Climb On! Singapore

In our relentless pursuit of excellence and success we have dispatched the Red Gecko climbing team from Sabah to wreak a special kind of havoc in the oh-so-straight world of Singapore. Country boys they may be and the big city might be a handfull but these guys are Sabahan and if theres one thing that you can say about Sabahans, they are adaptable!

What - evvveeeerrrr

You find yourself in a hole and you gotta start looking for a way out. Get used to it down there and its all over.
Never mind negativity, the chalk bag is half-full and dont ever forget it. Put another way; regardless of gravity's density on any given day, sometimes you are going to climb like a monkey and sometimes like a bag of onions. If its an onion bag day; dont sweat it, go home and take it easy. Come back tomorrow and it will probably be a monkey day.
Blog-catharsis this is.

Ok so moving on to a much more grounded subject, outdoor rock-climbing to be precise, the trip we have organised to Kironggu rock in Inanam for the 31st of October is now full, glad to see that people want to get out there and try the real stuff!
We do still have space on our trip to Berhala Island on the 6th and 7th of November, its going to be a doozy! big, scary and very lots of fun!
Sign up and lets get over there......

Its a strange thing how us humans are rarely, if ever, satisfied. At most its a passing sensation, a post-coital glow, the scoring of a goal or winning point, momentary and fleeting. Like a frangrance it is evaporating from the moment you put it on until only the memory of it remains.
How often do we wish for something, work for it, make sacrifices and compromises to get the thing of our desire only to experience a sinking sensation of anticlimax once we are holding it?
Is this what drives us to never stop, to move from one target to the next, a never-ending pursuit of the unobtainable, satisfaction?
So it is with the climbing centre in Kota Kinabalu. A major triumph for our team, the result of much hard work, sleepless nights, risky investment and zealous passion. A project that took a year to get operational after it was completed and one which we had no idea if it would be a success or monumental flop.
Our first month saw around 900 climbing sessions happen, around 30 people a night came down, climbed and hung out. Many of them have been coming down regularly.

Why is it then that we are left feeling unfulfilled?

Its like eating toast in bed, it feels great and sometimes you deserve it yet, there are crumbs in the bed afterwards and its hard to enjoy the sensation of satisfaction.

Its because us humans have a nirvana-type view of our desired outcome, there are no crumbs on our imaginary toast.

I have a feeling that heaven will be like that, there will be queues, bad food and tons of paperwork. Oh sure it will be a nice place, fluffy clouds or whatever but there will still be grafitti in the toilets and noisy neighbours..............

Back to the Climbing Centre (remember, its a blog about climbing). Though the operations are running swimmingly and numbers are great and we are finally starting to get strong again ourselves, it is too small, there are not enough routes, we need a shop and the Wireless is malfunctioning. All little things that suck out any indulgence into self-satisfaction at the overall success and undermine any bosom-swelling shows of pride one might be tempted to display.

Just thought I would share that with you.........