The day is here!

S2B: Seoul to Busan

It is not a race. Ep #1
Meet the P-stars. Ep #2
Fighting the demons! Ep #3

Bare necessities that we need! Ep #4

Episode 5: Day 0 S2B (5.10.2019)

At KLIA2 © EsKay

The flight that touched down that Saturday morning was filled up with dreary eyed cyclist who shuddered at the thoughts of what laid ahead. The journey was torturous to say the least, with hardly any body movement space even for a puny sized person like me what more my fellow cyclists who were six-footers. My heartfelt condolences went to them every time I knock my head to the seat in front as I bent down to take another scoop of Pak Naseer’s nasi lemak. 

Landing in Incheon International Airport, getting our extra-large luggage was quite a breeze. All we had to do was to load it on our trolleys - somebody has already taken it out. Clearing customs was a walk in the park. 

We did not attract any curious onlookers at the sight of seven jokers manoeuvring through corners and escalators with the load on the way to the train. I guess they must be used to this. 

At Cheong International Railway Station, we stopped for our first meal in Korea. Maybe it was the hunger, perhaps the pastry was good, we gobbled like starving third-world children. 

Time to reassemble © EsKay

Next, it was time to hit the assembly line. Monkey see monkey do. With trial and error, the machines were all up in about two hours. We were saddled up and ready to go. 

With our chief navigator glued to the navigation map, we reached the starting point, Ara West Checkpoint. 

The Four River Trail is mostly along the four major rivers in Korea and mainly along the old disused railway track. That is why we had to go through multiple tunnels. The Korean Water Authority is given the task of caring for the river and the surrounding areas. 

Our first impression was that everyone that we saw was slim and petite. Maybe it was because all we saw were cyclists. 

Ara West Starting Point © HS

Everything was going on fine until we were nearing our hotel for the night. It was the weekend of Korean Foundation Day, the day the first state of Korea of Gojosean was established in 2333BC. The whole cycling path was all filled citizens waiting for revelry. Fireworks were planned, and stalls were set up along our pathway. The navigations all went into disarray. After round and round, we finally reached our accommodation for the night, in Sopoong Guest House in Mapo-gu. By the end of Day 1, we had done 50km in our endeavour to reach Busan. 

Next came time to scavenge for authentic Korean food. 

Wandering around the town, one thing apparent was that young Koreans really dress up to go out on their dates. A typical girl would appear in monochromatic dull colour Western clothes, the porcelain hued face complete with the same vermilion coloured painted lipstick. The guys are dressed in their nines. 

Accommodation on first day © EsKay
Sopoong the Urban, Seoul.

Ordering at a restaurant is an art. The language barrier is the only thing that prevents Koreans from serving their customers. They go through great length to ensure client satisfaction- photos and google translate are apparently God-sent!

Korean food can be described as Chinese food but a spicier version. We enjoyed it. And the accommodation was decent. 

One new thing that we learnt is that, in Korea, when you are informed that the remote works by touch screen, it means you have to touch the control pad with your whole hand! Lesson learnt. 

End of Day 0.

Completed about 50km. 

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To laugh is to think!

The webpage screamed of the event being the biggest congregation of Malaysian stand-up comedy acts. It promised a night to remember as most of the national biggest bigwigs of the business were to share the same stage. They even brought in a Singapore artiste to add to the razzmatazz of the night. 

We were suckered in to part with our hard-earned moolah with their pledge of a stomach aching, rolling-on-the-floor type and eye-tearing kind of laughter. With the lure of ease of booking online, within a jiffy before the level headed neocortex could knock sense into our action, the transition was finalised. 

Even though getting to the venue was alright, parking arrangements were not really a breeze. The auxiliary officers did an excellent job though, to avert haphazard parking by patrons. The importance of this was appreciated later when the dissatisfied audience found it easy to take their vehicles out. (That is for later.) Malaysians are notoriously creative at parking their cars in the most precarious and mind-boggling way. Parking tickets do not mean anything as the local council have no punitive powers. 

Keeping to their Malaysian way of doing things, nothing happened at the time the show was to begin. People kept loitering in, out and around. The sponsors were busy promoting their merchandise and house pouring beer. No announcements. No tension in the air. 

A good half an hour later, the compère descended, literally, on a trapeze-like contraption from the ceiling of the stage. He was actually a guest comedian cum Masters of Ceremony. There were no apologies on the delay still.

He went on a rant about the weather, about Kuala Lumpur and his hotel. His stage persona was one that celebrated cross-dressing. The local rules, however, forbad male performers to appear effeminate. He made it a point to highlight his sexuality. 

From then on, it was downhill. Working on the same jokes, YouTube and social media must be a bane to their artistic work. We felt we had heard the punch line so many times before.

Next sauntered in a prima donna who is known for her raunchy lines. Her jokes were not just filled with sexual innuendos but were overtly pornographic. With no qualms, she utters profanity and describes private parts without batting her mascara filled false eyelashes. 

It was followed with more artistes; an American Pinoy with racial jokes, a Caucasian with lame rambling for laughs and an ‘Aunt Agony’ type of call-in show with a panel of 'experts'. 

Maybe it catered for a different crowd as the roar of waves of laughter were heard throughout the show. Or was it canned laughter? I am sure laughter must have been accentuated with the help of acoustics. The musical extravaganza that they promised was nowhere to be seen. After one long hour of performance, there was a break. 

Don’t know what happened afterwards as we joined the chorus of unhappy audiences who took a long walk to their parked cars to call it a day. 

Comedy is actually serious business. Look at all the doyens who stay eternally in my minds. Many comedians on the silver screen started of standup acts. Much of their humour came from human behaviours, with political or social messages or even laughing at our own follies. Many comedians are actually intellectuals well versed with the goings of the world. One can also create a comedy of errors through language.

Talking dirty and infusing four-lettered profanities does not constitute comic. And I do not when uttering vulgarity induced laughter. It is lazy creativity at best. 

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We do it for love...

Crossroads: One Two Jaga (2018)
Direction: Nam Ron

It is easy to form an opinion on people just based on a cursory look at them. The problem with this is that our judgement is clouded by our prejudice and our ignorance. We are all guilty of hating people that we have not seen what more interacted. Walk a mile in their shoes, and we will realise the things they do. We may even understand that the 'other' whom we hate so much are no different from us.

This excellent Malaysian movie illustrates just that. It tries to point out that people do the things they do because of circumstances, which may appear wrong from the eye of the human-made law or divine decree. For them, it is a matter of survival or to do what is best for the betterment of loved ones.

It tells the story of a veteran police officer, Hussein, with an idealistic newbie officer, Hassan, as they go on their rounds. Hassan thinks that law must be enforced as it is their job. Hussein, however, thinks their job is futile, as it is the big fishes at the top of the food chain are the real culprits who allow lawlessness. During the course of his work, Hassan realises the monetary difficulties that he faces as a lowly paid policeman as a father and his justification of making some money on the sly.

On the other end, there is an Indonesian migrant labourer, Sugiman, with a young son, and his sister, Sumiati, who is a runaway domestic helper. As Sugiman tries hard to send her sister back home and keep her in hiding, things get complicated. Sumiati is arrested by Hassan and Hussein whilst Sugiman's employer's son, a hot-headed fellow, comes to the scene and things get pretty ugly.

What most of us really want is to provide a better life for our downlines. We want them all to enjoy a better standard of living. We do not want them to be deprived of the same things that we yearned to have but never got. Just as much as Hussein is concerned that his son is frequently getting into fights, Sugiman is worried that his son is not in school but is mixing with the wrong company.

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Off to Korea!!!

S2B: Seoul to Busan

Nippon Antisemitism?

The Russian Protocols of Zion in Japan (2009)
Author: Jacob Kovalio

One assumes that Japan, being a homogenous country practising Shintoism and Buddhism, would not have issues with Judaism. Surprisingly, Jewish Peril (Yudayaka) has had its roots in Japan's late 19th and 20th-century history.

Only when the Japanese aristocrats landed their eyes on Commander Perry's navy fleet in 1858 did they awake from their slumber. At first, the Japanese thought that the American ships were the mythical celestial dragon that they had heard so much in their legends. This became their wake-up call as they realised that the world had passed them by. Emperor Meiji opened the floodgates for modernisation. For a start, his army was no longer hostile to damaged American whaling boats. Business flourished. Cultural exchanges took place. Loans from American banks (owned by Jews) started trickling in.

The Japanese noblemen and intellectual's first exposure to the Jews must have been Shylock in Shakespeare's play 'The Merchant of Venice'. He is portrayed as the miserly, greedy and vengeful moneylender who would charge exorbitant interest and stop at nothing to collect his dues.

The Japanese and the Russians had been perennial enemies fighting at their borders for aeons. In 1918, however, the Japanese Imperial Army was sent to support the Russian White Army to fight the Bolshevik Reds. It is said that here, the elusive Protocols of the Elderly of Zions was distributed to the Japanese soldiers. The Protocol is a notorious document that purportedly outlines the Jewish plan of world domination. Some quarters argue that such a book never existed in the first place. At the closest, there was just a figment of imagination from a fictional novel about cemetery, spirits and Satan. It was a ploy by Europeans who had been persecuting Jews since AD 73 when Emperor Titus ransacked Jerusalem and expelled them.


The ember of suspicion and Yudayaka (Jewish Peril) grew stronger as echoes of their ill-intent were fanned by the academia and media after 1919. The Red movement, the Communists, were mostly run by Jews. Karl Marx was a Jew. So was Leo Trotsky. The Jews alleged run their work by proxy, through the work of the banks, the Masons and the Illuminati.

The alleged modus operandi was by breaking family values, increasing individualism, early sexual activity, spiritual rupture of the parental-children bond, non-arranged marriages, replacement of monarchies and domination of media. These social changes were already apparent in Japanese society as the ruling class (emperor and samurais) lost their grip on society and the people became more assertive.

Commodore Matthew C Perry
(not of 'Friends' fame)

Around that time too, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison started distributing pamphlets about the Jew takeover of the world. Their conniving pursuits go back as early as the French Revolution, it seems. We all know about the 1869 gathering in Lviv, which eventually led to the Balfour Declaration in 1929 and the birth of Israel in 1948.

The bashing goes on even in the 21st century in the likes of Tun Dr Mahathir who still preaches about this grand scheme. He gets a mention in this book.

In the Jews' defence, throughout history, they have always been marginalised by the mainstream. It could be because of the peculiar practices or their conviction that they are the Chosen One. In the fringes, for survival, they had to resort to trades that were shunned by the mainstream. They indulged in moneylending, for usury was prohibited by other religions in their vicinity. They prospered in craftsmanship like diamond trade, photography and publishing. Their exile state of existence not only made them resilient. It became a fertile ground for conspiracy theories.

Antisemitism was debated in the 1930s. Some looked at the Jews favourably as they were of 'Asiatic' stock. During the industrialisation era of Japan in the 20th century, bankers, predominantly Jews, were there to finance them. The military, however, clang upon this Yudayaka. They entered an allegiance with Hitler on his anti-Jews stance. In the South-East Asian countries that they overran in WW2, they perpetuated their idea of the Allied forces (through their association with the Jews) a sure proof of world hegemony, to garner support from their subjects.

The Japanese, in wanting to protect their country, society, economy and way of life, immersed themselves studying and debating the contents of the Protocol. In contemporary times, they are doing the same to ward themselves off the 'side effects' of an unabashed open invitation to foreigners who could possibly derail the progress they have made after being flattened out in 1945. 

The debate on the Protocol amongst the members of academia, civil societies and the elite generated keener awareness that hostile, predatory ideologies from abroad were out there to sway the Japanese culture and to derail their national aspirations. 

Thanks to AqSS for input.

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Your raison d'être?

Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011)
Netflix

At a time when most people could hardly read, write or count, people like Charles Babbage (1791- 1871) and Ida Lovelace (1815-1852) were working on something totally irrelevant to their time. Babbage is course credited for the general-purpose computer, and Lady Lovelace is said to have written the first computer algorithm. Laypersons would have scorned upon them, thinking that they were weirdos living in their own dream world. Nobody would have thought that an infallible self-calculating machine was even possible, what more writing computer programmes?

Like that, many go on doing things in their lives, thinking that the thing that they do is the reason for their existence. But who really knows what is your raison d'être? Surely there is no laid roadmap given to us upon birth. Things that you do in childhood, the upbringing that you had, the friends that you cross path with and develop bonds all determine the direction of life and the career path that you choose. Who knows what your dharma is?

Most people let the stream of life take its course to lead their life path. Everywhere the wind blows, they set sail and head on all steam ahead. They reap the maximum from the journey of life in the voyage of their life mission. Like a rolled down carpet, some have it easygoing. Others go wayward but realign to the right path later. A fraction makes the best of whatever is laid on their plate. Some prosper late, Others never.

This exciting documentary tells the story of an 82-year-old (at the time of filming, now 93) sushi chef in Ginza who the oldest Michelin 3-star recipient. His sushi joint is a simple 10-seater bar specialising in sushi and sushi only. From the age of nine, after running away from home from a drunken father, he started as an apprentice in a sushi stall. 

Listening through the interview with the Sushi Masterchef, Sukiyabashi Jiro, one can appreciate the work culture of the Japanese. They take some much pride in whatever they do, and a lifetime seems not enough to master whatever they do. Jiro, even after spending 70 years into making sushi, finds every day a learning experience. He is still perfecting his craft.

His establishment is small, but he is very meticulous in the preparation of sushi. Till the age of 70 when he was afflicted with a heart attack, he used to personally hand-pick tuna fish, octopuses and prawns at the whole sales fish market. He has a long-time rice supplier who would choose only the best grain for his shop. It is not the rice, Jori says. Even big hotels like Grand Hyatt try to get the best rice but fail to make tasty sushi. It is little things that make the difference - the way of cooking the rice, the 45-minutes' massage of the octopus by his trainees, Jori's eye for clientele comfort and tastebuds, and so on. An apprentice has to learn to hold a fish properly before he can cut anything and has to work ten years before he can even make an egg cake. Only then he is a sushi chef, a shokunin.

Jiro, son Yoshikazu(his left), a shokunin and 3 apprentices.

Sorry, he has reservations about female chefs. His establishment

has only openings for a female cashier and female cleaner. 

His eldest son, Yoshikazu, is due to take over the business once Jiro. The question is that Jiro is a workaholic who finds cooking sushi his passion. The sheer joy he finds in the contended smile of satisfied gives him the purpose of living. He only closes for national holidays and funerals. His other son, Takashi, run another sushi shop elsewhere.

Jori's unassuming tiny sushi bar is not cheap. It costs $300 per head and reservations are made one month in advance.

You must dedicate your life to mastering this skill. This is the key to success. 

Being a rebel is not all that bad, being respectful and obedient does not guarantee success. 

                                                                                                                             Jiro Ono

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Bare necessities that we need!

S2B: Seoul to Busan
It is not a race. Ep #1
Meet the P-stars. Ep #2
Fighting the demons! Ep #3

Episode 4: Bare necessities that we need!

It has become a weekend routine to go grinding and spinning around the treacherous hills of Peres, off Hulu Langat, on our vehicles to build up stamina and to prepare ourselves to what may lay ahead in unexplored Land of the Kimchi. The sight of us, five or sometimes six, saddled with our panniers sticking out erect from our rears (of the bicycles) must have stirred the curiosities of many fellow cyclists. 

During one of these outings, a few curious bicyclists inquired about our set-up, accessories and all. 

When we told them of our intentions of touring South Korea on bikes and what they saw were what we were carrying all along our week-long trip, they were understandably astonished. With the usual travellers who try to bargain through the airline staff with their excess baggage, here we were squeezing one week’s requirements into a pannier. 

Only then did it strike me of the number of unnecessary things that we go on accumulating in our lives. We build false attachments and create excessive dependence on unnecessary items that are not essential for our existence. 

A few years ago, a husband-wife friend of mine got into an existential crisis. Going headlong into their newfound passion, they decided to paddle all the way from Kuala Lumpur through Thailand, Cambodia, China, Korea and finally ended their journey at the tip of Hokkaido Island. Relating their experiences later, their one take-home message was ‘we carry redundant baggage that we refuse to unload’. I think they were speaking not literally but at a metaphysical level. This they realised after unloading much of their belongings halfway through their journey when they met a friend who was returning home. 

So next week, on our maiden international trip, we would be leading an Epicurean life. Living simply close to the elements of nature - sun, wind, trees, birds and bees. “Give me water, give me water; I will be a happy man,” says the Epicurean. We will have to make do with the contents of our backpack. 

T -junction to Peres

Like Bablu, the bear in Jungle Book, we are expected to live with the bare necessities, be content with simple pleasures in life, forget the worries and strife and wander around with the company of friends. Was it not also Epicurus who observed friendship at where human nature was sweetest? He considered fellowship essential for a happy life. Unlike love and romance, it ‘goes dancing around the world, announcing to all of us to wake to happiness’. 

'Hakuna Matata' say Timon and Pumba. But then, familiarity also builds contempt. 

And cannot be seen around like vagabond without papers, cash and credit card. Do not leave home without it!

(T-7) 

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