The Unreachable Horizon

...and for Monday's pickups I found myself back in the Tuas area for aluminium bars. We spent about $180 only for me to come back and realise that we already had a sponsor for them. I had not gotten the metal bars from that company due to a miscommunication and my own forgetfulness! Aah! I dislike making major errors, but then to be realistic I am doubling up as Marketing/Logistics crew in a one-woman show. Well, except for ZQ who drives the truck, yeah, I call sponsors, follow-up, arrange itineraries and go out in the truck to pick up the goods, as I am the PR rep and the navigator on trips out. What's that? Alissa, the person who gets lost in her own hall, is a navigator? FYI, as long as I have a map, I'm not too bad.

Following that was lunch and a long, long negotiation with the rattan-man Jensen who kinda looked like rattan himself: wiry, brown and supple. We started by approaching the office and were told that he was in the warehouse, which was itself about 50m away. We wandered among the piles and bundles of rattan. Some bundles, soaring 6m high, were stacked against each other to create little towers, while the shorter cane was stacked horizontally in criss-cross fashion. Short, long, thin, thick, skinned and natural cane--any varieties that you please--all formed a maze of corridors that we wandered through until, right at the end of the warehouse, we met Jensen loading yet more bundles of rattan on a gantry. He was a very friendly chap who agreed to sell us the few kilos that we needed, at almost cost price, even though it meant disassembling the 25kg bundle of 4-7mm rattan he had painstakingly amassed from the different rattan varieties that are shipped in from Malaysia and Indonesia. This was difficult to do as it would mean another long time waiting for the right types of cane to randomly come in through different shipments, until he had a sizable bundle for selling again.

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Last night I made red bean sago soup for supper. Despite soaking the beans the entire day till they had swelled to the size of peanuts, the beans remained crunchy after one hour of boiling. I think I will try putting it on boil for an hour instead of just letting it simmer. Or just leave it in for two hours. Whatever the problem, I am not happy with the result and will stubbornly make another attempt tonight.

I had Den, Soci Boy and a neighbour of theirs down for the crunchy red bean supper. We speculated on the incredible size and texture of the beans, wondering if they were GMO or maybe a special variety from Japan. Or simply better quality beans as Den's mother bought us costlier beans that start out larger than the average bean too. Yes, hall is a place where we talk completely random rubbish with each other.

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And this deserves a mention: floorball training yesterday was great, I thought. After nine months of training, I finally have a decent level of skill in stickwork, which consists of basic techniques like dribbling, passing, shooting and keeping the ball on the blindside of opposing players. It's not 100% consistent yet, but at least I have passed from consistently missing passes and fumbling my shots to making fair passes and attempts at goal even under pressure from defenders.

What I would rather not mention is how frustrated I can get on court when things don't work out and I react negatively to comments from my seniors. They mean well, but when they take a hundred words to say something that can be said in ten, I get irritated. I suppose that's where my pride comes in. "I know I'm less skilled, but that doesn't affect my ability to understand what you're saying," mutters my ego. Fight fight. Get angry. Stop thinking about the game and perform even worse than before. I've been praying about it and trying consistently to cut down on my backlashes, and thank God I am managing little by little to lose my cool less and less. Playing in Div 2 releases me from the expectations of the Div 1 seniors and allows me the space to concentrate on improving aspects that I can improve on, rather than the on things the seniors want me to improve which is sometimes a few steps too far ahead for me. So I'm thankful.

So yesterday was a good day. I walked back to hall singing, thankful to God for the day and stopping to stare at the boughs as they danced in the breeze. The breeze picked up and I knew it was going to rain in about five minutes, but walking quickly in my five-year-old slippers was uncomfortable as they kept, well...slipping. Yes, slippers tend to grow into their name over time, like people. So I took them off and continued my triumphant march back home, stopping every now and then to stare up into the waving boughs overhead. Now if I had waved back, that might have worried some people. As it is all I got was jaded looks from worn-out special semester and graduate students waiting for their bus home.

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And as I am getting back into writing like I always meant to, this blog will contain a verbal diarrheoa (did I spell that right?) of sorts. I have figured that writing about my life, however narcissistic an exercise and however uninteresting it may be, would be a lot better than not writing at all in the quest for that perfect post or perfect poem. Pursuing perfection, I realise, is like pursuing that "untravell'd world whose margin fades forever and forever when I move." The line is from Tennyson's poem Ulysses, about the aged king Ulysses (also known as Odysseus) who regrets his life of idleness after decades of adventure and exploration. It's long, but the four lines which strike me most are:

I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margins fade
For ever and for ever when I move.

The horizon of perfection eludes us forever. Ambition, that tantalising fruit that remains always just beyond the reach of your fingertips. Whether as a Rag Day Marketeer, a noob cook or a sportsperson, I realise I am a die-hard perfectionist. I struggled to understand these lines in the poem until one day, it dawned upon me that the imagery is that of a ship travelling out to meet the horizon, which promises to reveal what cannot be seen beyond it. Yet however much I move, however much I experience, I never reach the horizon. I am reminded of Paul's exposition on faith, that no one hopes for what they have gained. There are always places to grow beyond what I was before. And I hope I will keep growing.

Speaking about new lands, I will be off to Cambodia tomorrow for a week. Till then, then.