Making It Real

Another month has passed since my last post. Pretty busy month for me. Was one of the participants at the World Engineering Education Forum held in Singapore, and got to meet awesome folks from other countries. Had a stimulating and mind-bobbling discussions with them. Also apart reading research papers which I have grown accustomed to, I have been reminded of my love; for the mountains. I did lots of hiking in the National Parks when I was in US. Love the hikes and the surrounding natural view. When I first came into NUS, that year was the centennial celebration. What caught my attention then was the news of NUS Team succeeded in conquering Mt Everest. Soon I found out that it was part of the NUS Make It Real program. It was a program which requires students to undergo rigorous training to learn the rudiments of expedition planning and mountaineering skills. And the programme culminated in an expedition to a peak of moderate difficulty in the highlands. Wow, that was so cool! But I never thought about joining MIR seriously during my undergraduate days. I was pretty much occupied by my involvement in the Students’ Union. Earlier this semester, I saw the recruitment poster for the new MIR team during the matriculation fair for the new students. That reignited my interest once again. I went for their welcome talk and was told by my friend that the training regime is rather tough. “Are you sure you want to go through their training?”, I was asked. Hmmm, that was not very encouraging, since I wasn’t good in sports, and I rarely exercise except for a jog or two. If I don’t even try, there’s no way I can make it. So I decided to give it a try. Maybe I have the slight chance to make it.

Over 2 months now and I’ve been training regularly with the group. Pretty intense at times but it was fun hanging out with them. Lots of unexpected trainings mooted out by our ever hyperactive and funny training instructor, GEW! Also being taught the technical mountaineering stuff by Jon. Re-learned all the knots that I used to do back in my scouting days. We do long distance runs, short intervals and carry load trainings. And probably one of the craziest things that I never thought I would do was to climb up a 40 storey HDB flat with a 10kg load. Not once but five times! And we are doing all these trainings to prepare ourselves better when we try to attempt a summit end of this year in Siguniang, Sichuan. Like one of the seniors said, you will appreciate the trainings when you are up in the mountains. Yup, so right now, I am making it real. Hopefully in December, I will be able to say aloud “I’ve Made It Real”.