Climbing.

I climbed Broga Hill this morning, the second time I've ever done so. I went with a number of my old Rembau batchmates the first time; this time, however, I went alone.

I’m used to doing things alone. I like going for solo walks and solo drives. I like it when I’m home alone. I like eating alone at restaurants. When I was in France, there were many times when I found myself traveling alone, and I enjoyed that too.

I’m not saying I’m antisocial. I do, of course, enjoy good company. I’ve heard it said that it’s better to have good company than to have none at all. But it’s also true that being alone is better than being with bad company. Sometimes I just like to be by myself instead of being with other people just for the sake of being with someone. I actually happen to enjoy my own company, thank you very much.

There was a time when the word ‘introvert’ would make me cringe, because I just kept seeing it pop up everywhere. It was almost as if being introverted was cool all of a sudden, and everyone wanted to get in on it. The word still has difficulty forming in my mouth, and I wish there were other words I could use, but the fact remains that it’s also a concise, yet accurate, description of who I am.

As I climbed Broga this morning, I noticed that I was possibly the only one there doing it by myself (except possibly this one foreigner I later passed on my way back down). I saw couples, families, and groups of friends, climbing, chatting, laughing, taking pictures, and generally enjoying themselves. The only problem for me was that there were far too many of them – I barely took time to stop and enjoy the excellent view on any of the four peaks as the presence of the crowds made me uncomfortable.

When I told one of my housemates I was planning to climb Broga by myself, he didn’t think it was a good idea, for reasons of safety (he couldn't have come; he had class this morning). It was a valid concern, of course, but I figured that if anything were to happen to me while I was up there (and nothing did happen, thankfully enough), it was safe to assume that there would be plenty of people there to see it, and at least a few of them would be kind enough to help me out.

When I reached the final peak, 1312 feet above sea level, I walked right past the overcrowded clearing on top of it and found a secluded rock to sit on and rest. The view wasn’t as great as it would have been from the actual peak, but it was a lot more peaceful. And it was peace that I came to Broga for, much more than the view or the climbing.

There’s just something I find therapeutic about staring into the distance after a climb, and if the whole climbing thing wasn’t so physically demanding and time-consuming I would probably do it more often. There was a hiking trail on the hill behind my first house in Nilai, and I used to climb it, sit on a rock near the edge of a cliff and just gaze into the horizon to clear my thoughts. It wasn’t as high or as challenging a climb as Broga, but it did the trick.

It would be nice if I could scale higher peaks, like the many mountains we have here in this country, in the future, though doing so would probably mean having to go with other people for safety reasons. That would mean losing out on the part I like the most about climbing, namely reaching the top, looking out onto the horizon and not talking to anyone. It would be quite something to look down from the peak of Mount Kinabalu and not have that moment of serenity pierced by the voice of another human being.

But I guess people were made to live together for a reason. Adam (a. s.) did feel lonely all by himself in Paradise, after all. Having my peace interrupted by another person every now and then is probably better than it never being interrupted at all.

Results.

Donald Trump was announced as the 45th President of the United States yesterday. People were calling it a surprise, but it wasn't really for me. Not because I have an in-depth knowledge of American politics or anything like that; it was more of a hunch. And anyway, after Leicester City winning the Premier League, Portugal winning the Euros, and Brexit all happened earlier this year, nothing should really be a surprise anymore.

(Incidentally, I read somewhere that if you'd put a £5 bet on Leicester City, Brexit and Trump, you would have won £15 million. It's been a crazy year.)

I had the luxury of being able to follow the results live yesterday (my Master's proposal is still yet to be approved due to administrative issues), and I have to say I got stressed when the final results were announced. I decided to get off Facebook for the rest of the day (though I did accidentally go on once later out of habit) to avoid the inevitable barrage of negativity, and de-stressed myself with a bit of PES, football with some local kids, and then dinner with my new housemates.

I think I would still have been stressed had Hillary Clinton won instead of Trump. Both candidates are flawed (to put it lightly) in their own ways, and the outlook would have been bleak whatever the outcome of the election. If I'd had to vote, I don't think I would have been able to bring myself to vote for either of them. As it is, I'm glad I'm not a US citizen.

For the past 18 months, I've been keeping an eye on the US election through talk show segments on YouTube, mainly for entertainment purposes. There was, of course, the whole getting-updated-on-current-events thing, but I frankly wouldn't have paid so much attention to the election if it following it hadn't also been so entertaining. Laughter is good for my mental health, and as someone who likes to keep mentally healthy, I try to get it whenever I can.

I do, of course, get the importance of keeping up with the world, regardless of whether it's presented in an entertaining format or not. I do read the news, and I do get concerned with the stuff that's going on. There's always something happening, good or bad. There's always something to talk about, always something to discuss.

The problem with talking about current events, though, is that there's always so much negativity involved. There's so much hate, anger, sadness. So many problems are out there in the world, and so many people getting upset over them. All this emotion is understandable, of course, and sometimes even necessary. You can feel what you want over what you want, but please don't drag me into it. There's already too much negativity as it is, and I don't want to be a part of it.

One of the things I want most in this life is simply to be happy. I realize I can't be happy all the time, but it's something I always aspire to be and strive towards becoming. Happiness should be more than just an emotion, which is temporary and fleeting - it should be an underlying state that you always revert to. Whatever it is you're going through, you can rest easy knowing that soon it'll be over and you'll be happy again.

It may be intelligent to to be able to think about big, important things and talk about them, but it's wise to know what's big and important to you and just focus on that. Trying to know everything about everything is great and all, but it's also exhausting. No matter how wonderful you think your mind is, you shouldn't overwork it.

I've never been one to publicly offer my thoughts on trending topics, because most of the time I can't be bothered to look up too much about something that will soon come to pass anyway. It's funny how everyone on social media at the moment is suddenly an expert on US politics as well as its effects on the global economy. Just like how not too long ago everyone was suddenly an expert on Islamic law and jurisdiction.

It's great to have opinions, as it shows that you have a functioning brain, but quite frankly no one cares. Your voice is just one of millions (billions?), and what you think doesn't really matter unless you're somebody important. That's just how it is.

Sometimes it's just better to keep what you think to yourself, especially if the environment is as toxic at is right now. Whatever has happened, has happened, and there's nothing more we can do about it. Focus on the present, keep your sanity, and look ahead to the future. There's still more to come, and you'll never move forward if you're still stuck in reverse.

Waiting.

I do not like waiting. It's just one of those things in life that you kind of just accept and can sometimes do nothing about, but that doesn't make the act of waiting any less unenjoyable. We've all done our fair share of waiting throughout our lives, of course, as have I, and I like to consider myself a person who's quite good at it. Unlike other things I'm good at, however, waiting is something that I would much prefer to avoid doing whenever possible.

Linguistically speaking, waiting is a verb, or a word that indicates an action. I find that to be a bit paradoxical really, because, in my case anyway, waiting usually involves me doing precisely nothing. I have that ability to simply zone out and literally not think about or do anything, and this particular ability is my regular go-to whenever I find that I am forced to wait for something. It's quite handy when I don't feel like wasting my phone battery through aimless scrolling on social media or playing the one mobile game that I have.

I've been trained from an early age to remain vigilant in the face of an extended period of waiting. Looking back now, the time I used to spend waiting for my mother or either of my grandfathers to come pick me up from school might not have been all that lengthy, but back then it seemed like forever. My sister and I used to find comfort in Billy Joel's "The Longest Time", although years later I discovered that the context of the song was quite different from what we used it for.

I incidentally just read about Arsenal, the football club I support, employing an Austrian 'gridlock consultancy firm' to design a new queuing system to reduce waiting times on match days. The fact that such a service even exists is actually sort of amazing to me, but I guess it makes complete sense. People specialize in everything these days, and due to supply and demand, the fact that a lot of people, like me, don't like waiting, there was always going to be someone finding some way to make money from addressing that.

Having said that, though, waiting is just part of life; there's only so much you can do to speed things up, but most of the time it's impossible to eliminate the wait altogether. The world today, among other things, is characterized by its need for instantaneousness; everything has to be done now, now, now. It's a viewpoint I personally agree with, as I don't really see why something that can be done quickly, well, isn't being done quickly. However, I do accept that there is always a certain amount of waiting that needs to be done - I just always prefer that it's as small an amount as possible.

Sometimes, though, there's really nothing you can do to reduce your waiting time. I'm currently waiting for the proposal for my Master's project to be approved before I can properly start with my research, and I've been told that the approval process typically takes a month, though mine might just be able to be completed slightly sooner. This was last week, so I have potentially three more weeks in which I have no choice but to wait.

I could, of course, get started on my reading, which is what my supervisors have advised me to do. It would at least be better than simply doing nothing. With me being me, however, exactly no relevant reading has been done. I've pretty much been doing what I usually do when I'm waiting for something, which is basically nothing.

I guess I've been hardwired since young to do nothing while waiting for something, but it's a habit I'm trying to break. I intend on being at least a little productive this week, if only so I can tell my supervisors that I've actually been doing something besides watching YouTube videos all day. Rambling about the act of waiting is one way to get the juices flowing, in any case.