurting like a bitch but it feels really good =)

OK need to go cook lunch, my Brazilian couchsurfer is arriving in 2 hours. Another one from Indonesia arriving tonight around 9. Strangers are (Val can chant with me) friends you've not met yet! And sharing, is caring!

Escapism: Gooseneck Campsite

I have to finish this paper to finish this paper to finish this paper. (That is what I call two deja vus in one sentence.)

But at the back of my head I am actually there, in the picture, looking at the river below me, marvelling at the sheer insignificance of myself and my problems in general. I love how nature puts me in my place.

Motivation to finish this paper to finish this paper to finish this paper so that I can write other papers and compile them into a confirmation report so that I can travel again! Ooosh!

I am back

but not for long.

It's been such a crazy ten days. I am back at the Green Tortoise Hostel now but I will be moving to Micah's, one of my travel buddies on the Canyons of the West tour, for tonight. Yay to saving money on accommodation!

Tomorrow the bus for the Burning Man leaves at 10am, and to tell the truth, I am quite knackered and not really in the frame of mind to go. We just arrived back from the trip yesterday, reluctant goodbyes and all, and I'm really not in the mood to get used to a new set of travel buddies so quickly.

Let's see. What we did this past week. I'm just going to list stuff that I remember, things were happening so quickly that I find my short term memory being overwritten to make room for new stuff. This computer that I'm using does not have a memory card reader so I shall just steal pictures from all over to illustrate the scenery that I'm talking about.

1. In the span of ten days I took a grand total of two showers and swam twice in lakes. Baby wipes did wonders for the rest.
   
2. I hiked this really steep and nerve-wracking trail at Zion National Park called the Angel's Landing (see the peak of this orange black mountain thing, photo credit to David Pettit), at the beginning of the trip, and was really proud of myself.
   
3. I owned a horse called Harry Killer for two hours. The guide told me that his name was Killer at first, for whatever reason he had in mind, and later decided to tell me that it was Harry instead =_=. Since I had been going "Good boy, Killer, good Killer" for most of the trip, and I named him Harry Killer instead. He was gentle and patient, but fast. We galloped and I bruised my butt and thighs. It was painful but fun. This was where I went horseback riding at, at Monument Valley. Photo credits go here.
4. I contemplated about the insignificance of my existence at the Gooseneck State Park, overlooking the Horseshoe Bend, right at the U-shape that you see in this following picture (photo credit). I don't know why this site had this effect on me, when Bryce National Park was much more impressive looking (see next picture, I couldn't find a good photo that would illustrate the sheer beauty of what I saw, but photo credit anyway), but I guess you can't really explain stuff like that.
5. I was bathing in the hot springs while looking at a night sky full of stars.
6. We were camping at Gold Bar Campsite, next to the Colorado river, and I woke up to scenery similar to this, but imagine the mountains being a terracota orange, the sky being blue, cloudless and clear, the fence being behind me and me holding a mug of hot chocolate + coffee with my feet tucked into my sleeping bag. (photo credit)
7. Me and four other buddies (Polish Kasia, American Micah, Italian Michael and Spanish Vanessa) spent the night at the Bright Angel Campground, which is at the base of the Grand Canyon. We reached there past sundown, so we didn't really get to see much of the Bright Angel Campground nor the Phantom Ranch where I sent a postcard home to (the mail is delivered up by mules). What we did see were wee scorpions scuttling on the ground, a family of deer and the ringtailed cat, shown in the picture below (photo credit). To give you an idea, the Grand Canyon is about a mile deep, i.e. 1.6km vertical distance. The guide, Lucas, said that we were doing 8 miles per vertical mile, if you understand what that means. The heat is intense when you hike down the Grand Canyon, and mostly rangers advise people not to hike between 10am and 3pm, because that is when the sun is the deadliest. The day when we were hiking up, the max temperature was at 105F (i.e. 40.5 deg C). Thing is, early in the morning, the temperature drops to about 16C, and because we didn't bring anything down besides sleeping pads, we ended up huddling together because of the cold.
   
   The interesting thing about hiking the Grand Canyon is that the first half is going down, not up. So you do one vertical mile down, feeling proud of your accomplishment of being at the base of the Grand Canyon, and the second day you are faced with the spirit-breaking prospect of having to hike up, the way you came down, one vertical mile. In total I think we accomplished around 20 miles (plus side trails) in two days, half of it being downhill and half of it being up. When me and Kasia made it to the top, we were so happy that we were just hugging each other with huge smiles on our faces!
   
8. Right after the Grand Canyon, our last night was spent at Las Vegas. It was the most mindfucking thing ever. To build things up a little bit we had alcohol in the bus, so when we got off the bus I was slightly tipsy and laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of everything that was in Las Vegas, such as Disney castles and Egyptian buildings and pimps handing out calling cards on the streets, but then the novelty wore out and the heat set in, Vegas being in the middle of the desert and all, and I started to be really glum.
   
   It's a little like eating a really great meal with a wonderful aftertaste, and suddenly someone forces coriander into your mouth and ruins the whole moment. I mean, after about 9 days of nature and breathtaking views of nature's works of art, you get doused with a ridiculously concentrated dose of city. It's not one city. It's one city that has the Eiffel Tower, a pyramid, Statue of Liberty, a replica of Venice by day in the Venetian... and so on and so forth... all rolled into one. God that was dispiriting. I wish we didn't have to end the trip that way.
   

So anyway - I don't think I have time for more, I have to collect my laundry and make my way to Micah's place now. And the Burning Man awaits tomorrow morning. I don't know how I'm going to adjust my head, but I will do it, and hopefully come back with more stories and genuine pictures this time.

Dear all,

I'm just writing to let you know that I camped out under the stars next to Colorado River on a ledge last night, and I am going to go horseback riding at Monument Valley tomorrow, and I am camping out at the base at Grand Canyon a few nights later. Oh yeah my hair is just dry from swimming in a beautiful lake surrounded by sunflowers with an imminent thunderstorm coming from ahead, with lightning and such. (We didn't get caught in the storm.)

Feel free to be jealous.

Love,
Me
from somewhere between Arches National Park and Monument Valley

Meltdown sikit

OK We're finally in July. I'm finally in the battle zone that I've been looking at afar from June, speculating about the craziness but never actually registering that with every passing day, the dates come closer. I am at the point where I finally see, that I am going to be the person carrying out my haphazardly engineered back-to-back schedule for the following three months - and it is not going to be pretty.

Right now you're looking at a deer staring into the headlights of an oncoming truck named Self-Inflicted Stress.

There's so many thoughts in my head, all not related to each other, some research, some travel, some homelessness, a fair bit of homelessness actually, and all the hell that is spawned from these sources. OK to put it in perspective:

July
7/7
Leave Singapore for KL after putting my whole room into boxes. Which is something that I should do from right now.
8/7 - 11/7
In KL. Running errands (India visa, ISIC card, shopping for formal wear, somehow fix my hair), multiple gatherings (Asa, LL, XiaoCi, my NZ Aunt).
12/7
Return to Singapore with my World's Greatest Parents and move everything to Jia Ling's place.
13/7 - 17/7
Some graduate forum. Whole-day affairs. I'm presenting a paper. Which means that I need to prepare for my paper as well.
17/7 - 25/7
India. Haven't got CSers for Bangalore yet. I am nervous. Also I think India's going to be really intense, and at this point it looks intimidating. Thanks to my mum who was collecting horror stories in attempt to dissuade me from going. We'll be covering Bangalore, Mysore, Chennai and Pondicherry.
27/7 - 31/7
Some course for graduate students. Also whole-day affairs. Right after India. Have to adjust my mind straight after I come back.

August
1/8 - 3/8
Prep for US
4/8
Flight to Boston. Reach Boston at 10:30pm.
5/8 - 8/8
Conference. Presenting paper on the 6th. Need to prepare some kind of poster session. Have no idea how it's going to be like.
9/8 - 13/8
Bus to New York from Boston. Bunk at Kingston's, meet up with XC and Jian Hui. Probably the only relaxed part of my trip to the US.
13/8 - 20/8
Research week at San Francisco where I try to talk to people. I haven't planned it yet. My theoretical framework, my interview questions, my EVERYTHING. Kill me now please.
21/8 - 30/8
Camping Part 1 - Going with the Green Tortoise for its Canyons of the West trip, covering Las Vegas, Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon NP, Arches NP, Monument Valley, Lake Powell, Grand Canyon NP.

September
1/9 - 7/9
Camping Part 2 - Burning Man. Also going with Green Tortoise. Intense desert camping, but at least I'll have someone to take care of my food and water and transport. Highlight of my trip. And I am still bloody scared.
9/9
Arrive in Singapore. Back. Finally. Start to look for a new room. Move house from Jia Ling's, as soon as possible. This will take me at least 2 weeks. At least. But can't mooch off Jia Ling's hospitality too much.

OK Siao onot. Two months, four countries. (And check all that KL-Singapore-India-Singapore action.) The panic has kicked in, and according to past experience, action will kick in soon after, but I'm at that paralyzed stage where I need extra push from panic to get away from the inertia, and then the two months will fly by. The details of the plans still have to be executed, and I have to come up with some extensive to-do list, extensive packing list, extensive people-to-bother list.

I like lists. I now have a list of lists. This should be heaven for me. AAAARrrrggggh the truck's gonna hit me!!!!

Adrenaline rush, danger danger danger. Then after moving have to get my confirmation report ready, as my goal is to complete it by the end of this year. October, November, December. 2009 will then be gone, we'll be one decade into the 2000's, and climate change effects are going to happen even more frequently, and we're all going to die!!!!!!!

Shhhhh. Everything's going to be ok. Shhhhhh.