Lost in Singapore?
It had to happen. After 14 years of hashing in Singapore, I finally could not find my way out of the forest!
Yesterday on the Seletar HHH run, the trail as set by the hares, went from the Venus Drive carpark, through the forest and into the catchment area - once we got to the road leading up to the water storage tanks.
The hares warned that the run is through old trails that have become overgrown. But, again, we are hashmen. Nothing like this intimidates us.
As the run proceeded (more of a walk really), it was getting to be rather difficult with the overflowing growth of thorny undergrowth. I was with Prime Prick and was later joined by Deep Hole. The sweep, Brown Eye, arrived and went past us! Instead of doing the sweeping, he just scooted off into the shiggy.
We continued. It is amazing that even though Singapore is one degree north of the equator, at this time of the year, there is a noticable shortening of daylight with the sunset happening at least 10-20 minutes earlier. By 7pm we were pretty much groping in the dark - the thick canopy and the thorny obstacles were of no help and constant reminders of needing to be extra careful.
To their credit, the hares (Up Yours, Three KG and Pantat Bersih) did mark the trail well - the flour on the tree trunks were luminiscent (I wonder why that is so), and there were also luminiscent leaves on the forest floor - perhaps this is because of the leaves being stomped on. Gotta find out why they glow, albeit dimly.
We did push through inspite of the difficulties and reached a last point where we could not see any more trail markings. Thankfully, of the three of us, I was most able to spot the markings and sorta lead the way. We reached one spot and that was about the last marking we could see - on the left was the water's edge (from the reservoir), ahead there were no markings and to the right it was upslope, again with no markings.
As any true hashman, the next most obvious path to check would be to the left. I ventured out and started walking into the water, only to realize that the water was getting deeper than the calf. No, I ain't going there - not in the dark.
We figured that there is nothing else we can do and as any experienced hashman would, we stayed put on the last spot and on trail/paper. Let's just sit down and wait for the hares to come out looking for us.
I reckon it must have been about 7:30 - 7:45 then. The wonderful watch I have has a glowing keypad, but no light to see the time! Damn Casio - for 20 cents you could have put in a bulb/LED. Prime Prick and Deep Hole both had no way check time as well.
Resigned to the prospect of waiting out, we sat on a log and starting chatting. I think that was good - it certainly helped in passing the time. All I can say is that for the first time, I actually felt dehydrated. Sweaty and tired and with a zillion thorn scratches certainly did not help.
I am glad that we did chat - although I was doing most of the talking - time just went past. Somehow, the topic centered around Linux and open source (duh!). Deep Hole said that the Oracle deal in supporting Red Hat Enterprise Linux is going to cause problems for RH (DH is an accountant, but a techically clued in one, I must say). My retort was that what is happening is that Oracle is now working for Red Hat. They want to take RH stuff and strip out RH's trademarks and logos etc and sell it as theirs. DH wondered if that would fork Linux. I told him that it would be the case if the code was proprietary and not GPL. The beauty of the GPL is that you cannot hide things and one vendor fixing an issue will benefit all vendors. DH was not aware of that. [Note to self: How many others are like him? Need to work on public education on this.] We continued chatting and I told him that things are changing finally in Singapore as well - the "IT regulators" are now under pressure from up high to get a clue and bring open source into Singapore in a big way.
As the conversation proceeded, we heard the beautiful "R U" echoing through the forest. I shouted out "On On. Three hashmen here - Never Come, Prime Prick, Deep Hole". Through the spaces in the heavy bush we could make out flash lights shining. And finally, it were the two of the hares - Up Yours and Three KG. As expected, they came from the left side from the other side of the water body. UY crossed the water body some 10 meters back from where we were where the water was ankle deep. I should have checked that part - but in the dark, it was hard to figure these out. We crossed over and then up a couple of embankments and not more than 20 meters away it was a trail! Damn, we were just 30 or so meters from a track that would have seen us get back to the run site much earlier!
Got back to the top of the hill where the water storage facility is and we had a welcome back party comprising, the GM, Sticky Tissue (with a parang ready to do the needful), and Hornbill. GM managed to get a golf cart from the SICC to come up as well to help get us out. Hornbill got me to ride on his Big Bike instead. To the refrains of "Rock On Amadeus" we were cruising down the road to Venus Drive.
Once I got back at the run site, Whip was on hand with a microphone-look alike to ask me what happened. Read all of that above.
Anyway, it was a great experience, save for the thorns. Getting "lost" was not a concern for me, frankly. I knew someone would come in looking for us. The key was to keep to the trail.
I was back home at 10:45 pm and in bed by 11:45 pm - completely drained!
