www.Go To The Mountain - Musings of a Potential Guru

The genre of movies during my childhood days were typically stereotypical. The English moves on TV or the big screen would feature lots of cowboys, police stories, war or some animals. Think Lassie (a collie of a dog), Black Beauty (stallion), Rin Tin Tin (Alsatian), Bonanza/Rifleman/For A Few Dollars More/The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, The Lone Ranger, Hawaii 5-0 (Steve McGarett saying Book him Daniel), Magnum PI, Streets of San Francisco, etc. And do you remember Combat starring Vic Morrow? Chinese movies ranged from the sad and tragic love stories, ghost stories, lots kung fu sword fighting stories where revenge is the main theme. The love stories of my parents' generation were mostly truly and extremely tragic. The lady would be bullied by the mum-in-law, suffered much for the hubby, molested by some neighbour and yet accused of being unfaithful, frowned upon by everyone yet she would find strength to earn some money to help her hubby pay off some debt and end...

Give a man a fish and he lives for the day. Teach a man to fish and he can be crazy ab0ut fish and fishing. Fishes are one of the most interesting creatures in the world. Just like the so many species of birds - fowls of the air, fishes are amazing to look at in water just as our fowl friends are in full flight. A close encounter with a Kingfisher would enable you to witness its swift flight, sharp shrills and bright colours. If you had the opportunity to catch one with a fish in its beak, you have seen the best of both worlds. You can usually see them at golf courses near the water features. Kookaburas are very interesing birds too. Gastronomically speaking, few birds can be eaten compared to fish. Goose, Turkeys, Ducks, Chickens even Pigeons are just the few. If you talk about fish then the food list seems quite endless. As the saying goes "Big Fish Eats Small Fish" and you'll understand the chain. A sashimi chart alone can give you a headache. Talking about ...

His guruship GuruGeoff is not an accredited guru but since when were gurus appointed? Gurus do not get appointed, they only get disappointed. Anyway, nobody ever listens. Therefore, please do as he says and not do as he does. While others graduated from NUS, he graduated from SNUSS (Sang Nila Utama Sec. Sch - haha, just kidding for there is no such education centre). He actually graduated from the School of Hard Knocks (SOHK pronounced as Shiok) and the University of Life. Gurus are often self-styled, eccentric, maverick, etc. They either dispense great wisdom or spout nonsense. Sometimes both and when done beautifully - nonsensical wisdom flows. They need not be hermits though and are culpable of downing a couple of brew. GuruGeoff was a name given and conferred on him by some friends who thought that he seems to know everything, every #@% ! thing! Knowing in a way that made the subjects ...

Drinks, kueh chee , curry puffs. Drinks, kueh chee , curry puffs. The constant aural bombardment of your senses at the terraces, the colourful balloons carried by a section of the crowd around the players' entrance where they would be released the moment the team started marching out from the tunnel and the kaleidoscope all around creates a ruckus and oh what a carnival! It was a sight to behold, 60,000 screaming fans at the National Stadium during the Malaysia Cup days gave us the intimidating Kallang Roar where when the Roar reverberated around the stadium together with 60,000 pairs of stomping feet provided our team with the inspiration, courage and desire to fight and win. Those were the unforgettable days of the Malaysia Cup where every fan recognised each player by their individual, distinct style of play. Eric Paine with his stylish dives, Hasli Ibrahim for his sliding tackles, S. Rajagopal "The Camel" with his galloping runs on the left flank and...

The indomitable spirit of the dragon. When his first movie The Big Boss hit the big screen, he was still an unknown but with much hype already in the process. Spurned by Shaw Brothers, we had to thank Golden Harvest for their foresight or we would all have missed the greatest martial artist cum superstar. I caught it at the Ruby Theatre in Balestier (opposite Whampoa) after a long queue for tickets. I was lucky to get a black and white photo with Bruce Lee's autograph distributed at the entrance. The movie transformed audiences everywhere and the next to follow - The Fist of Fury ensured that you do not only have to queue but you have to queue for advance tickets for the next week! Even Circle seats were sold out in advance. (Circle seats which are upstairs "sikit atas" costs $3, double what you would have to pay for the normal ones). If the Big Boss was a big success, The Fist of Fury catapulted Bruce to super stardom. People young and old were talking a...

Toa Payoh was nicknamed the east side of Chicago. Gang clashes were common and police actions was the norm. You could be eating at a hawker centre and suddenly tables would be overturned and beer bottles flying and you could see some twenty people in fracas. Or you could see suspicious characters doing drugs and followed up by a police bust. Neighbourhood boys whose faces you knew could be seen being arrested for armed robbery. Drug addicts bashing up undercover police and the list goes on. It was inevitable that you knew some of these people who are among the gangsters but when you knew them as friends they are perfectly normal people of our age but perhaps just under the wrong influence and company. Two new theatres opened as well as a park later to be followed by a library. These were the most exciting things happening. another big thing that happened when they put the SEAP games (now SEA games) village in Toa Payoh's four new point blocks of five-room flats. The was a ...

When you are a child or in your youth, you wanted to be like the adults, to go out to work and be dispensed with the misery of going to school. Perhaps it's the stifling education system but soon enough when you became an adult, you feel like wanting to be a kid again. Which is why I have always advocated strongly that we should let children be children (not the disciplinary part) but children who could play imaginatively and with wide eye wonderment and even to a certain extent I believe being with nature builds up the creative side and EQ of a person. That's why some people talk to plants. Maybe they are tired of talking to people? Going to the kindergarten was a first real experience of being with complete strangers, like when you first came to primary school, then secondary school, National Service, etc. except that when you were older, you could cope better. I could still remember that just before tea-break as the aroma of Milo filled the air only to find out that w...

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

We few, We happy few, We band of brothers, For he today, that shed his blood with me shall be my brother.

A word of love, encouragement, positive affirmation can go along way especially if you inspired someone, anyone. This is so since that inspired person will in turn go on to inspire many others just like a recipient of your love and help or simply an act of kindness. What goes around comes around as they say. My beloved son Clarence has started blogging, his so far of stories that seemed like Star Wars meet Lord Of The Rings but they are very well-written and to many younger readers simply awesome as they have mentioned! I have read his Sec. 1 school composition which are among the best in school/class but this is the first time I have read his story writing in this blog and I'm impressed that at his age, he is writing better than me at his age. Read it or start writing your own blog too, you and your children. It is part of sharing your friendship. To go to Clarene's blog, go to: http://www.letfoolsbefools.blogspot.com/ or you can access it from my blog...

Victoria School in Singapore, There are other schools we know. Victoria School is something more, The school that watch'd us grow. For here we've learnt and striven too, And played the sportsman's game. Victoria School we give to you, The honour that you claim. Victoria thy sons are we, And we will not forget. Victoria thy triumphs see, And victories we share yet. For others came before and went, And carried to the world. Victoria's flame and our intent to Keep her flag unfurled. That's the school song above which I have fondly remembered. The khaki shorts, red badge and motto: Nil Sine Labor which means nothing without work. I have made many friends here through different involvements in school activities. It was here where my passion for soccer was stirred. The school would close when our A, B, or C team entered a final played at the Jalan Besar stadium next door. I remembered vividly the A team's 2-2 draw with SJI where the Ho Kwang Hock inspired VS te...

Black and white television brings with it the simplicity of life much like the portable radios of the time and where only the men go out to bring back the beacon and the women folks handled the workload of a home affairs minister. Spoken dialects on TV, radio and especially on advertisements were actually quite amusing and interesting. Amazingly, there weren't many skirmishes and fights over TV rights (who has the right to select the preferred channels) considering that a typical family unit living together in the same house would probably consist of the patriarch, two married children and their families with children in toll, a couple of brothers and sisters living in a two bedroom home with a single toilet if you were lucky. A single toilet where you would do your business, shower and wash your clothes. Go figure how things work out. Precisely because of the small confines of home, the adults would frequently encourage or allow the children to go out of the house to pl...

Everytime something happens - good or bad and I would reminisce. Distant memories would keep flooding back. Perhaps it is my way of recoiling myself into my own protective shell telling myself that things would get better again. An eternal optimist you might say. I would have wishful thinking of the good old times, not sure if they were all good but at least what I thought were happier times for many at an age of innocence where television was essentially black and white and where life was much simpler since even toys were often home-made. When TV was only black and white, the good guys wore white and the baddies wore black depicted in the countless ninja/samurai, cowboys, sword-fighting movies and even on Wrestling programmes. I was very young and my impressionist mind had thought that the soccer game has good and bad guys too. EPL was just plain old First Division and teams like West Ham, Stoke City, Coventry and Wolves were plying the trade. There was never any "live...

Pray, for there are calamities everywhere! Every morning when you read your newspapers there are more gloom and doom. Singapore is supposed to have several great years ahead including 2008 but we cannot be sheltered being an open and export oriented economy. Not having a hinterland like Hong Kong has in China does not help. We are in uncharted territory. What we are seeing now is unprecedented. The train has gone off the rails! American capitalism has failed big time and Singapore is in a technical recession. Confidence has been completely eroded, fear has taken over, markets are irrational and the American consumers have stop spending surely to be followed by the Europeans but then American consumerism is driving the world economy worth some USD 8.5 trillion for 300 million people as compared to China's USD 1 trillion for 1.3 billion people and India's USD 600 billion for 1 billion people. Some people even predicted that America's sole superpower supremacy will...

F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone has spoken on the controversy raised by Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo labelling the Singapore GP a circus. He also criticised the elaborate electronic system Ferrari use in the pits instead of the more familiar "lollipop" man which all the other teams use. Bernie's retort: "If the Ferrari president is right about the Singapore GP being a circus, then we have to be grateful to him for providing the clowns". Steady lah Bernie! The Guru says: I can see the point about the safety car but circus? "Luca yee kong, wah nan eh sai eh, tok kong eh" (Hokkien).

While most people would take the often travelled path, a friend and I besides being young and idealistic at the time were poor and penniless having just started life in the rat race. The problem with the rat race is that at the end of the day, you are still a rat. Rats we were as we decided aimlessly to take time off to find a paradise. Having just read about an exotic place called Koh Samui, we took off taking an express coach from Singapore because it was the cheapest mode. Not only that, Samui had no airport at the time, so in effect it was the only way. As there were no travel agents packaging such a tour, we had to find our own way there and so we landed at Haadyai (a much talked about and dangerous place) after a gruelling 18 hour trip (considered express at the time) through the old Malaysian highway. We dozed off at times when the bus was travelling at expressway speed in the night but only to be awakened on several occasions when we sensed the bus slowing down and we wi...

Fast forward 20 years later, with family in toll, we headed to this Paradise Where Time Stood Still. Everytime, when we are at some beaches somewhere, I would them the story of Koh Samui about how beautiful it was like some old grandfather (I'm not). Sure enough, they asked me why keep talking about it? Just bring us there. Me and my big mouth. Samui now has an airport but only Bangkok Airways fly there. As a result, they just tell you how much to pay. While you would have to walk on the tarmac last time, now you ride in a tram like those at the Night Safari to take to to Immigration and Customs which are made of wooden and attap huts with open space. Arriving In Style Idyllic Calm Rustic Charm Pristine Beaches Meandearing Streams at Low Tide Island Tranquility Picturesque Postcard Pix   Shopping ... Yes, Versace tailors too Bi...