It was a year ago, but it feels like yesterday...

When I joined the Gobi March in 2012 as a volunteer, I did not know what to expect. A year just flew by. In 30 days' time, I will be joining the race again, but this time as a competitor. The preparation feels familiar and yet are so different. During the course of one year, I have taken the time to research, looked around, asked around, testing everything myself. I have also trained hard, through rain or shine, day or night. Even though I have only trained for one year, the effort feels like a long long time and I am amazed and grateful that I have remained dedicated and determined still. Initially I thought joining the Gobi is an end goal, turns out it is just the beginning. What started as a travelling experience turns out to be a lifelong path of spiritual and physical discovery. I have learnt so much more about myself and my place in the world and I am so grateful to be shown this opportunity.

I look forward to start the race, even if it is tomorrow. Sure there will be physical exhaustion, pain, injuries and desperation. But at the same time, I also look forward to seeing the wonders of nature, personal breakthrough, lifelong friendships and a sense of achievement. No matter what condition I will be, I will try to take as many pictures as I can because I realize I will never get to walk the same trails ever again. This is the start of a different way of travelling and seeing the world, but then again, it will be the start of many in the days to come, hopefully.

I am so thankful to my parents for giving birth to me and for raising me to become the person I am today. Without them I would not have the strength and courage. I wish to dedicate the happiness and wonder out of taking part in adventure races to them. Even though they cannot travel anymore, I will take their spirit and inspirations with me as I run.

The first time I did the Green Power Hike was in 2010, not long after I joined Esquel. I thought it was just a casual 10k hike. Indeed it was. My colleagues and I were in casual wear, big and small bags. We were dressed for dim sum lunch as much as we were dressed for hiking. After we started, I started feeling hungry and looked at my watch. It was 10 am. At the rate we were walking and talking, we would only be done at 1 pm. So I told my colleagues that I would try running a bit so that I could finish and have food. I started galloping away and my colleagues followed. Carol and Bob were about my speed and we finished in about 1.5 hours and had a happy and early dim sum. That was my idea of trail running then.

The second year, Bob and I decided to up the challenge to 25k, and we got Eddie in too. We went for a few shorts hikes on the Hong Kong trail. On the day of the race, Eddie felt ill and had to pull out. Even though we were disqualified for lack of a complete team, Bob and I decided to go nevertheless and finish the race. While we were going up Dragon's Back, I gave a shout to Bob who was in front. My shout triggered his muscle cramps and he was barely able to walk for the last 6k. Bob is one of the best sports buddies in the office and I had no hesitation of stopping and walked with him all the way to finishing point.

The third year, I was not able to join the Green Power as it was our Annual Dinner.

2013, I decided to do solo 50k. I only had a few goals in mind - Finish, don't stop, listen to the body and enjoy the run. I was so glad that I had done all these, and still had time to care for an injured friend. As I was going up the Dragon's back, I felt I still had energy in me to keep going, and the flashes of so many races, the difficulties, the encouragement of my training buddies and friends all flashed back. Every race has helped me to become a better person and a better runner.

I have listened to the Les Misérables CD for more than 2 decades, and watched the musical live. But still, the latest movie version has not lost any appeal. In fact, the movie even led me to pay attention to a lot of details which I had missed in the musical years back. The impact of  the story lines was magnified, through  shaky-cam, wide-angle lenses and vertiginous crane shots, all designed to please the mainstream audience, including myself.


In recent years, one of my favourite songs which I would play over and over again, especially when I am in need of a boost of courage, is "One More Day". There is one line of lyrics which I can always remember, "I did not live until today". In fact, I never learned to truly appreciate this musical until today. I never realized that Jean Valjean's encounter with Bishop Myriel was so powerful. Bishop Myriel touched his soul and bought his soul in the name of God:

"Yet why did I allow that man
To touch my soul and teach me love?
He treated me like any other
He gave me his trust
He called me brother
My life he claims for God above
Can such things be?
For I had come to hate the world
This world that always hated me

Take an eye for an eye!
Turn your heart into stone!
This is all I have lived for!
This is all I have known!

One word from him and I'd be back
Beneath the lash, upon the rack
Instead he offers me my freedom
I feel my shame inside me like a knife
He told me that I have a soul,
How does he know?
What spirit comes to move my life?
Is there another way to go?"

The ending with the reunion of souls, Fantine and the Bishop is another example of how the movie version has a grander and more definitive impact compared with the other iterations in the past.

"To love another person is to see the face of God." How could I have missed this line for the past 20 years?

I live alone in a small apartment, smaller than B-612.

I have been living alone ever since university graduation and I don't recall having friends staying with me for more than a couple of days during all these years. Recently I offered a new friend to stay in my place while he was in town for a few weeks.

I was very humbled listening to his experience of growing up, the difficulty and the pain he went through.  There was also a fun side, listening to his adventurous past. Living in Hong Kong, I have always considered myself outside of mainstream. And having heard him talking about his life, I feel that I am not even close. In Hong Kong, a person's occupation defines him or her. If I apply the same theory to this friend, his path is certainly one of spiritual freedom, choosing nomadic travelling above mainstream ordinary life.

This friend is so different from what he appears to be. Beneath the quiet and reserved appearance is a kind, caring, gentle and yet misunderstood soul. It breaks my heart to see someone going through so much suffering since childhood, physically and mentally. I also have a lot of respect and admiration for someone who despite all these challenges, is not crushed and still has the determination to move on. It takes talent and lots of inner strength.


I remember in The Little Prince, the fox said, "Bien qu'avec le cœur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux." ("One sees clearly only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye.") He also said, "You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed" and "It is the time you have devoted to your rose that makes your rose so important." Don't know why these quotes came up when I was thinking about the time we spent together.

A few months ago I thought I would only sign up for Gobi March 2013 when I feel my body is ready.

I finally got myself to sign up last week. I was sitting in the office and in-between tasks, and suddenly a thought came up. It's really not so much about the body, but the heart. I realized that the time when I really felt like signing up was the moment when I finally decided on my fundraising goals. I was finally able to put my wish list together. That was a wish list which made me feel a greater sense of mission, a wish list which would propel me to persist with training in the next few months.

As for the body? I can't help but remember a beautiful and cute all time children's classic which I found last year at Bring Me A Book.

A little railroad engine was employed about a station yard for such work as it was built for, pulling a few cars on and off the switches. One morning it was waiting for the next call when a long train of freight-cars asked a large engine in the roundhouse to take it over the hill. "I can't; that is too much a pull for me," said the great engine built for hard work. Then the train asked another engine, and another, only to hear excuses and be refused. In desperation, the train asked the little switch engine  to draw it up the grade and down on the other side. "I think I can," puffed the little locomotive, and put itself in front of the great heavy train. As it went on the little engine kept bravely puffing faster and faster, "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can."
As it neared the top of the grade, which had so discouraged the larger engines, it went more slowly. However, it still kept saying, "I—think—I—can, I—think—I—can." It reached the top by drawing on bravery and then went on down the grade, congratulating itself by saying, "I thought I could, I thought I could."

 The underlying theme is — a stranded train is unable to find an engine willing to take it on over difficult terrain to its destination. Only a little blue engine is willing to try and, with hard work and courage, overcomes a seemingly impossible task. That has been my mantra for the past few months and it really kept me motivated when I was about to die at the Action Asia Lantau 27k trail last week. I think I can.

This morning I woke up feeling really happy with lots of gratitude, even though I also felt the pain and swelling everywhere…

The Raleigh Challenge 2012 is my first ultra. When I first received the flyer of this race, I thought it would be an ideal distance for a first ultra, 78K. It turns out that distance is not an indication of the level of difficulty. As one of the runners put it quite well yesterday, “I can’t even begin to describe what this race is about…”

The mountain ranges of the Wilson Trail are paced in such a way that one has to deal with the toughest challenge at the most exhausted and weakest moment.

I got a lot out of joining this race. I started training from almost zero in July to finishing a race after 8 weeks and saw improvement of my physical ability and mental strength. The race also compressed a lot of interesting experience in some 20 odd hours. 

 

There were two weakest moments when I almost cracked. We were done with about two-third of the distance but by then it was already past 2 am and I was completely exhausted. The remaining distance to be covered was the Pat Sin Leng. At that point, sitting in the park, I really felt that I had no energy left, and to have to handle one of the toughest mountain trails in Hong Kong was almost unthinkable. But looking at my teammates, thinking about their encouragement and support over the past months, I couldn't get myself round to say withdraw.

 

As I was making my way up Cloudy Hill, I started to remember how Sam took me to do a first hike there two months ago. Up till the time of the race, I still was not able to piece all the different sections of the competition trail together. I went up the stairs and started to realize how everything finally came together at that point of time and it was a perfect moment of completion. 

There were also iconic moments. It was 6 am when we arrived at the entrance of the Pat Sin Leng country park, along with a few dozens of runners. By then everyone had been running for almost 20 hours and were almost dead. Everyone just laid flat on the ground, motionless and it was almost complete silence. It felt like the scene of a disaster movie where everyone had died. By 6:45 am, the runners were up one by one like zombies, dragging their heavy bodies up Pat Sin Leng.  

It still amazes me as to how I managed to have this wonderful mix of team members. I am so grateful to my teammates. Each one offered me something unique, and helped me improve my physical ability and the mental preparation for handling the race.

Thanks Sam for friendship, care, support and expertise and for taking me through this journey in the past few months, helping me with training, preparation and crisis management. I still think that it was an act of God that you decided to join our team, purely to test your patience in waiting and sleep deprivation. But I really appreciate and enjoyed every moment of it!

Thanks Bo for being a great and caring training buddy, helping me improve physically and my mental strength. Also thx for your patience in waiting and for helping me with details (coz I am very weak on details). Again, your fitness levels belong to a different league, but then I guess you didn’t know how slow I was when you first signed up.

Thanks Yellow for exploring the Wilson and other trails with me earlier on, and for going through the toughest stage of this race with me when I almost cracked. I will always remember the two of us limping through the Pat Sin Leng and the last 8K together, supporting each other.  

The encouragement and support of all three of you was what got me going and the experience wouldn’t have been awesome without you. I have also really enjoyed the interesting conversations during the past few months of training. I owe you all a lifetime of good cooking!

As much as it is a monster, there is something fascinating about the Raleigh. Someday, I might want to be back to do a night race or to attempt under 22 hrs.

I feel as if my new life as an ultra junkie has just begun. 

If I have to describe this movie in a few words - I would say "rich texture and intense flavours", the words I would use to describe food or wine. Rich texture because it feels like the weaving of fabrics. Using food as a backbone, the stories are divided into three segments -  breakfast, lunch and dinner. A number of the characters cross from one story to another, some even play the role of linking up all stories. Intense, because of the cinematography. The shots were very close and dynamic and there were some heavy emotions expressed through some of the characters.


The film explores the human relationships behind the 18 meals. There is some discussion on the food itself, but much less than I expected. The narrative at the opening sets out the theme clearly - that food not only opens the appetite, but opens our souls.

When I was small, my dad used to say that good food brings the family together. I was certainly brought up to understand the value of good food and the importance of family values, but probably those values were separately registered in my system rather than integrated. Good food has always been a matter of family obligation and practical necessity ever since I was small. As I grew up, graduated from college and moved away from my family, it ceased to be a matter of obligation. I realized that I had a choice, on what to enjoy, when to enjoy it, how to enjoy it and with whom to enjoy it etc.. It then became a matter of personal enjoyment and passion, and above all, the obsession with quality. The concept of family does not exist in this equation.

My parents' ageing eventually brought me back to cooking more at home, and I began to have a deeper understanding of the relationship between food and family. Cooking becomes a labour of love and compensates for the inadequacies of verbal communication. But something has changed over the years. Whilst my dad enjoys my cooking, he doesn't care much about the food anymore.

For me, there is no doubt that food is a life-long passion, a major sensory indulgence, and a powerful tool allowing me to express love and artistic creativity. Modern society is a lot more complex now. Whether it is fate or luck, having a family is not a must for the younger generations. Yet, good food has not lost its appeal, because its importance has elevated to binding and enhancing all kinds of human relationships.



“Desserts are like mistresses. They are bad for you. So if you are having one,
you might as well have two.”
 - Chef Alain Ducasse

“I prefer to regard a dessert as I would imagine the perfect woman: subtle, a little bittersweet, not blowsy and extrovert. Delicately made up, not highly rouged. Holding back, not exposing everything and, of course, with a flavor that lasts.”
- Graham Kerr

"When I walk into my kitchen today, I am not alone. Whether we know it or not, none of us is. We bring fathers and mothers and kitchen tables, and every meal we have ever eaten. Food is never just food. It's also a way of getting at something else: who we are, who we have been, and who we want to be." 
- Molly Wizenberg, A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table, 2009