Monday, October 19, 2009
Catch-22
@9:02 PM
I met with SPH School Pocket Money Fund (SPMF) today. Suffice to say, I found myself ill-equipped to answer administrative questions to the mechanics of donations. I have never heard of the auditor requirements, or the stuff about accounting.
Surprisingly, instead of disappointment, I found myself to be extremely relieved to be rejected by SPMF. The rejection itself was on the basis of the administrative, but in terms of general strategy and ideas, we found ourselves in agreement that there wasn't an issue. The plan was good, but leaky in the places that mattered to the sponsors and charities.
I find myself to be stuck in a Catch-22 scenario. I cannot obtain a sponsor without any credibility as to my ability to attempt the tour, so to get sponsors, I need a solid support base from which to work from, which as Joyce had suggested, should be the charity. Therefore, attaining their endorsement comes first and foremost. However, as SPMF managers kindly explained the situation, no charity will be willing to go ahead without any existing plans on my side to provide auditors and accounts through which sponsorship can flow, and ideally, I should already have pledges to my cause before approaching a charity. What makes it worse is that I have no achievements in the field to my name, and I have no precedence on which to back the validity of whatever I am proposing.
Who ever said this was going to be easy? Nevertheless, the situation proves to be quite amusing.
SPMF suggested that I can try continuing on for this trip, if only to gain experience so that we can work together in the future. This unsponsored trip can fulfill two things: firstly, it can provide me the credibility basis that I so badly need, and secondly, it gives me the 'been there, done that' experience to put forth a more solid plan the next time round. I will continue on without the charity element, utilising this trip as a testing platform for a even longer term journey in the future. In any case, revising the plan now is too late - in three months, I will have to achieve what others accomplish in a year.
For the past weeks, I have already envisioned the next seven years of my life: I will go on to earn some degree in NUS, and hopefully secure a place in a European university to study my Masters. Before going to Europe, however, I will take a gap year, and cycle there from Singapore. That is the plan, for now.
Hence, the post-ORD trip will be truly self-sufficient, completely on my own, finance and all. The post-uni trip, hopefully, will not be this way.
For the past two months, the tight timing has been stinging my mind like a mosquito that refuses to go away. I eat, sleep, go to work, play, and read, all the while aware that time is passing, and the charity and sponsor element is slowly sliding into oblivion. The pressure is amazing for the little actual work that I needed to put into working the system. It was like a chain on the neck, setting a quota on what I need to achieve in the near future, and all the while, I keep thinking what I can do in the present, which frankly is not much. And not doing much made me feel guilty.
The rejection stung, but the relief was a joy, together with the tantalising understanding of what I can or cannot achieve. I am now free to carry on with the trip, however I want it, be it easy or hard, not pressurised by deadlines to reach a certain place by X date, nor chased by my own conscience that perhaps I ought to be doing more (which, given my disabilities, I could not have).
In view of budget and China's closure of Tibet, the trip will probably only focus on Southeast Asia. Onwards!
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Tuesday, October 6, 2009
The Cyclist
@12:38 AM
If you’re not hurting you’re not riding hard enough.
If you’re not hungry you’ve eaten too much.
If you’re not cold you’re carrying too many clothes.
If you know you will succeed it’s too easy.
Days are long on the road. Pack up and pedal into the dawn. Ride until sunset. It’s easy to kill time but you can kill distance only by riding. Roads roll on forever, linking and connecting and reaching so far ahead that to think about the end is to think of something that feels impossible. So settle for today, for earning the small distance that the day’s long hours will allow you. Roads drenched with rain, stinging hail, pulsing heat, slick ice, buffeted by winds on loose gravel, deep sand, tangled rocks, think snow. Roads of smooth tarmac down mountainsides on sunny days with warm tailwinds and scenes of impossible beauty. Roads furious with traffic through grim slums, bland scrub, concrete jungles, polluted industrial wastelands. Monotony in motion. Roads too hard and too long that break you, expose you, scorn you and would laugh at you if they cared. Roads too hard and too long that you pick yourself up from, have a word with yourself, and make it to an end you once doubted. Roads you have never ridden to places you have never seen and people you have never met. Days end. A different sunset, a different resting point, a different perspective. A little less road waits for you tomorrow. A little more road lies behind you.
Choose your road. Ride it well.
- Alastair Humphreys, The Traveller's Handbook
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Sunday, October 4, 2009
Creating miracles
@2:53 PM
Whenever I tell people that I am attempting to cycle to China and India, they react with shock and awe, with an inevitably healthy dose of skepticism:
“What if you get robbed and mugged?”
“What if your bicycle breaks down?”
“What if you fall sick?”
All these are common responses to the plan, and the extreme scenarios of these possibilities are things I will not be able to adequately cover in terms of safety.
This is a world that I find strange. Every day, we look at the television and view the larger than life characters and drama, and each time, we wish that our life can be equally extraordinary and colourful. However, when I uncover a dream of my own, almost everyone turns into a skeptic. Now, I don’t deny that people who express their concern do so for my wellbeing, but I do think that we should look more on the possibilities rather than the drawbacks.
I am not much more average than the other fellows on the street. In many ways, my intelligence is average, so is my education, upbringing, achievements and character; none of them stand out that much in the environment of overachieving Singapore. My leadership is mediocre, I don’t learn very fast, my memory is sketchy, and I am no orator. I have little talent for either music or sports. On hindsight, that may be why I tend to emphasise my capabilities to make myself seem more than I am, not to impress others, but to deceive myself.
The only real virtues I have depended on since junior college has been a hyperactive imagination and a powerful determination to materialise these possibilities. I would dream of what may be, hours, days, weeks, months and years in advance, and I would take the dreams that I love most to turn into reality.
Cycling is a good example: two years and five months back, I had quit hockey and was looking at what I can do to replace the sporting void. Imagination made me long for a sport that anyone can participate in, with enough freedom not to be tied down by teamwork requisites, and the answer was cycling. Determination and near obstinacy got me a mountain bike, and subsequently a road bike which was eight sizes too small, but I never looked back since.
I do not think I am the only one in this regard; many others who people deem to be society’s movers and great achievers rely on little more than their strength of character to strive towards success. In this sense, our success in life can be measured by the battle we fight, not against others, but against ourselves.
I am an unordinary person attempting extraordinary things. Anyone can do it too; put your mind to it, and you will get there someday.
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