Savouring the good life and a historic moment

Singapore started the weekend in absolute gaga mood. On Saturday, 9.12am local time, our national swimmer, Joseph Schooling swam the race of his life in the Rio Olympics 100m men’s butterfly event and struck gold. He beat the greatest Olympian swimmer of all time, Michael Phelps and even broke his Olympic record. It was the first Olympic gold any Singaporean had ever won.




Our Nation struck Gold at the Rio Games!
 

Hearing our national anthem played for the very first time in an Olympic final and watching the young man, only 21 years of age, stepping onto the podium to receive his medal moved the nation to tears. Well, at least according to the wave of text messages I receive from friends and colleagues who freely shared their feelings about this historic achievement. We are a tiny nation but with a population of close to 5 million, many felt that our nation, not poor by any means, should have done far better in the sporting arena. Of course many factors come into play to explain our sporting slump. Not least our heavy emphasis on academic excellence in schools all over the country, placing sports and artistic achievements as distant seconds.

But for this Rio Games, Schooling has given his country-men a lot to cheer for.  Still one wonders if his parents had not made the bold decision to send him to the US at the tender age of 13 to be schooled and trained there, he would have achieved such stunning success.



 

Our MOE has a good sense of humour

Even then, nobody can deny that a true-blue Singaporean boy is now an Olympic record-holder. The nation is in celebratory mood like never before. Punters and gamblers were out in force to place bets on the number 5039, following the record time of 50.39 seconds clocked in the race. But the big question on a lot of people was whether the following Monday would be declared a public holiday. But the joke was that “Everybody likes Schooling”, so there would be no question that Monday would be another schooling day! Our Ministry of Education followed up with a posting to clear the air in equal humorous fashion.

A local journalist, senior in years, wrote that this achievement might not have been thought to be possible in his lifetime. Well it certainly did not happen in Jenny’s lifetime.  Jenny does not follow sporting developments very closely but even she would have been overwhelmed by Schooling’s success.

In church today, I reflected on how pleasant life has been for our family, especially on weekends at home with the kids. They helped with the grocery shopping. My elder boy W put his culinary skills to practice, whipping up a nutritious but gorgeously savoury meal for us – guinoa salad, a vegetable stew and baked salted sea bass. The new football season kicked off this weekend, which gave soccer crazy fans like me a renewed lease of life on dull weekend nights. Sunday mornings the kids are enticed out of bed with Dad’s “signature breakfast” meals – French toast, pancakes or cheese omelettes.  Sunday lunches are escapades to explore further gastronomical delights our country can offer.

Daughter caught cat-napping on our new sofa seat.

Last week we went furniture shopping at Ikea. Our battered up old leather seater, a centre-piece in our living room had seen better days. Now a painful eye-sore, it is in dire need for replacement. As far back as when Jenny was still alive, we have not had much luck finding something we could all agree on, dilly-dallying and always putting off the purchase to a later date. Dad may be the one paying for it but the kids veto for a collective decision could not be ignored. This time at Ikea, we struck pay dirt. To our huge relief we found a fabric 3-seater that our picky butts could all agree on. The days of our old sofa are definitely numbered. 

Our family is a fantastic team. Even as a vital cog is dearly missing. But what a difference if Mum is still with us. How much more complete life would be. Everywhere we went and everything we do, I feel her absence.

End of Sunday Mass, as usual we gathered at the church columbarium. One of her sisters had placed a small but delightful-looking bouquet of purple flowers at her niche.  But horticulture-wise I am too dumb to tell the name of the flower. Let me know if you do. They were strikingly beautiful. And Jenny would have loved it for sure.  It matches the purple sleeved dress that I often picture her to be wearing for weekend mass.

Pretty purple flowers adorning Jenny's niche this Sunday
 

Still, I felt the same old familiar woeful feeling weighing me down. We were savouring as good as what life can best possibly offer – revelling in the joy of our nation’s unprecedented sporting success, feasting on scrumptious delectable delights and so on. But Jenny has to be contented with just a pretty bunch of flowers.

Still, we need to move on with our lives. And live life the best we can. She would want us to. And not any other way. It’s the only way to honour her. And Jenny always deserve the best, even in passing.

National Day at Macritchie

The bedside clock said 4.30am. I should roll over and slip back into deep slumber. But instead, I felt all wound up. Why not start the day early and hit the trails of MacRitchie Reservoir? A full-blooded 12 km trek.  After all, it was our National Day and it might be more meaningful to commemorate the day with a good physical workout than sleeping in. Alright that is laughable. But it was a public holiday and I should make the most of the day.

At the reservoir, my iphone read 5.44am. The entire park was dark as night. What a fantastic time to have left my head-lamps back home just when I would need it most. Stepping into the forest, an ink black wall of darkness crashed upon me, forbiddingly and unwelcoming.  I could not even see the back of my hand, nor my feet or the track to take the next step forward. Thank goodness for modern day devices like our hand-phones and the blessed built-in torch-light. I immediately turned it on. The battery will be fast draining but I had no choice.  There was enough light emitted, faint and casting eerie shadows that danced in tandem to my hand-held light source. Now is not the time for imagination to freely wander or the mind to succumb to its own trickery. Behind the shadows are but lots of plant and shrubbery. Flora and fauna that is essentially non-threatening. Who’s afraid of the dark? Not me.

I assured myself that at some point the sky will eventually brighten up. Above all, I was not walking alone. I had my music companion. Spotify, delivering Mike Oldfield this time. His latest album “Man On the Rocks” is not half-bad and surprisingly very listenable.

And how often could I have the whole forest to myself? MacRitchie Reservoir is such a popular destination for trekkers and joggers, the trails were always crowded whenever I visited. But for this pre-dawn trek I seemed to have the trail all to myself. Or so I thought. Up ahead, I spied a faint glimmer of light. I was not alone. A group of three at least, teen-agers by their looks, the light from their smart-phones and hand-held torch piercing through the dark. But instead of striding ahead along the track like me, they appeared to be looking for some lost treasure in the forest. Of course they were. Pokemons, to be exact. The augmented reality app was launched in our country just two days before and many people fell under the spell. People crazy enough to venture deep into the forest just so to be the first to hunt down these virtual nothings. It is totally unreal except that it was happening. I brisked past the three of them. With their eyes glued to the screens, I felt like a ghost whisking past.

Early morning at the reservoir

After some 5km of walking the night sky eventually made way for morning. I turned off my hand-phone torchlight. Mike Oldfield was singing about the sense of time in one of his songs, entitled “Minutes”.

“Minutes seem like hours / And hours they seem like days / When the ones you want are missing / And they’ve gone their separate ways”.

So true for me. You would know what I mean. Since Jenny’s passing on, time seemed to slow to a crawl. I fill the time with every possible distraction I could think of but the days were long and hard to get through.

As I crossed the half-way mark of the trail, with the morning sky fully lit, more people began streaming into the reservoir. Many of the joggers were dressed in red and white, the colours of our national flag. There was at least one family of five, the two parents and their three young children in their sporting attire all colour coordinated. Wearing my usual blue dry-fit tee-shirt, my sense of patriotism appeared somewhat questionable by comparison. But that did not bother me much and soon, after slightly more than two hours, I completed the trek. My left ankle felt sore but overall I was pretty satisfied. And it was only around 8am in the morning. A great way to start the day.

I washed up and took a leisurely breakfast at the park café. Just then my handphone was flooding with several Whatsapp messages. Congratulatory notes coming from my colleagues. They found my name amid the list of National Day award winners, published in the newspaper on national day each year. After some 30 plus years in service, it was my turn to receive this award, I supposed. Still it came as a very pleasant surprise for me. I felt almost embarrassed replying to the endless shower of flattery that I was most unused to, thanking my colleagues profusely.  Some of the bolder ones demanded treats in the form of beer. I will need to concoct a plan for a small celebration but that will be a matter for another day. I was in no mood to enjoy the ego ride.

The sun was scorching down the reservoir, now bustling with fitness jocks and families out for picnic gatherings or just having a good time together. And of course, droves of pokemon hunters, mobile phones in hand. This is the second National Day spent without Jenny. So many people around, yet the park felt as empty as the time when I first arrived in the dark of dawn.

“Walking in a sunny garden empty like the moon / And birds that once could fly so high / Now sing a different tune”

-          Mike Oldfield, "Minutes"