There are many ways to welcome the new year. Some party. Hard. Some dine and wine. Almost everyone counts down.
We did it differently this year. We didn't even count down. We had a quiet moment, including exchanging words of encouragements and bowed our heads in solemn prayer. And yes, D & J did have a glass of wine each. My teetotaller condition was due to being on another run at the Dukan Diet (probably my 4th or 5th go in 5 to 6 years) while M was at church celebrating with fellow youths.
Actually there is no significant cosmic reason why the passing from 2359 to 0000 on 31st December every year is special. However, in a world regulated by timelines, milestones and deadlines, it has become important.
In our case, we were indeed governed by one of these deadlines. J had to submit his application to US universities who conveniently put it as 1st January 2017. And being busy the entire year, J left it to the last days and hours to get that done. We were obviously anxious on his behalf and stayed with him as he composed multiple essays.
As I understand the process better (being the first born, he typically had to go where none of us had been), I must say I am rather impressed with the system. Rather than asking for a regurgitation of accomplishments, the essays are meant to deeply understand the applicant: his/her passions, attitudes and resolve. It was not difficult for J for these three attributes run deep in him to hammer out the essays. Reading through his essays, it was more difficult for me as his dad, and to an extent for D as well, to not focus on "telling" on his achievements but rather to show the inner spirit and strength that led to these achievements.
Over the last few days and especially last few hours, I must confess I like this system. So much so that I expressed this to M as we were waiting for our takeaway lunch. I knew she saw the amount of stress her brother was in and I wanted to take a moment to pacify her. J's situation partly stemmed from having too many things to do, being new at this, leaving it too late, and not knowing there were more essays required!
What I really like about the system is exactly what I have been preaching to my parents, who have a habit of heaping praises on achievements rather than efforts. I understood effort to be the true determinant of success and had encouraged them (robustly so) to also concentrate on calling out grandkids who have put in great effort be it in learning a skill like baking or undertaking a courageous challenge. I can well imagine if I had applied to the US all those years ago and they were advising me, I would not be accepted into any school!
So, there we were, son, mother and father, welcoming 2017 and hoping we complete the applications in time. Earlier today, we did. J submitted to 7 of the 8 schools and having not slept the night before, is taking a nap now before he finalises and submits the final application.
I have been on his case for leaving it so late. Truth be told, I am not sure he had a choice. He gives everything in all his undertaking and had been thoroughly consumed by the officer cadet course, which he graduated from with distinction. And as I read his essays, be it about his angst towards overconsumption, his love for the outdoors, the lessons he drew from nature, his thoughts on how to sustain the world, his joy of being hands-on, his leadership opportunities and his code of honour, I cannot but feel immense pride in him. While we are there for him (esp D, while I am there for the pivotal moments like this one), but all that he has learned and done, it's all him.
For that, recognising the inner strength, the values system he lives by, I must say I am pleased. He is a fine young man. A brand new year, with all that it promises, beckons for him, and for all of us.
If asked for one word to describe the year, I would say "succession". I could have said "passing" for many iconic persons passed away this year but it just doesn't quite capture the fact that their passing made news because they had been hugely successful in their lives. Also succession implies there will be new icons. It is worth reflecting for the moment why I had especially called out those who had died this year. Its not just because they were famous but rather what they were famous for.
Musicians like Bowie, Michael, Prince not only wrote unforgettable music but performed like no other. I would go so far to pronounce them pioneers in inventing new genres: glam rock, new wave and of course Prince is uncategorisable. Cohen and Frey on the other hand were not as versatile performing but were blessed with so much composing talent that songs like Hallelujah and Hotel California will still find fans long after this.
Its not just the music world. The world of literature lost a giant of a man. A moral compass of our time, Elie Wiesel, wrote achingly about the holocaust. If not for him, this most unimaginable of tragedies of the 20th century would have lost a powerful voice.
Architecture too lost a heroine. Until Dame Zaha Hadid, the famous architects were all men (Ando, Corbusier, van der Rohe, Wright and of course Gaudi). In fact even fictitious characters (as in Ayn Rand's Fountainhead) were men too. She broke through barriers not just with her sweeping lines but with a bravado not often associated with the female gender.
There are some barriers though that remain unfortunately intact. Hillary Clinton lost the race to be the US's first woman president. She lost to an unlikely candidate whom she and others of her ilk had taken literally but not seriously. Indeed, Trump and quite a few political leaders have herald a new brand of politics where rhetoric and reality will be the redefined. So even though the presidential succession did not happen as I expected, it nonetheless is a succession that will redefine the global political landscape.
At home, new thresholds had also been crossed this year. M completed her secondary school in flying colours. Top GPA, with school and state awards to boot! J completed his basic military training and officer cadet school top of his class and picked up some military and state awards too. D is writing yet another chapter in her career moving ever closer to her dream design job. I too moved on to one of the top-most table in my firm. But for D and me, at this stage of our lives, its more about how well we have set up the future. On this score, 2016 showed us we need not worry so much. Yes, they could be more intense than we like but importantly, their values are soundly founded (thanks to D) and their wings are pointed to a suitably aspirational height (thanks to yours truly).
So, 2016 is indeed the conclusion of an era, and immediately the start of a new one. We all can do our part to create more icons who can change the world, in our own small way, for the better.
We wrapped up the year with the family. First in Malacca with a Christmas dinner (where we also had a very special golden anniversary celebration* for mum and dad) and now in Singapore on New Year's Eve lunch.
It's been a bit of a life-long struggle. I was a heavy 8lb 2oz baby at birth but generally a scrawny toddler. Things starting going awry when it took me awhile to hit puberty. A number of my classmates in Standards 5 and 6 in BHES were experiencing early growth spurts and my mum expecting mine to come shortly starting feeding me like I needed the calories. Well, my face started getting rounder (and captured for posterity in photos).
I did start growing through puberty at around 13 and did stretch out a bit and caught up with some of my (first to grow) friends, though generally still at less than average in height. But at least I was no longer pudgy.
That way I remained for a good 10 years. In fact I was slimmer then (less buff too!) than J is now. So much so, that none of us could believe how small my old scout uniform was.
The trouble started not in junior college or university (and yes I did have a 27-inch waist and could carry a white pair of slim cut Levi's like a rock star!) but it was the entertaining in the airlines industry that did me in. I went from a sub 70kg to touching 80kg in the 90s and have remained there since. In boxing terms, I would have gone from welterweight to middle weight to light heavyweight.
But the horror of horrors was awaiting me. This morning as I stepped on the scales, an act I have been assiduously avoiding the last few months (knowing the feasting I had done in Athens, Hydra, Paris and most recently over Christmas in Malacca), I was confronted with a number it has never shown me before. I am now well and truly in the heavyweight class, a good 20% above my ideal weight.
I had sensibly adjusted my ideal weight (owing to a stout, muscular 'ahem' built) to about 77kg (and allowed a permissible range of 75 to 79kg).80 was to be the alarm bell. At 84, I am more than alarmed.
And this is after a year of disciplined exercising. In fact, I had run 400kms, and with the distances covered from cycling, walking, swimming and rowing, it'd top 600km. In fact, I do enjoy running and recently did so in Chicago along the lakefront and in the Greek national gardens. So am not short of expending energy. Its the intake that way exceeds the output that's all.
So, here's a simple resolution. One which D made for me early this year. She didn't even specifiy a weight target. She simply said "lose the gut". Being more mathematically inclined, I would resolve to get back to my sensibly adjusted ideal weight of 77kg. Certainly way before my 50th birthday.
We have now cruised out of Hydra. Spent another four hours in Athens (at the Acropolis Museum, the Panathainaikos Stadium and a satisfying Souvlaki lunch) driven around by Tasus for a friendly finish of Greece. This ancient nation so steeped in myth is truly wonderous. Socrates once said "wisdom begins with wonder" and there is much wonder here to write cleverly about. As someone who writes, and aspiring to write well, I know when I come across a good write. There is of course the quintessential Gerald Durrell on his life with his family and other animals on Corfu. Hydra is another Greek island teeming with animals: cats, donkeys, horses, dogs, sheep and chickens. So, one expects a good story. This one, by Antonia Quirke, writing for Conde Nast, is so good, I had to reproduce it here.
SAILING INTO THE SMALL SARONIC ISLAND of Hydra in early summer, the unrivalled colour I see is yellow. The port - a perfect horseshoe - backs into a high amphitheatre dotted with 18th-century mariners' mansions painted citrine, picked out now by the morning sun. It is a Rip Van Winkle town, cute-warm and coiled around dazzling-bright labyrinths of steep steps and slender streets.
I arrive to hear that summer so far has been a flow of clear-blue days, and that Leonard Cohen was around last night handing out olives and ouzo. As Cohen has lived here on and off since the 1960s, it's not impossible… but best ask the island's keeper of stories, harbour master Pandelis, about such things.
Prodigiously bearded and continually harassed by sailors wanting a mooring in the snug port, he's being followed about today by the king of Malaysia. Apparently the king of the Netherlands is on the lookout for him too, not that Pandelis demonstrates any favouritism, standing in his small tug yelling instructions to fishermen and kings alike, happy to park any one of them next to a semi-derelict vessel filled with nautical junk.
There is no denying that in some months of the year Hydra has immense glamour. In the high season, weeks pass when its port feels almost like a little St Tropez, full of visitors lolling over the day's first glass of Champagne. Other times, you'll find only a few old men playing backgammon, and smooching couples off the early hydrofoil from Athens ordering pastries for breakfast
On the cobbles, a line of donkeys waits patiently to carry suitcases up to the hotels and apartments. There are no land vehicles here, not even pushbikes. Banned for all time. Hydriots feel about the wheel the way the Amish do about Velcro: they know of its existence and have determined that with it comes the fall. How wise this has proved. No wheels have meant no heavy construction or gigantic hotels; the island can never be overcrowded or spoiled through overdevelopment, and has the atmosphere of a long-cherished and deeply quixotic place, a place far, far away, even though it is separated from the Peloponnese by just a narrow strip of water. There are no street names on Hydra either. You simply set off and see what lies around the next corner. Flora's café, perhaps, in a bright square full of lemon trees, with its pots of exquisite cold rice pudding spiced with cinnamon. Or a sweet supermarket where the freezer bursts hilariously with octopus tentacles and the honey comes in tins stacked in a quivering 10ft pyramid.
I'm so hot and lazy. Hardier friends return from Hydra trim from trekking across the island to the handful of pebbled beaches along the coast, although most people take a water taxi for a few euros. For centuries ancient Hydra was nothing but an obscure pirates' lair and you'll find no temple ruins to visit. There is blissfully nothing to do, really, save sleep and swim and order hot baked peppers and drink retsina until your tongue is raw. Or perhaps take a turn around the mansion of a great patriotic seafaring family, semi- museums hung with the rapiers of daring local captains.
Hydra has long attracted artists and art money. In cliff-side galleries in June and July, New Yorkers show short films on the subject of dislocation to an excess of global super-collectors, after which everybody troops off to a taverna and gets un-Americanly drunk. The island seems to absorb this fashionable display of chatter and ambition, and enjoy it enormously for a while, but is just as happy when everybody melts away back to Milan or Brooklyn.
But no activity on Hydra compares to a trip out in a boat. The island is only 50 kilometres square and completely riveting when seen from the water, despite not being particularly lush or landscaped with the comely vines and olive trees of other Greek islands. Still, whichever way you turn, the impact is captivating.
Late one afternoon I join Tasos and Eleanora - a fisherman and his girl - searching for squid on a simple cruiser. Chugging out of the port along the coast we pass the popular Hydronetta bar on the cliffs where people are already gathering for sundowners and, moments later, the house where Byron once stayed ('On old Aegina's rock and Hydra's isle/The god of gladness sheds his parting smile'). Sere thistles and bright Judas trees punctuate the nearby shore close to grand villas and more modest cottages overhung with harebells and gentians. After a few minutes, the distinctive landmark of a squat terracotta mansion in the village of Kamini that once belonged to a wealthy publisher but is now used for storage and is full of buoys and ropes, and a defunct but magnificent glitterball rescued from the sea.
A little further along, we pass the chapel of Saint Kyprianos, made from mud and wine and constructed long ago in gratitude by the survivors of a terrible storm, and beyond that a cove where five goats, almost mythically huge - really the size of Shetland ponies - play along the shore. Standing whooping on rocks, a group of kids watch a menacingly handsome adolescent known locally as Wolf Boy free-diving from a crag, arching his body like a rainbow and then sharply straightening seconds before impact. Everybody explodes in applause. ('What goes through your mind when you hit the water?' I ask him one night after bumping into him on a dancefloor in town. Pulling a mock-dramatic face he leans into my ear and whispers, 'the full moon'.)
Half an hour passes as we hug the coast. On the distant hills I spot a house, very high and white and alone. By foot it would take perhaps two days to get there from the port. Pine trees, heat, cicadas. What happens when someone gets old or sick and they can no longer walk down for food? 'Oh, they just wait,' shrugs Tasos, lounging with his arm around Eleanora, pausing for the optimum moment to drop his fishing lines strung with the fake silver fry so loved by greedy squid.
I don't know why my heart stands quite so still - it is only a house on a hill - but the patience. The peace.
As the afternoon draws to a close, everything beyond the lulling shores is washed in a plumbago haze. The mainland in the near distance shimmers through a silvery curtain of atmosphere. Athens is just 68km away, although it feels infinitely remote. Even the pretty ketch now bobbing into view seems almost a chimera. Plonked on the stern, a pot of basil; above it, a bikini hung up to dry. Nobody seems to be onboard.
Terrace at the interior designer Tino Zervudachi's house
Hydra is the birthplace of five Greek prime ministers and the first president of the Second Hellenic Republic. I've often wondered why that was so, this relatively barren rock with one town and a handful of hamlets reached by foot or donkey. Some places are just like that: powerfully and romantically unusual. Its current mayor - the son of a grocer - grew up on the island but won a scholarship to read philosophy at Cambridge, returning home to be elected to office at just 36. I see him one day carrying a pile of books, and he shows me a photograph of himself looking scholastic in his room at university. On the walls, nothing but the Hydriot revolutionary flag.
I GO ON A DAWN MULE RIDE UP to the high Monastery of St Matrona to take carrots to 70-something Sister Nectaria. Leading the little expedition is 26-year-old blonde Harriet who came to Hydra aged 10 from Uxbridge with her mother and has the best-groomed donkeys on the island. On the way she tells me about a secret valley where in the winter, feeling lonely, she used to hunt for quail and hare, and where there is an ancient chapel that had long lost its bell. One morning she met a man out hunting too, Vasili - a Hydriot much older than her, warm-hearted - and they fell in love and he restored the bell in her honour. Now they are engaged and 'go to the valley together to listen to its peal'. She says all this unselfconsciously, unaware of how absurdly enchanting it sounds. Vasili, brown eyes full of worry, dotingly leads our mules through banks of bracken and myrtle and masses of what looks like a wild, thorny buttercup hung with dew-shivering spiders' webs.
Up at the monastery, sisters Nectaria and Matrona, dressed in black habits and veils, have been awake for hours. They're the only nuns left here now (across all of Greece there is a crisis in recruiting to the religious life), resident since they were 11 and 14 when, consumed with heavenly duty, they walked up the hill to present themselves. Working contentedly at their sewing machines, the nuns are full of news about a rare trip to a hospital in Athens where Matrona, homesick and bewildered, had to drag a mesmerised Nectaria out of the flower shops off Syntagma Square.
Sitting on the courtyard wall we drink tea and gaze out across the island: sky-blue as an agapanthus. Behind us, dry peaks burn; far below, the curved lick of deserted and glassyMandraki bay. Nectaria turns to smile dotingly at Harriet, nodding her approval to Vasili. 'We stole her from England,' she rocks, patting Harriet's hair as it gleams pale in the sun. 'We took her and kept her.'
Back down on the shore, in peaceful Kamini, a short walk along the path from the port, I have what I think of now as the perfect Aegean afternoon, starting with a binge at the smallest restaurant I've ever seen: four tables and a menu of three dishes written on a chalkboard strung with dried sage. I am served fresh anchovies and giant fava beans, and creamy slabs of cheese, Greece teaching me yet again that feta only ever comes one of two ways: either a salty chore or a thing you can't stop forking until you faint.
After lunch, a swim, simply stepping off nearby rocks into the sea. Far beneath my feet are sponges of such rare quality Hydriot merchants sold them the world over for centuries and they still come up from abyssal depths the colour of caramel, smelling of kelp forests. Even Sophia Loren couldn't resist, clutching several to her décolleté after a dive scene in the 1957 movie Boy on a Dolphin, which was filmed here. Half the island appeared in it and everybody still talks about it like it happened yesterday. Time on Hydra is relative, ever-deepening and drifting. For the rest of that lovely, lost afternoon, Kamini is siesta-deserted. Next to someone's abandoned towel on the rocks, a handful of fresh apricots.
That evening along the waterfront there's the gossipy murmur of newly arrived summer crowds. The billionaire art collector Dakis Joannou (a long-time visitor to the island) has just docked in a fibreglass tank designed by Jeff Koons - enormously blue and yellow, steaming menacingly through the water like a cubist icebreaker. And then, soon after, a gentleman's motor yacht - the Mabrouka - which had belonged to Lawrence of Arabia, enveloped in the resin-drenched smell of a newly renovated ship.
Girls on their way to an opening at the DESTE Project Space wear Balmain dresses and sexy-fantastic shoes. American teenagers on a tour of the Argolic Gulf, their pink skin glowing freckled as foxgloves, step off boats, daring each other and shouting. The lights of the port enrich and refine the many colours until past midnight when a low-hanging moon turns the sea to iron and outside Papagalos bar the drinkers' faces flicker in mirrored oil lamps, somewhere between the waking world and the world of dreams.
Much later, after cocktails and dancing to bad Greek pop music at Red Club, I lose my way in the backstreets. Because high buildings within the harbour protect the port, nights here have a drugging, winey warmth, and bursts of hibiscus everywhere black-red in the shadows. Then whitewashed walls and pretty apartments and squares of long-deserted rococo merchants' mansions shuttered and still. Without scooters or cars, the quiet on Hydra has a discernible pulse. Yet… from an open window a little further along comes the sound of John Denver's 'Leaving on a Jet Plane', and I make my way down the street to poke my head through.
Salvaged maritime miscellany muddles the room. Water-damaged paintings, chests and whistles. And there is Pandelis frying potatoes, standing on hazardous floorboards. We both hoot at the surprise of seeing him in a house rather than yelling from a harbour wall. 'Oh, dig out those photos of Sophia Loren,' I plead. He was an extra in Boy on a Dolphin when he was 10, an experience he speaks of rarely, as though such precious memories ought to remain shrouded. On the cabinet by my head, a formal portrait of him at around that age wearing a little white peasant's smock, standing outside the church of Saint Dimitrios, where there is an esteemed deacon called Manoles who chants the liturgy every Sunday in a voice so transportingly Byzantine that women stand outside the door weeping into their hankies.
We are now on board Flying Cat 6, here in the ferry terminal at Piraeus. After two and a half splendid days in Athens with mythology in our heads and gastronomy in our tummies, we're going to spend the next few days in relative calm in the surrounding islands. We will be heading shortly to Hydra and from there maybe head out to nearby islands.
Our time in Athens this time is all about the view. From dinner to breakfast and all the time in between (mostly walking), we are treated sumptuously with the majestic view of the Acropolis, not least from our excellent hotel, King George.
I was last here over a quarter century ago, with backpack, my then Girlfriend D and her newly graduated university friends. Now, I'm here with D & M, and between us we have over 60kgs of stuff in 3 large and 3 carry on luggage! How times have changed.
Now, D plans the itinerary with the help of Trip Advisor, a crowd sourced travel portal. Back then, I relied on Lonely Planet, which by the way, still has the best description of places have in store for the traveller, like this ...
Ancient and modern, with equal measures of grunge and grace, bustling Athens is a heady mix of history and edginess. Iconic monuments mingle with first-rate museums, lively cafes and al fresco dining – and it’s downright fun.
The historic centre is an open-air museum, yet the city’s cultural and social life takes place amid these ancient landmarks, merging past and present. The magnificent Acropolis rises above the sprawling metropolis and has stood witness to the city’s many transformations.
Post-Olympics Athens, even in the face of current financial issues, is conspicuously more sophisticated and cosmopolitan than ever before. Stylish restaurants, shops and hip hotels, and artsy-industrial neighbourhoods and entertainment quarters such as Gazi, show Athens’ modern.
We didn't wander into Gazi but did navigate our way through Psiri, relying on D's amazing geospatial intelligence. She set us up really well for this trip. The last two days we joined two wonderful tours. The first on the myths of Ancient Greece, all aimed to manage the politics of the day. The second a gastronomic tour, showcasing local favourites like the Topaki and Souvlaki. Both minds and bodies were filled. Now, on to the next stage of our vacation.
Salvador Dali painted his sister gazing out of a window to the sea&landscape beyond. I liked it so much I bought a poster reproduction of it. It showed his skills as a classical artist before he went all macabre. It also had a certain poignancy to it.
This is the same sentiment I felt observing M staring out of the porthole on our flight from Paris to Athens. The skyscape outside is a wondrous sight to behold. But I wonder, what's on her mind...
As a boy, I too enjoyed moments like this. Especially when at the window seat in my dad's Datsun 120Y as he drove us around town or to/from Batang Melaka. I would daydream about being the star performing on stage to the music that is playing on the car's 8-track. To you Millennials, that is the music format that succeeded vinyl, especially in its portability and preceded the even more versatile cassette tape. Pretty unimaginable to those growing up in the digital music era, I suppose.
The past month, I've been stocking up on vinyl records. My collection now is well over 200 records (including some of my dad's which I grew up listening to) and a good number are classics voted to be amongst the TOP 500 albums of all time, by Rolling Stone magazine, no less. My kids, like me, function well to music, whether in the background or in the foreground. Music is a good friend to me. Like wine and whisky, it calms when I'm agitated. It soothes when I'm sad. It provides company when I'm lonely. It heightens my joy when I'm happy.
Right now though, I have no music on hand. And I am a bit vexed that our luggage are probably not on board on account of poor transfer procedures at Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport. Architecturally splendid, but process-wise, a bit stupid. Lost baggage is a pet peeve of mine, way back from my airline days when I know how chaotic the bag handling area is.
I am seated at the aisle seat, my preferred location for ease of access. That means no window gazing and poignant reflection moment. As the pilot prepares to land the aircraft, I am hoping that our bags made it and if not, comes the time of waiting...
I have been madly busy lately. The good sort, though. Actually, is there any other kind? I just sold a project with a client I've been cultivating for years. It's a real accomplishment, seeing the efforts bear fruit. After the euphoria, comes the responsibility of delivering to the expectations both he and I had. So much so, that as I took this long planned vacation with D & M to Athens and Paris, I felt conflicted.
My family, like me, are all blessed (or shall I say cursed) with a deep sense of obligation. So, you can imagine the dilemma I faced trying to fulfill my promise to all that I care about. So, as I sat in the SilverKris Kris Lounge before flying off, I wrote to the client:
"I wanted to convey this personally to you because I know this is important to you and to demonstrate that I am focussed on the project, remotely and of course am on the ground physically as much as possible. My team of course are on the ground constantly and so are the partners as we ramp up towards launching our journeys and use cases."
It's quite clear this trip is not an escape life. But rather it's about maximising it. So, there you go, the ultimate work-life balance.
And nothing quite speaks to steady equilibrium more than D, who spent the anniversary of her birth on board and SQ helped me arrange a nice surprise! As they were preparing it, I had to stall a bit but I think I did a pretty good job with a good credible story about how we should meet at the exit of the jetway as we disembark the plane. While on the plane, more than 30000 feet in the air, travelling at over 800 km/h in European air space, we took a nice photo in the cabin to mark the occasion, and M thoughtfully stretched her arm, creating space for her brother.
Yes, this vacation starts with the notable absence of J, now that he is in the armed forces has limited off days and even less permission to vacation overseas. Thankfully, he will be having fun too, his friends are coming over to the house for barbecue. It will be much needed relief for him to unwind and relax after a difficult exercise in the officer cadet school. The good thing about him is he has the courage to try new things, the strength to see them through and the humility to learn from whatever has transpired. In this way, he is not discouraged. His heart is hopeful and happy.
Photo credit: brucelee.com
Speaking of hearts, we have been on holidays without him before, starting with a long weekend in Maldives 5 years ago where M wrote in the sand, "Kor, wish you were here". We missed him too in the week we took to Geneva and London two years ago. So this is a hat trick of vacation with just the three of us.
Watch this space on our experiences maxing our lives in the upcoming blog entries!
