my funny valentine

people look at valentine's day in different ways. some find it overrated. others corny, some romantic. many i believe still celebrate it. well whatever millions of different people think about it, i still think that it all boils down to people capable of 'loving' - be it your pet dog, your sweet half, mom, whoever, whatever.

i dont recall any special valentine's day celebration for me though. there was only one instance that i was in a relationship during valentine's day -- and that was a long distance relationship. hahaha!

i may never have had a special valentine's day, but for many years, my heart had a special place for a person named valentine. highschool puppy love. and because i put her in a special place, she indirectly taught me many many lessons on love (and im talking about romantic love).

the love you give may not always be returned, no matter how hard you try or how much you give, but you can't take that other person accountable for not reciprocating the love. yes. love hurts. exclamation point. cry, cry your heart out. shout, whisper, beg, pray. it doesn't work that way. if she doesn't love you. she won't love you. you lose - you're a loser. if you let go, she loses you too though. it's fair, right? i still believe that a man should go for the one he loves and a woman for the man who loves her. it takes time to heal. it does. some longer than the others. for me, it took 10 years. love takes courage and risks. it can break you into pieces and you're the only one who can really pick yourself up and puzzle it back into wholeness. i needed closure. she may not give the love in return, but she's human too. respect her feelings. let her go. she's got heart, but it's not for me. give yourself one last chance and if it doesnt work, give the others many more chances on you. let her go and let yourself free too. i needed closure. i said bye and closure is what i got.

to valentine -- thank you!

* * *

i can only hold 1 special romantic place in my heart, that's just who i am. it's vacant and open for permanent residency. only females can apply. hahaha!!!

hot and cold

each of our bags during the trekking were around 8-10kg heavy and yes, we carried them roundtrip from headquarters to laban rata (about a total of 12km). no, we didnt carry them to the peak.

i really don't know what made our bags so heavy. i was just carrying one set of extra clothes (we even skipped carrying extra pair of socks -- hahaha!!!), toiletries (which i dont think were that heavy), some energy-boosting snacks (2 snickers and 2 small bags of raisins each) and other necessities like torchlight, poncho, sweater and windbreaker. Oh, we carried the tripod (which we baptized as 'yang'), video camera, digital camera and a 1.5 liter of water. i think howlake was carrying almost the same amount of stuff except that his towel was 4x the size of my towel and wet, which made it even heavier.

so what's up with the title of this blog?

well, one of the discussions howlake and i had when we were climbing was whether it's heavier to carry a cold water or a hot water. because on the second part of the climb, we were advised to carry a warm water since it's gonna be a cold trek to the peak, since it's at 230am. howlake said there could be no difference since it's the same volume. i said i'm not sure, because there might be some chemical reaction going on that might affect it. just like when a metal gets heated, it expands. we went through some 'smart' ideas like "oh yea, maybe warm water would react differently to its plastic container and alter the weight". hahaha! imagine, we were discussing this at around 4000m above sea level at 4am. amazing how our minds still work.

well, guess what?

cold water is more dense than hot water, and is therefore heavier.

density is the weight (or more accurately the mass) of a given volume of a substance.

wowow!

so do you want to know what water we carried to the peak? hahaha!

C-O-L-D

why?

our theory is that even though we carry a warm water, since weather is very cold ... our water would turn out cold afterwards, unless we carry a thermos. and we didnt have a thermos. hahaha!

wait a minute, on second thought... it doesnt really matter if it was cold or warm, because we asked our guide to carry our water to the peak as we werent carrying any bags and he was. hahaha!!!

WISE!

Happy Chinese New Year!

Happy Year of the Chinese Fire Pig!

18 Feb 2007 to 6 Feb 2008

700+

it's been a week since our holiday ended and to tell you honestly, im still not over it yet. im slowly getting back to my routine. in fact, i was able to drag myself to take the 530am shuttle to get to work; i've been driving to work the past week since i still can't imagine myself waking up at 415am vs 630am (when i was working in penang). ofcourse it's a different story waking up at 1am to get ready to trek at 230am (and we were in bed at 7pm that night -- hahaha!).

ah, post-holiday syndrome! i'm sure i'll be back to my regular routine and life goes back to 'normal', but the adventure we had is not so easy to forget. it's not something we put in temporary cache, but rather we save into our long-term memory.

there's a lot to tell and we'll try to put in words (and show in photos) how the adventure felt. i'm sure you're so eager to hear all about it, but i have to keep you hanging for now.

i'll update maybe later .. maybe tomorrow.

-JR

trivia: the title of this post is the number of photos we took during the whole trip.

BIEN!!!

Low's Peak, Mt. Kinabalu
4095.2m above sea level
5:15AM Feb 01, 2007

We know the update is a bit late, but we just want to inform our readers that 'YES, we made it!'

More photos and stories to come later...