Wherein I Climb to the Top And Hit Someone Down Below

On a whim, I asked the guys if they'd like to go do the walking route at MacRitchie Reservoir to the infamous treetop bridge walk. To my surprise, there was almost unanimous support for this outing, except for Nick, who blithered a bit about how he'd rather stay home and play monopoly (with his girlfriend, no doubt) but who at last also professed interest. So we met up at the ridiculous hour of 1030am at the reservoir (ridiculous because Seet and Nick turned up a half hour late, and Take a half hour early) and set off on our little adventure. It's probably of some little interest to note that the infamous treetop bridge walk is infamous because:

1. It is difficult to find, resulting in old people slugging their way to the attraction only to find that they were on the wrong route and the most interesting things they get to see on this one are notices about the hairiness of Percenek leaves or some such trivia that only biology majors could orgasm over
2. It takes a rather long walk to actually get to the bridge (about 6km), unless you cheat and start at Singapore Island Country Club, which probably doesn't help the mood of aforementioned elderly people
3. It is a treetop bridge - meaning it is above the trees and therefore quite logically, rather high up and requiring the climbing up of stairs and slopes that aforementioned elderly people might find a tad difficult to get up
4. There is only one toilet along the 6km route (and the 6km route back!), but elderly people suffering from incontinence will be constantly reminded of their urge to pee by the glistening waters of the reservoir close-by and unable to relieve yourself because of the signs that point out how you could destroy the environment with your waste, so Take It Out With You (no true Singaporean would pee in the reservoir! Not after NeWater!)

As you have no doubt guessed, I am not too fond of the idea of elderly people making the trek. I think this must be largely due to the fact that I learnt about this route from the forum complaints of some elderly people in the papers, who were most upset over the points mentioned above. I figured this would be a good opportunity to express my manhood by lording it over the one minority with even less physical capacity than my own.

Those elderly people are such wusses. Haha.

In any case, we managed to make it to the top with a minimum of fuss, though my army training once again came under fire. It hardly seems fair to me that just because I've had months of training in jungle-warfare and navigation that people immediately expect me to be able to find my way around in some reservoir. All it means is that I can get lost in one and feel quite comfortable for a while to wander aimlessly until I find something that looks like a trail other humans have been on. People can be so biased. Sheesh.

The walk wasn't really difficult, though it did bring back memories of the good old army days when I spotted this gigantic spiky plant. It was in the army that I realized that the hippie-tree-huggers who pictured Mother Nature as some kind of kindly old woman had probably been about as close to nature as their neighbouring flower garden. Nature is mean bitch who wants nothing more than to see you as a steaming carcass on the forest bed and will only feed you small amounts of non-sweet fruit if you should happen to survive her deadly machinations. If anything should be portrayed as being kindly and providing it should be the dominance of mankind over nature and the domestication of wild animals and plants, which has brought us the Sweet Banana That Requires No Boiling to Eat and various other niceties. If Mother Nature is a sweet and kindly old lady then Domestication is the sultry mixed-race seductress with the slightly-too-large lips and big breasts. And we all know no one's gonna want to go to bed with the old lady when there's a seductress around.

Here's a rather ominous sign before you enter the treetop bridge. It conjured to mind images of lemmings falling off the other end to their doom (at the hands of prickly plants, courtesy of Mother Nature).

The bridge itself proved to be rather unsatisfying, being not very high up (NPB says the highest point is 25m), rather narrow, quite short and not shaky or dangerous at all (unlike how it looks on the NPB website). Since none of us were experts (or fans) of Mother Nature's work, it was rather difficult to build up enthusiasm for the wildlife around us. I do recall it being quite splendid, though, with the tallest tree that had managed to break through the canopy being trimmed of all its foliage and left to rot, a bald trunk towering above its mediocre brethen. No doubt it was for safety or conservation purposes to kill it off, but that's Singapore for you.

Here's some pictures of us standing around taking pictures because the sods in front of us kept stopping to take pictures and chatter about the plants below (no doubt praising the beauty of Mother Nature).

After seeing the boring bridge, we began the long trek back to the starting point, whereupon we nefariously broke the law by stepping onto the golf course right beside our walking track with no obstacle in between- private property of Singapore Island Country Club *gasp!*. Yes, gentle reader - we trespassed(!!!!!). I went in about two metres, being the daredevil that I am, whilst Nick sneakily put a foot onto the private grass. However, Take, being very law-abiding, refused to join us in our dirty deeds. Well, he'll see. Next time when he's old he'll have no exciting stories to tell his grandchildren.

I think towards the end we ended up with adrenaline highs, because we starting running down the track for no reason at all (except Take). I guess it might also have been desperation to get to the end, which was much welcomed when we did get to it.

(On a side note, I am never going trekking with Take again unless he promises not to open up a large magenta umbrella in the middle of a forested area almost completely protected by foliage. It completely destroys the manly stronger-than-an-old-person image.)

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Went for some rather bad sushi with friends, which would be nothing eventful to blog about except that I brought up the issue of why 1 and 2 seemed to be blog-bashing each other these days. 1 concurred, and asked why we (2 and I) seemed to be deriving pleasure from publically humiliating him.

I was in shock for a while. Me??? A blog-basher??? I was unable to provide a valid response. On my return and review of comments on 1's blog, I realized that it was true - I was being a little harsh on him, considering his entries are probably no less silly and delusional than the ones I read on a regular basis that my other friends write.

I mean, I don't even flame Xiaxue (not that I read Xiaxue on a regular basis, just that all Singaporean blogroads seem to lead to hers - like some gross and perverted Emerald City) and I find her even sillier than 1. When religous people talk to me about the kindness of their God and I can see that they believe it I don't (usually) push my agnostic beliefs on them. When other people talk to me about the latest development in their quest for love (note in Singapore that quests for love usually don't involve sex or love at all, but usually things like "compatibility" or "class-difference") I don't tell them they're better off with their right hand, some lube and a roll of toilet paper. I'm actually a lot more tolerant of them than I am of 1's ramblings about world dominance, his chauvinistic views on women or how cool King Kong is. I actually do find 1's delusions rather charming and humourous, compared to the vile ooze that spreads from the mouths (and blogs) of others - then why do I always give him such a hard time about it?

Perhaps because he's close enough to be family - and my views on family interaction typically involve strife and conflict (though in passive, non-violent ways). It doesn't help that 1 very helpfully serves up dish after dish of bash-worthy comments ranging from "Women should be subservient to men!" and "I can tell what your personality is like from what you just said!" that are just irresistible to a bastard like me. 3, on the other hand, knows when to keep his mouth shut (ie. almost all the time) and 2 would rather swallow cold mud than make unsure statements.

I also think that, if only a little, all that education I've been receiving at the faculty of Arts has trickled into my everyday life, such that I'm actually analyzing arguments in everyday speech and picking at mistakes people make when talking (or at least, making up mistakes for them when I can't find any). I never used to do that before, mainly because my training was in Science, and there's not much conversation around there to pick at. Sure, you may get really good at logical analysis, but you don't really learn how to apply it to discourse, not like when in a module like Critical Analysis of Bullshit (which sometimes seems an apt title for the courses I take). 2 (who is a hardcore Arts major) does it a lot more now, too, this (I admit sometimes irritating) habit of critical thinking whilst the engineers (1 and 3) seem to have gained no more discourse-analysis skills other than Resume Writing 101.

I sometimes irks me to think that, despite graduating from a course in Science that I think is pretty difficult, I'll still sound like a country doohicky compared to someone who did a course in, say, Political Science or Economics, simply because their educations were so much more relevant. It's the sad truth even in teh scientific community that the best researchers aren't necessarily those who have a good grasp of their subjects but those who can speak up well enough to secure funding for their projects. If Einstein was a great scientist, it was only because he had a good grasp of politics and human nature, and he used it to leverage his authority.

If anything, I think this might explain why graduates from the hard sciences and engineering dislike Arts graduates so much (read: Dilbert). Even with a tremendous education in something complicated and difficult like Quantum Biological Transcription, it's difficult to win an argument against someone whose main academic claims are in building them whilst yours lay in writing an equation down and pointing to it whilst mumbling "It is obvious from the equaiton that I am correct". Also, the Arts graduates tend to dress so much cooler and nobody likes a cooler dude.

So 1, if I've offended you in any way by being critical, I suppose it's only because I do care (awwwwwww) and also because you leave yourself wide open to attack. I'll try not to blog-bash from now so that you can once again use your blog as a means of trapping impressionable young girls in your web of romance and deceit. And I'll sign up for you for literary appreciation courses if you ever decide to go for them.

(All names changed to numerals to protect my friends from being too easily recognized by aforementioned young impressionable girls who feel slighted by my *final* blog-bash)