The jungle survival course -- part 4

Day 4 and 5

We are up at about 7-8am. We eat whatever we can. I scoff down more sardine -- yuck -- and rice. I am not going to touch the instant noodles with a ten foot pole after what happened the previous night. While we are eating and milling around, we hear the boom of a buttress root being struck. Being the smart asses that we are, we decide to reply to the sound signal but not with a buttress root boom but with my trusty survival whistle that I have hidden away in my shirt; it is always there on a necklace with my torch and small neck knife (which I didn't bring with me this time). Sure enough, after some time, one of the instructors turns up at the camp site and asks us why we didn't reply to their signalling. We tell him that we did reply and I am quite sure they heard us but just wanted to know why we didn't use the buttress root system. We quote their own pamphlet at them: learning how to survive using what you have and whatever you can find around you. I think they don't really know what to do with our motley crew. It is always dangerous to get a bunch of philosophy students around; they exercise slightly too much freedom of thought, especially with military types around.

Anyway, we get invited down to the instructor's campsite where there is coffee and cookies and a couple of buns. So we happily munch away while getting more stories from our instructor. And we get a chance to refill our water bottles at the stream too. While we are there, the instructor teaches us how to get a sense of the weather by looking at the way the smoke from the fire rises. It's a very loose and not a great way of predicting things -- I'd rather have a barometer watch. [Hint! Hint! The Casio Protrek with triple sensor is a LOVELY watch for my next birthday/Christmas/whatever. :o)] But when all else fails, I'll watch the smoke! ;o)

Anyway, we have to get back to our campsite and pack up. We have a large amount of walking that day because we are trying to squeeze two days' trek into one. You see, it was all our fault -- the Singapore bunch had arranged it such that we were going to arrive back in Singapore on Wednesday morning at 4 am and go back to work/school at 11 am that same day. So we tell our instructor that he can't be late at all for the bus on Tuesday afternoon. He looks at us mildly but in his mind, we realise now that he thought we were crazy to not allow ourselves one day's rest before going back to work. So he quietly decides that he is not going to make us camp out as he initially planned on Monday. He decides instead to take us back to his friend's house for the night and take us to the hot springs which is the "traditional" thing to loosen up your muscles after a hike.

Anyway, we start off and we get to the top of this lovely waterfall where we get a chance to take some photos -- you see the photo at the first page of this blog. The pace of everything had been so hectic the last few days that we hardly got to take our cameras out at all. I don't have a camera [having left it with B. in Aust] so I had to rely on everyone else's photos. Once we finished with the photos, we then started our hike in earnest. We had a short uphill section again -- not too bad this time but steep, very very steep. We are talking about 70 degree inclines. We have to space ourselves out a bit so that if we fall we don't take the other person walking after us along with us. We reach the ridge finally and then start our tracking lessons.

We learn how to observe the ground and plants for signs of disturbance. We also learn how to mark a trail. Then the fun begins -- we get split into teams and one team will mark a trail while the others try to track them. It is challenging and tremendously fun. We do more of this and eventually the instructors plant a trail for us to track and we are supposed to count the number of marks they have left for us. Mingde and I got 20 out of 27 marks -- which was considered decent. After that, more plant identification. It also started raining at this point. We were hoping that the rain wouldn't be too bad but luck was not on our side and the rain bucketed down. When I say bucketed down, I really mean that. Imagine being in the middle of the rainforest with a very dense canopy and still feeling the rain pelting on your face like a shower head turned to maximum or a garden hose right in your face and chest!

Well, you can imagine what the rain did to the ground -- which was mainly clayey. It was a nightmare. The clay became colloidal very quickly and quickly got more fragile and more vulnerable to environmental factors -- like footsteps. Clayey soil is bad enough but clayey soil after a whole bunch of people have stepped and slipped on it is horrible because it becomes compacted and even more slippery. Erg! And here we were walking along inclines with gradients of about 70% in those conditions. I think that was the hardest part of the course. And it was also in those circumstances that I discovered how wonderful a walking stick could be. It functions more or less like an ice-axe; when you feel yourself falling, you jab the stick into the ground and arrest your fall with it if you can't find a nearby tree to hang onto. And sometimes, you can jab your stick into the ground to give you an extra thing to hang onto to prevent falls. My stick really saved my butt a couple of times. The alternative is to go sliding down cliffs without any prospect of arresting your own fall unless you can catch a tree on your way down. I was also very pleased that I wore fairly high boots with stiff leather uppers. I'm fairly certain they saved my ankles a few times over the uneven ground. We spent as much time slipping as we did walking in those conditions.

And the thing was that half way through we got lost. The second half of the group split from the first half and it was some time before we realised that we had lost the trail. When we found out, we stopped. Thankfully, our guides had walkie-talkies and contacted the first half of the group. They found us eventually. But that meant that we lost time and so we had to keep up a break neck pace in these conditions in order to make it back to base camp by sundown.

We did a few river crossings in order to get back to base camp and it is quite amazing how even a shallow stream can pack a real punch when there is intense tropical rain. We could feel the current against our knees and boots when we were crossing the streams and I hate to think what would have happened if someone had slipped and didn't unclip himself from his pack. We were all fairly cautious and careful so there were no accidents which was great. However, I have to say that I felt a little uncomfortable about this last stretch of the course. I felt happy and safe with most of the course. But I didn't like how that last trek went. I would have chosen to break the trek into two and stayed an extra night out rather than to have risked the kind of pace we were keeping, given the terrain and the environmental conditions we were faced with. It wouldn't have been any problem without the rain.

Mingde and ChongMing tell me that it is quite common for them to do that kind of pace in the army. But then the army's injury statistics are not great and the army also has helivac (helicopter evacuation) services. If you are in a survival situation or even on a civilian trek, I think it is foolhardy to risk your body that way because each injury decreases your chance of getting out alive and if you get injured in the middle of the forest in Perak, medical aid isn't exactly going to be fast in coming. So you just better pray very hard that if you get injured, you don't have severe bleeding or have any internal bleeding because you are in a really serious situation if you do. I'm not prepared to take those chances, especially when they can be avoided so I guess I am a lot more conservative than my friends are. I think Thushan (and maybe Faisal) felt a little uncomfortable about it too as we exchanged notes later.

It was Mingde who had the closest shave with danger though; he fell right when the path took us on a cliff alongside the waterfall. Thushan, who was walking behind Mingde, had remarkable presence of mind. He jabbed his walking stick into the hillside and yelled at Mingde to grab the stick. He then managed to pull Mingde back up. I think if Mingde has slipped any further, he might have gone down the cliff right into the waterfall and well, it was a huge drop down from there. But in any case, we all made it out in one piece.

Interestingly, all along the way, in all the days, not a single person complained about things. I think that was the one thing I really enjoyed about this trip. We did share our reservations and whatever thoughts we had fairly factually and concretely and I enjoyed that a lot. I believe it would have been different with a different group of people.

We finally reached the end of the trail at around 5pm in the evening. And then we had another short trek down the mountain to our base camp. But that was on paved road. By that time, we were exhausted, hungry, dehydrated. We mainly stood around and waited for some food to arrive --- fried bananas and stuff -- and of course, spent lots of time trying to get the leeches off. Because of the river crossings, they were everywhere. I was fortunate and had quite a good time; because I had been trained to blouse my boots (that means to tuck your pants into your socks and then your socks into your boots like they do in the army) and to always keep my shirt tucked into my pants and my sleeves buttoned, most of my body was clear of leeches. I got them on my hands and neck mainly; although there were loads clinging to my socks and boots trying to worm their way in. Some of the other guys who were a little more relaxed about attire landed up with leeches on their thighs and stomach etc. And it was just a whole saga trying to get ourselves clear of the leeches -- they are really hard to peel off once they start biting. You can see what Faisal's legs look like after the leeches have been peeled off in the photograph below -- not the prettiest sight.



Most of us were a little numb from the experience by that point; it was this strange experience of knowing that you have been physically extended past your regular levels but extended to a point where you are a little dissociated from your body and you feel like you can keep walking, keep hiking because of the rhythm of things even when all your muscles are strained. It's a funny sensation: I used to feel it after a very hard day's training at athletics (we had a mad instructor who used to make us run carrying logs which we had to lift over our heads whenever we passed certain designated points). But once you stop for a while, you start feeling the lactic acid build-up in your muscles and you know you are in trouble because every movement becomes increasingly painful. I don't know if the rest felt it in quite the same way I did -- I am really out of shape. When I am with B and J in Aust, I eat really well but don't get half the amount of activity I need. when I'm on my own, I get more activity than usual (although still not enough) but I don't eat half as well. You become very sloppy about eating in Singapore; it is just so easy and convenient and cheap to get yummy food everywhere. Unfortunately, it's not food that is always particularly good for you. Rats, I have to get my life in order here. I have made it a point to whack all the ingredients for a salad in the staff fridge every week so I get my greens and freshies but I need to do my own sandwiches more often.

Anyway, there isn't really any place to shower at base camp. There is no shower. There is only a communal concrete bath which you have to scoop water from and pour over yourself. Every one is a little embarrassed about me because they don't know what to do about change and shower facilities for me. They haven't quite tweaked that most of my male friends have forgotten that I'm female by the time they agree to do this kind of stuff with me. So anyway, in order to save everyone the embarrassment, I get together with Mingde and Chongming and ask if they are comfortable having a shower together. They were cool and so I basically announced that we were going for a shower together to save time. I also basically needed someone to check my back for leeches for me. So we do that and then manage to crawl into our cleaner clothes for the rest of the evening. I can't tell you how fantastic it felt to have that shower and to powder yourself liberally after!! It was sheer heaven!

We pack up after and zoom off to our digs for the night. Our instructor has arranged for a friend of his to put us up. We were all going to crowd into two rooms when they tell me that I have a separate room – because a woman can't sleep with men in the same room. My instructor gives me a hint about it being local custom and I realise that in the jungle and base camp, they are happy for me to sleep together with the guys but back in civilisation, I have to be a lady. It's so funny. I remember an article one of my students had saved for me about Albanian women who take on a vow of gender transference and “become men” when their fathers or husbands die so that there will be at least one man in the house and they can look after the family. They remain celibate for the rest of their lives but they are treated like exactly one of the guys, with the freedom and authority that comes from being “male”. There are days when this amuses me and I look on it with indulgence as a backward quaint practice that will pass as the world becomes a global village. But I also wonder what has prompted me all my life to deliberately maintain a position of gender androgyny – is it the unconscious realisation that no matter how far feminism has progressed, we still treat women as second class citizens and I still have more freedom when I am seen as a man? It's not that I am forcing myself into something I wouldn't naturally do. I still remember how as a child, jeans and shorts were always my first choices over dresses and skirts. But the older I grow, the more my androgyny has become consciously chosen and existentially endorsed as much as it is an innate disposition that I have allowed free play to shape my life. I simply see no reason why my life has to be restricted simply because those restrictions are what is expected of me as a being gendered in one way rather than another. I wouldn't mind controlling the expression of my gender if I thought that it would enhance the communal good but I actually think the opposite holds true.

Women don't realise the degree to which they suffer under gender stereotypes. I mean we have universal suffrage, we get educated, we have jobs. So what is the problem here? The problem here is the fabric of the everyday that constrains us without us realising it. Here's something for you to think about – clothing design. I think women still suffer under the oppression of clothes tailored with an eye to form more than function. And you know what the worst part is? We don't know it and we collude in it because we can't give up the usual ideas about what a woman is supposed to look like and how a woman is supposed to dress.

9 times out of 10, I will pick mens' clothes over those designed for women. Why? Pockets. To have functional pockets is to have liberation for your hands and to have a tonne of gear that you can carry sensibly and which is with you all the time – like swiss army knives and torches and money and keys and phones. I'm dying to see the day when I can create a chain of stores called “the sensible woman”. I already have the advertising campaign all planned. All I need to do is to go to any office building and shoot. The commercial is simple – I will simply station my camera outside a door and do a time lapse thing and count the number of times women are unable to hold a door open because they are holding their keys, mobile, purse and coffee in two hands and the number of times men have the same problem. I know what the answer will be – women will outnumber men exponentially with this problem. Why?? NO POCKETS.... It is also impossible to find a pair of women's hiking pants that are long enough to blouse properly and not only that, they make the bloody pants FLARED at the bottom. Which freaking self-respecting hiker will wear flared trouser legs????

Now take another look at women's shirts – yes those teeny weensy things that come up to your hips with the shapely bust conforming lines. Like those?? Death-traps to your arms. Try stretching to the top shelf of your favourite library bookcase and see how comfortable you feel. Does the shirt tighten up at your triceps and pull across your biceps and bust? Do you feel a waft of fresh air upon your belly? Well, guess why? That's because it IS exposed and every dwarf can stare up at your boobs ... which of course, you have hidden under a respiration inhibiting bra right? Then try wearing a properly fitted men's shirt and do the same thing. What do you find? No pressure anywhere and the shirt is long enough to stay tucked in your pants. I have an old joke -- when a tailor runs out of cloth to sew a man's shirt, he asks his friend what to do. His friend's answer: make a woman's shirt. Its funny but it's also not funny because what we can and can't do comfortably is built into what we wear.

Same thing with shoes. 9 times out of 10 – actually 10 times out of 10, I will pick men's boots and shoes. Why? Again functionality. Find me one pair of women's hikers that are 8 eyelets high and I will take you out for lunch immediately. The only people who manufacture 16 eyelet boots are military boot manufacturers and they manufacture ... primarily for men. But why? Why is it that women don't deserve the same ankle protection as men? They don't hike as much? What bollocks! And don't get me started on formal office shoes. Also why is it that if you try to buy women's motorcycle jackets, you will find that they always come in a grade of leather thinner than the equivalent male jacket. What is this? Women don't need as much protection when they fall off their bikes? Do we suddenly have thicker skin or what? I talked to Mars Leathers – a top manufacturer of leather gear for motorcyclists in Melbourne once about this. Their reply was that women like their jackets thinner because they like their jackets lighter -- oh really?? How come nobody consulted me as a woman about this because that sure as hell isn't my answer?? I asked how many focus groups of women they had – no answer. I buy only mens' leather motorcycle jackets and pants. I recommend you do too.

Women, liberate yourselves!! Cross-dress for a year and I'll guarantee you that you will never look at women's clothes in the same way again. I know some of my friends wonder about my image and they wonder why I can't/won't dress in a more womanly way. But that's the problem: they are asking the wrong question. The thing is that when I pick my clothes, they have very little to do with whether they look male or not. I am very happy wearing sarongs (skirt wraps) at home and at the beach – I am exclusively in them at home. My choice of clothes has everything to do with whether they extend my ability to live the form of life I enjoy and whether they constrain me in unnecessary ways and by that standard, women's clothes stink. I wear more women's shirts nowadays since I've discovered Portman's in Australia. Somehow, I often find them turning up in second hand stores with tags on or barely worn and many fit me fantastically. They fit my almost “Bauhaus” criteria of form fitting function. But pants are still a no no.

Sorry to spew about women and gender and feminism and my own self-image here. But I am going to teach a course on feminism soon enough and I think my brains are starting to pattern themselves to look for things to talk about. Unfortunately, this stuff is not exactly systematic philosophy. It is still anecdotal. There is a critical theory paper here waiting to be born but not yet, not yet. At any rate, I am toying with the idea of challenging my kids to cross-dress for a month and keep a log of their bodies. I don't know what their parents and the university will think. But hey, they are supposed to be getting educated in a more critically reflective way right? And Singapore wants to be at the cutting edge right? It will be an interesting experience I'm sure. If you want to learn, your learning better touch your life. It will be worth more than any lecture I could ever give.

Anyway ok ok, back to the hall of justice and the jungle survival course thing. So we are at our instructor's house and they have insisted that I sleep in a separate room because I am a woman. Unfortunately, they kick the kids out of their room so that I can have it. I'm deeply embarrassed and ask if I can sleep on the floor in the living room or something. But they won't hear of it; it would be a failure of hospitality. And so I sleep in some poor kid's bed that night. I like the Muslims for this spirit of generosity and hospitality. I remember one of the most shocking incidents I encountered in Australia was having someone relate to me an anecdote about her friend's mother telling her to replace the bread and butter she used while a guest in their house (she didn't stay there long at all). She was so insulted, she filled the larder. Was it because she was Asian? Or was that friend's mother just a calculative jerk who did not know how to give anyway? We will never know. There is a reason I hate the calculatingness of the modern economy – it steals something from us when we are not looking. It steals friendship and generosity and hospitality. It steals from us our ability to give and take with open hands and an open heart, confident that there is nothing back behind the giving.

We go out for dinner at a hawker stall nearby-- it's owned by the people we are staying with and the food is excellent. I expected that we would be really hungry and ready to stuff ourselves like pigs. But interestingly, I find that I can't eat all that much despite the few days of minimal food and extreme activity. I notice that everyone else doesn't seem to be stuffing their face totally either. That's interesting. We then go back home and sit and talk to our hosts a little and finally go to bed. The rest that night is wonderful; deep and refreshing. I wake up the next morning with muscles aching (which I expected) but with my feet feeling funny. I sense everything underfoot; every pebble, every grain. My feet were waterlogged and totally shrivelled the day before but it didn't explain the sensations I was getting then. I only tweaked the following day when I found that my feet and ankles swollen to almost one and a half times their regular size – combination of excessive prolonged standing and sitting (the bus journey was 10 hours or so) and also dehydration and my electrolytes being totally off. Not a good combination – I returned to normal once I started drinking and eating normally and I am fine now.

We spend the morning drying out our wet clothes or at least those of us with enough energy to unpack and then repack our bags did. And while our clothes were drying, we went for a dip in the hot springs. Oh that was lovely. It relaxed our muscles and helped us unwind. And then it was back to the house again to pack and get going to the bus interchange for our journey back to KL and then onto Singapore.

What can I say? I paid RM500 to suffer and join the military for 4 days so some of my friends say! They think I am nuts. Oh but I gained so much and I loved every moment of it. It wasn't just the skills that I picked up there. I needed a different space to let certain reflections sit ... some of which you read about here and others are elsewhere in my head and in my hand. I needed to be reminded of what it was like to be tested. Maybe I am an adrenaline junkie but I don't think so. I need a sense of a form of life which was somehow more elemental, more concrete than the life that I live ordinarily – somehow I can't function properly without that every once in a while and I hadn't been doing that lately. I have always needed that and the jungle for me has always offered that. It keeps me honest; it gives me the happiness of being free but reminds me at one and the same time of the austerity and harshness of that freedom because nature is unforgiving of fools. But isn't this why the Talmud reminds us that humanity, while deriving from and belonging to nature, is separated from nature by an essential dimension? Because it is humanity that offers us the space to forestall the instant of natural brutality with speech and thought which allow us cooperation and communal action in peace; and affords us the capacity for grace, mercy and love?

Sigh. I read all this and it sounds right to me. But I know also that it sounds out of place in the professional world I inhabit where humanity is thought of as just so many synapses and ideals just another bunch of constituted ideas. A humanist sensibility is just so outmoded in the 21st century but the thing is that I can't find anything that fits me all that much better.

More hiking adventures next time.

The jungle survival course -- part 3

Day 3

Thushan and I are up early and eat our only orange. We sniff around at the sardines and I eat them too. They tasted great -- but only because we were starving!!! I also ate some of the bamboo rice which was so hard that I had to scrape it out of its bamboo container with my parang. The instructors invite us over to their campfire to dry out our boots and clothes. They of course casually tell us to go cut down another tree to get a log that we can sit on -- it's just their way of getting us to practise but also to physically stretch us a bit. So ok, we go and cut down a tree and it becomes our log and also fuel for the fire. We have a coffee with the instructors -- a very very welcome treat for me, coffee-addict that I am!! And our chief instructor tells us a bit about his adventures. Apparently, he was of the generation that fought the communists in Malaysia and it was interesting to hear about this episode in our local history. Some of it was macabre; how the soldiers were asked to either snip off a finger or a head as proof that they had actually "cleaned out" the tunnels. He tells us all this without pride or sentimentality or guilt. It was one of those messes that had to be cleaned up and he did an essential job. He has left that life behind now and uses those skills to bring jobs to the indigenous population, to protect elephants and to introduce people to nature. He is an interesting man.

Levinas wrote that war is the greatest challenge to morality because it suspends morality; makes it seem naive, the thing that betrays us and stops us from surviving. This was the text I opened with when I taught Totality and Infinity. I think some of the thought experiments I did with my students made them uncomfortable or at least a little less sanguine about what war means. I think it gave them the realisation that they too were prepared to give up morality in the name of survival, or at least that they were tempted. And then it becomes difficult after that to pretend that what you are reading is one of those things that does not touch you, that does not require a response.

I very often get irritated with those people who think they know something about Levinas and then give me the objection that his morality is "over-demanding" and "utopian". Were it not for the "over-demandingness" of the moral command felt by some sensitive individuals in the world, can we count how many more would have died in the many genocides and lynchings and in the everyday crimes of the world? Were it not for the extraordinary courage of some of my friends who are wonderful and moral people, I would have been dead. None of them look like the moral saints that Susan Wolf describes; some of them are the most colourful and humorous and resourceful people around.

I resent it when people say that Levinas is "unrealistic" and that he has underestimated what people are capable of in the world -- both in terms of good and evil. This is such a bizarre critique coming from punks who live in the comfort of academic positions in the first world; who have never felt hunger and who have never felt deprivation and who have never smelled fear or have had to face the choiceless choices of having to learn how to kill in order to live. They would not understand evil and neither would they understand friendship or morality if it struck them in the face. Some days I wanted to just punch my supervisor in the face when he spoke with such casualness about these things, when he talks about needing to move beyond the mistakes/weaknesses of Levinas' work. I don't doubt that there are problems in Levinas, but it was something to do with the levity, the disrespect that I hated. Because we were not just dealing with a conceptual problem that had nothing to do with the world and nothing to do with life. We were talking about the things that made our lives possible. Some days I wanted to tell him to "show some respect you young punk".

I'm not sure that some of the things we "naturally" think of as weaknesses in particular philosophies are actually flaws in the philosophy or whether they are insights that proceed from a life shattered from its illusory moorings. We take for granted everyday an entire system of things, norms, structures that make our life possible; food and the systems of agriculture and distribution that make it possible; water and the catchment, irrigation and purification systems that makes it possible; friendship and love and cooperation and the communication and shared normative expectations that make them possible; law and the systems of governance and enforcement that give it force; the everyday acts of kindnesses and the grace that makes them possible. If we are a society of copy-cats, we are also a society of systematic amnesiacs. That is a blessing in ways because the disruption of those moorings of life does things to us that leave us marked, changed, different. It is not necessarily a bad thing, this change: you find a remarkable amount to be grateful for in life and it brings friendship that is hard to come by. But it brings also its own sense of frustration at the carelessness and lightness which which the majority of us regard the "under-fabric" of our lives.

Philosophers like clarity and cleanness in systems of argumentation; they want things to be tidy, to be coherent; for things to fit together and make sense. But life doesn't always fit this way; the greatest power and the greatest flaw in analytic philosophy has been the obsession with the exclusive sense of "or" because it forces choices sometimes where what is required instead is the holding of both sides because each side contains an essential dimension of the truth. Are we revisiting Greek tragedy here in its richest sense; the idea that the seed of greatness is exactly what dooms the hero? I listen a lot to stories of lives that are tangled and where there are so many mixed motives that feed into a single action and then I try and philosophise about it and there is something unreal about what I say because out of plurality and multivocality and contradiction, I try to distil some theme or themes that somehow "fit". I "fit" things to the best of my ability but always always, I know there is something missing. Funnily enough, what is missing is present in my writing when I am not philosophising in the classic academic medium but when I am telling a story in a letter for a friend or to B or J.... Anyway, enough philosophy. Back to the jungle.

So we have coffee and conversation and then we have to go "shopping" as our instructor calls it. Essentially, we go around the forest looking for stuff that we need: resin (from trees) that functions as our firestarter, rattan that functions as a remarkably strong rope, plants that stop bleeding and which give us an energy boost. We learn how to split lianas in order to make very strong cordage. We learn also how to cut drinking vines which are alternative sources of water in the jungle. We learn how to do a ground air rescue and how to make sos signals using buttress roots. We also learn how to chose a good campsite and fortify it against intruders -- the instructor focused on wild animals but I had no doubt that it would work equally well against humans as well. This includes a system of stakes in the ground and early warning systems etc.

Then we go on to the toughest thing we had to do -- get food from the bertam palm. That was a NIGHTMARE!!! The bertam palm is a palm that can grow about 4 metres high in the tropics. It is a wonderful source of leaves and wood for shelter building because the wood is soft and very easy to cut. The leaves if woven can make an excellent thatch (although we didn't learn leaf weaving techniques). However, it is nightmarish to deal with because the lower sections of all the palm fronds (the first 2 meters or so) are full of long and very sharp thorns!! ... Did I mention long and very sharp??? Each thorn can grow to about 1 and a half inches long. And each 3 meter high frond of the palm is full of the thorns in lower regions. So there we are, having to look for the shoot of the palm which is normally buried in the inner third of the plant. We have to dig underneath the plant and pry and cut through the outer leaves so that we can reach the shoot. Once we reach the shoot, we have to separate it from the rest of the plant and then strip it so that we can eat it. It took us more than 2 hours working in groups of 3 to harvest 3 shoots and even then some of the shoots were rejected by our instructors because we failed to dig deep enough! It was a good exercise in that we understood something about the availability of food and also it reminded us of the value of food. But in a survival situation, I would NOT harvest from the bertam plant. The caloric output just would not be replaced by the nourishment from the plant. I'd rather fish, set traps or eat insects. Anyway, below, you can see pictures of Chongming digging away at the palm and my trying to pry some of the fronds apart. If you look carefully, you can see thin black things sticking out of the green fronds in the second photo -- those are the dreaded thorns I was telling you about.
















Anyway, after our adventures (or misadventures more accurately!!) with the bertam palm, it is already mid-afternoon. We have not had lunch (not going to be allowed that luxury). We pack to go to our next camp site. This time it is intensely uphill for much of the way. Imagine the stairmaster with a 15kg pack on and you more or less have a good picture of our trek. The going is ok on flat ground but when it got uphill, our variable levels of fitness caught up with us. Faisal and Chong Ming are marathon runners so they are happily traipsing along like it is a walk in the park. Mingde is pretty fit as well because he is in the infantry in the national reserves. That leaves me puffing away and Thushan struggling after me. Really important lesson #3: I need to lose 8 kilos and get fit again. I am a pathetic mess now compared to what I could accomplish in my twenties. I currently weigh about 66 kgs. According to published weight tables, I should be 61kgs. According to my own experience, I am ideal at 57-58kgs. So ok, going to start eating properly and exercise more regularly.

We make it up the mountain eventually -- we are about 1000m above sea level and the nights can get cold in situations like that. We reach the camp site around 5 pm in the evening. The instructors have left us to our own devices (with a walkie-talkie that was so weak on batteries that we were convinced it was going to die on us) as they were camping slightly further downhill. So we decide to have a communal fire but to build three shelters with two persons to a shelter around the communal fire.

As a result of the late hour, we decide to split our efforts. Mingde and Faisal go down to the waterfall to refill our water supplies. Chong Ming goes to lop sturdy branches to make the framework for the fire place. Thushan, Kevin and I take it upon ourselves to clear the camp area and to make a start building our shelters. Clearing is very hard going for such a large area. And of course our instructors left us in the middle of a bertam palm area -- more thorns! It's hard to clear the area with ease because we can't just pick up the stuff with our bare hands on account of the thorns. I thankfully have my trusty turban/sarong which I use as a glove to deal with some of the fronds I need to remove by hand but the rest of the time, we are using sticks to clear the debris. It is slow and painstaking work. Eventually we get it cleared and we start on our shelter.

By that time, Faisal and Mingde have returned with our water bottles filled. It was apparently a really difficult road down to the waterfall -- treacherous and very steep. It was amazing that they made it up with all 5 water bottles filled. We were very thankful for their work. Unfortunately, there was still a lot to do in terms of the shelter building. So everyone chipped in.

We got the framework set up for Thushan's and my shelter. I then quickly gave Faisal and Kevin a sense of how we did ours so that they could proceed. And then I went looking for large leaves to harvest for our shelters. Bertam palm leaves are great if you have time to weave them but if you don't do the weaving, they are not the best leaves to keep the rain out. We had seen some of the large study leaves that we had sheltered beneath the other day growing nearby. So I took it upon myself to go find them and drag them back. The large ones are about 2 metres long so if you try and take a bunch of them, you will just have to drag them around rather than carry them. And they have these very fine thorns on their spine so you have to dethorn them before you carry them. I harvested whatever I could nearby and dragged them back. I left Thushan to thatch our shelter while I went to collect more. A couple of the plants nearby with usable leaves were unfortunately too tall so I couldn't harvest them. I then started scouting further afield for the plants. I eventually found a clump near the bottom of a slope. I wasn't looking forward to dragging them uphill but well, necessity forces you to do things you don't want! So anyway, after a couple of trips on my own, I realised that the light was failing and that if I didn't ask someone else to help, I'd run the risk of climbing the hill in the dark with the leaves. So I asked Faisal to make one or two last runs with me so that we could both harvest enough leaves for everyone. Anyway, we made it back with enough to go around for all.

The shelter frameworks were more or less all done and there was only the roofing to do which was quite simple. The next big task was the fire of course. And we all took turns mucking around trying to start one. We finally got one going but firewood was going to be a problem because we had nowhere near enough. And it was a bit of a problem because some of our team had not camped much and therefore didn't realise how much we would actually need through the night. Either that or that was a problem with the training that you get in the Singapore army -- that if you can't start a fire, just sleep it off. You can do that for a short period but you can't survive like that in the long term because pneumonia and infected toes etc. will catch up with you. Anyway, we just decided to improvise as we went along. It was great to finally get a fire going. It was the first time that we managed to get our boots and clothes dry!! And that was wonderful. We managed to dry out our feet as well although they still remained fairly wrinkled.

Oh I forgot the saga of the snake. While we were building our fire, Mingde and Chongming tried to make torches from the dried bertam leaves. Our instructors wanted us to make a few and use them to go down the hill to visit them at their campsite for coffee. However, ChongMing and Mingde spotted a snake while harvesting the bertam leaves and since we didn't know if it was dangerous, we decided not to proceed any further. I radioed our instructor and told him about the snake. He asked what colour the snake was. As luck with have it, Mingde [who is the only one who really got a good look at the snake] is colour-blind!! So there we were in the middle of the jungle with a snake nearby and we couldn't tell our instructor whether we were SURE that the snake was a green one. We just thought it was green!! The instructors informed us that the only green snake in that region is the Sumatran pit viper and and that it is "very dangerous". "Don't go anywhere near it!" We are of course not very comforted since the snake was spotted really near us!! Anyway, the instructors turned up later to inspect the area and came with some coffee power and a pan for us to brew it in. Slurp!!

We had instant noodles in our bags and so we decided that we were going to eat them raw and consume the salt/seasoning provided as well because we needed the carbo and also the salts. Unfortunately, of course, living in my house, eating instant noodles is something you do once in a year or something if at all. So sometime after eating the noodles, I promptly had a bad reaction and passed it all out. So much for carbohydrates! I know that instant noodles are dehydrated foods and therefore light to carry but really Asian campers have to get a better idea of nutrition in the wilderness! This is one thing we really need to learn from the US and Europe and Aust. I mean we could have carried the same weight if they issued us with eggs in a screw top container with the spaces between the eggs filled with a high-protein flour. That would give us the potential to mix the flour with water and make a bannock and the eggs could be either incorporated into the bannock or roasted. The nutritional value would have increased by leaps and bounds. Or if they wanted something local, they could have given us bah kwah -- a kind of local beef jerky -- or lap cheong -- a local dried salami type sausage thing. And of course, for Malay cuisine, there is tempeh, which is a type of dried fermented bean curd which is great. Asian camp food really pisses me off because it's like we left our imaginations back home and all we can think of is instant noodles and tinned food. This when we live in a region flooded with tapioca and coconut (tapioca leaf curry -- YUM!), yams, bananas as fresh produce. And all the dried Asian food -- salted fish, waxed duck, bee hoon and mi-sua (Asian vermicelli) and all the various types of dried beans we have is just stuff that we don't even think of as camp food. Why??? As if our ancestors never camped before the advent of tinning and commercial dehydration! Actually, it just goes to show how much we have lost touch with our own native cultures that we face this lack of imagination when it comes to food.

Anyway, we all had a good sleep that evening. Just had to wake up in the middle of the night to restart the fire because it had been put out by the rain. We eventually got a roof over the fire and it kept going after. We also got a bit more firewood after. The fire was important that night because it would be cold in the morning on account of the elevation.

The jungle survival course -- part 2

Day 2

We get woken by the sound of a rifle/loud firecracker going off at about 7.30am. We eat and pack and are given our first lesson at the stream nearby -- how to sharpen a parang. After that we are ferried to the start of the trail which is this beautiful spot in fairly dense jungle. We start hiking for a bit and then we stop and have lesson 2 -- how to use a parang. We are then split into pairs and tasked with felling a small tree (about 6 inches in diameter) and cutting up a section about a meter and a half long. So off we go and pick a tree. This is my favourite bit of course since I get to play with the parang. Woohoo! Chop. Chop. Chop. I really get into rhythm and enjoy it lots. In no time, it is done and I have my section. The guide tells me to carry it to the main area and so I do. Then the second job is to fell a larger tree -- about 12 inches in diameter or so -- as a team working in rotation. It becomes evident who has spent time playing with knives in their childhood but it was really interesting because just observing the different ways in which people try to work out the mechanics of swinging a 12 inch blade was enlightening. I really admired Thushan's technique. He is already an imposing man but what I really appreciated was the sheer economy of his swings; just enough wrist flick at the end and a very smooth action all the way through. Not an ounce of wasted strength. Then we are asked to cut a hiking staff for ourselves; just under shoulder height. I normally hate hiking staffs -- I think they are just extra weight to lug around and are a nightmare when you are in a tight spot with creepers. Well, I do as told anyway, waiting to see if I might be persuaded otherwise over the course of the trip -- you'll see where they are useful on the last day.

Well, the next job. We need to go look for vines to use as rope. The interesting thing was that the instructors told us to look for roots as well. And I wonder how I could have been an idiot for so long in not considering roots as a good source of rope!!! I had been having tunnel vision for so long about this it's amazing. I was used to the idea of vines and creepers as rope, I knew about braiding cores of plants for ropes but I forgot about roots!! Man, I'm really getting daft! So ok, vines. I pull down loads of vines and we are asked to stop when we have enough. And being the philosophers that we are, we ask, "ermm ... define enough." Anyway, I've overdone it. I have shitloads of vines but never mind, I strap them on the pack and away we go to our next station.

We hike at a decent pace and unfortunately the very high humidity and my own body heat (as usual) leads to a major fogging situation with my ballistic spectacles. I am almost blinded by the condensation on my lenses. I remind myself that I need to get an anti-fogging treatment for my next pair of ballistic goggles. But somehow I manage until there is time to stop so that I can change into my regular spectacles which cope better with the fogging but offer less protection to my eyes.

We stop soon and the instructor takes us to a clump of what look like a variety of tree ferns. He tells us to look carefully at how another instructor strips the plant. We are trying to get at the soft inner core of the plant just under where the new leaves are growing. That small section is edible. So we get sent out to harvest 3 shoots per person. It is ok work -- just a regular clean up operation. I make a mistake with my first shoot and look for it on the wrong side of the plant at the roots instead of the leaves. But after that, it is fairly smooth going. We wrap the shoots up in leaves of the plants we have harvested and tie it with some of our "rope" to our packs and we are off again.

We trek for a bit more and land up at a bamboo clump. It is now around noon. The skies have opened up by now and we are wet. We dump our packs under a tree with lovely large leaves that provide us with some shelter. But our instructors move on to the next task -- how to cut bamboo without splitting it. The key is patience; as with most things in the jungle/bush. You need to go slowly and without too much force. Just persistently and gently chip away at the bamboo. Do not place any undue stress at any section. Just so you know, these are not the small "Teck-ko" bamboos that we use in Singapore to hang out our clothes. These are the really huge variety with a diameter of about 5-6 inches (rather than 1 inch) and each segment is about 30 inches long. So anyway, we are asked to cut out a section with extra space at the ends. That is going to be our water bottle for the rest of the trip.

Oh stop!! This is also where I get my first leech!! I found this ugly brown stain on my hand that just wouldn't go away. Of course looking through my fog-laden spectacles, it just looks like a stubborn bit of dirt, then I finger it and find it really squishy and realise that it's a leech. It's been there for a bit, judging from the size. So I spend a bit of time trying to pull it off. Man, they are tough little suckers (pun intended!!) When I finally get it off, the blood just happily streams down my hand without stopping. Oops. I'm scared of blood remember? And I also tend to feel faint when I see it. Strangely though, when I am in the jungle, this is never quite a problem for me in the same way it is in civilisation. Somehow, it doesn't feel like a violation of my body, it feels at home, in place. It belongs. And after staring at it for a bit wondering if I'm going to feel faint, I realise that it's going to be ok. And then I realise that my greatest fear in this trip is over: I was scared of not being able to cope with the bleeding from the leeches and potentially holding everyone up. Yes, I know, It's crazy. Of all the things I could have been scared about in the jungle, I was fucking scared of my own haemophobia and its consequences. I mean there were tigers and bears and snakes and falls etc. but was I scared of those things??!!?? Noooooooooo!!

It's funny when I think about it. I didn't and I don't fear the jungle. I'm cautious. I have no romantic illusions about nature as some of my more "city" friends do. Some of them laugh about what I carry in my car boot in Australia. But they are the people who will travel in the rural areas by taking shortcuts through dirt tracks in winter without extra water, no sleeping bags, no firestarters and no skills _with_ their children. I would hate for a storm to close up the road when they are on it or for an accident to happen and the car to be rendered useless because it is not likely that they will live. Nature is neither benign nor vicious; it is impersonal. It doesn't care how hard you have struggled, it doesn't care whether you have a family you need to return to. It just is and if you make a mistake, you deal with it. And so I try to make as few mistakes as possible in the jungle; that's just sensible. But I don't fear when I am in it; I accept it somehow. I know that I would be happier dying of an attack by a wild animal or a fall than I would of cancer. I accept its terms. And I find its harsh, taciturn terms easier to accept because if I failed, it's my fault, and not the fault of some asshole who tripped me up because of jealousy or malice or just plain incompetence or indifference or the inability to think cooperatively rather than competitively. Anyway, I digress. Back to the jungle.

Once we get our sections, we congregate at a central area where we are taught how to shape the ends of the bamboo section into a lip that we can drink from and into a point so that the section can be leaned easily against a tree. And then we are taught how to chip holes in the ends so that we can slip a vine through for easy carry (boy, did I wish I had my swiss army knife then -- my awl would have made the hole so neat!!). Then the instructors ask us to strip the outer covering from the bamboo -- I don't really know why they asked us to do that. Ostensibly it was so that we could dry the bamboo out to prevent splitting when we took it back home but it didn't make much sense to me as bamboo can be dried even with the outer layer. So I am a little puzzled with that -- I will try some experiments with bamboo when I can here to find out more. The final step is to carve a wedge-shaped stopper for the container and then to puncture the container with the stopper. When I punctured mine, I discovered that the bamboo was filled with water and so I happily got a drink out of it. It was refreshing.

This fabrication section was the coolest part of the entire course for me. I loved the wood work. There is a happiness in making something that you will use no matter how stinkingly ugly it is (not that any of us aims for ugliness!!). This has always been hard for me to explain to people. We live in a "ready made" society and we have forgotten the processes that make things useable for us; the processes that pull amorphous bits from the elements and make them into a distinct thing through the interposition of vision and will and labour. I think it is why I really love Levinas' early phenomenology -- he understands what this is and what it feels like for the body and the mind. It is, in his words, "care for the morrow" and "joissance" -- joy, happiness in which the whole person is taken up -- at one and the same time.

It seems like a strange thought to have but we are a society of copy-cats. I doubt very much that many of us have had a seriously original idea in our lives. Really when you think about it, many of us do not fabricate, and even when we do, we fabricate in the light of the fabrication that has gone before us. When I improvise in order to create a tent-peg or a pot holder or a camp bed or a water-bottle, I am not totally creating these things from nowhere. I am seeing the potential to fit the elemental in a form that has come to me from a book, from a diagram, from the utensils of everyday life which are not of my making or of my imagination. I am a consummate copy-cat; a creative one, but a copy-cat nevertheless.

Anyway, the happiness of building also consists in the knowledge that with increasing practice comes a more beautiful work. So eventually, hopefully, my next bamboo water bottles will look a little better and incorporate improvements here and there.

So after the bamboo water bottle fabrication, we go to the stream to fill them and get a good drink and by then the instructors have a good fire going. They ask for our sardines and show us how to cook bamboo rice and smoked sardines in the fire. Apparently, the food will last for 6 weeks or so when it is prepared like this. I'm not sure about that but hmm ... maybe that is another experiment to be tried -- erm ... anyone want to volunteer to eat some weird bush food? ;o) Also the instructors started drying out some bamboo at the fire too. They have assured us that it is hard to find dry wood at the higher campsite where we are going that evening. While this is all going on, the instructors send us on a wild goose chase to look for a particular type of leaf. After lots of failed looking, the instructors tell us that the leaf we are looking for has some antiseptic properties and can stop bleeding -- they call it the "handiplast plant". So that was cool; it was an excellent exercise because we learnt something about biodiversity that afternoon. The number of near misses we had while trying to find that plant was amazing. I am reminded once again of the richness of the rainforest. And while I love the land of Australia and its beautiful microclimates, if I was going to be stranded somewhere, I would want to be stranded in the tropics -- I think I would have a better chance of getting out alive. But then, if I go for Bob Cooper's course in desert survival in Perth.... hmmm ... now how do I get a couple of thousand dollars?? ....

Ok, while the sardines and rice cook, we have to split the firewood between us and find a way of bundling it up so that we can carry it easily and so that it doesn't get wet. We use large leaves as a waterproof membrane and tie the stuff with our vines. We then tie the packages to our packs. We get the sardines back -- they rattle around in the tins like charcoal and they look a little like charcoal. We are speechless. The rice looks marginally better but it is hard like hell. Anyway, we have no time to examine the stuff more closely because we have our last hike of the day to complete. We fill our water bottles again as we are warned that there are no water sources up at the next camp site. Man is water heavy!!! And water in bloody bamboo receptacles that soak up water through the stripped fibre is even heavier!!! It is uphill most of the way now but we make it by about 6.

It has been raining most of the way and the forest has darkened more quickly then even our instructors expected I think. They hastily teach us how to fabricate a shelter from the bertam palm and tell us to get into pairs for the night. Thushan and I find ourselves together. Faisal and Kevin had struck it off quite well at the bus station and we figured that they would pair up. I had initially thought of pairing off with Mingde or ChongMing and then realised that they would probably be more comfortable with each other rather than with Thushan. And since Thushan and I were the oldest farts around with kids, it seemed quite natural that we would get together. Well, we first spotted a lovely area sheltered by the buttresses of a large tree with bertam palm to the other side. We were chased off by our instructors who brought us to this bit of land at an incline of about 30 degrees to the horizontal. That was not my idea of a good piece of land. But what to do? This was what we had to put up with for the training so ok we did our best. We spent some time planning our shelter and communicating ideas. And once we had an image of what we wanted and where we wanted it, Thushan and I set to work. It was easy going and we had a shelter up soon enough.

The next part was fire -- which was a pain. Everything was wet. And I was irritated at being dumped in the place after nightfall. When I camp, I always try to set up camp before nightfall and I have always collected firewood before dark. It just prevents accidents and sticking your hand into a snake pit or centipede or scorpion or something. And of course, our instructors had confiscated my leather gloves at base camp so no hand protection there. We try quite a few different methods to get the fire going. Next valuable lesson: starting a fire in the tropics is NOTHING like starting a fire in Australia. The wood is wet all through and the rain gets in everything. So you need to build your fires big so that the heat can dry out the next batch of wood while one is burning up. And I will always always bring hexamine into the forest. ALWAYS. And I will have to practise major bigtime whenever I can -- especially in the rain -- because I stink at firework. I have learnt a bit in Aust but nothing compared to what I need to know if I am to be truly competent. That is my one major deficiency and unfortunately, it is a serious deficiency in the woods. I have to plug it.

Thushan finally manages to get a fire going. And everyone starts gravitating towards the fire because nobody else has gotten a fire going. We eat a little, not much because we don't really feel hungry surprisingly. The instructors come check on us and tell everyone to take some coals from our fire to start their own. Chong Ming and Mingde try a few times, as do Faisal and Kevin but no one has any luck with their fires. It is a miserable night for most of us. Thushan and I were a little better off because the smoke from the fire kept the sand flies off at least. But the patch of land we were on was uncomfortable and I was worried about dislocating my facet joint in my back again. I had been conscientiously maintaining my muscle tone at least for core muscles in Sing so I worried less than during my most unfit periods in Aust but still that injury nags at me now and then. In the middle of the night, we woke to the sound of the rain a couple of times. I also woke to find the back of my head covered in blood. I looked like I had been shot -- it was of course another leech that had had a feast at my expense!!

The jungle survival course -- part 1

Ok, I had spent a little bit of time everyday over the last few weeks doing my log of the jungle survival course that I went to last month. I was starting to forget the sequences of events etc. so I decided to set everything down while I still could. It's finally done so here it is. I'm sorry it has taken so long -- I know quite a few of you wanted to read it.

As most of you already know, I have this "thing" with the jungle. So when I found out that there was a group of former Special Forces military guys who were teaching a practical jungle survival course, could I resist?? Noooo.

Of course that meant talking other people into going with me!! Har Har. I wasn't going to go through all that fun (or misery depending on who you talk to) on my own. Anyway, after lots of negotiation with everyone -- Malaysians, Singaporeans -- we have our team. There are four of us mad people; Mingde, ChongMing, Faisal and myself. Axel decided to abandon the trip because he had a guest visiting and was scheduled to go to Cambodia with her.

We set off via bus on Friday morning. Of course, our great friend Murphy has to show up almost immediately on our trip. We were scheduled to meet at Lavender MRT station since Faisal and Chong Ming had not been to the Kallang Bahru bus terminal before. However, since I got a lift from a friend, I decided to head directly to the bus terminal, thinking that Mingde would be there to show them the way. When I called Mingde to tell him about this, I find him breathing rather heavily and sounding a bit panicked. I then find out that he is still in a cab in Ang Mo Kio!! So off I went to Lavender trying to round up Chong Ming and Faisal. We got on the bus ok thankfully!

So we leave at 10am in the morning and the travel was uneventful. It was good to have the bus trip as I gave me the chance to learn a little more about ChongMing and Faisal. I had known Mingde for a slightly longer time as we had done a few hikes together and had quite a few dinners. ChongMing and Faisal were however totally new to me.

Anyway, as we neared KL, the skies opened up. When I say that it rained, I mean it RAINED. Australians have no idea what rain means. When I first when to Australia, I would get people (and the radio) warning me to go back home because a storm was brewing. So thinking that the locals knew better, I hopped off home, waited for 2 hours and the "storm" was over. Err ... sorry but that is not a storm. A storm is when it rains for days on end and you feel the raindrops hurt when they hit your face while you run. Although I must admit that Australia has the WILDEST winds I've ever encountered. But rain -- nah, you guys don't come close to knowing what a real rain is like. So anyway, it started pouring in KL and we realised that we were going to be in for a real treat -- it was obviously going to rain on us all 4 days of the course. Great!! Jungle survival in the rain! I don't know whether I was worried or excited.

So anyway, we finally make it past the peak hour jams (4pm) jams in KL and hire a cab to take us to Hentian Duta which is the other bus station we need to get to. We meet our instructor at Hentian Duta together with some of the other guides and people on the trip. There are 6 of us all together. We met Thushan, a hulking 6 foot tall Sri Lankan and Kevin, from Malaysia, the last member of our group. So we get ushered up the KL-Perak bus, only to be shooed off because apparently, the buses were all delayed and we had boarded the 4pm bus when we were due to catch the 6 pm bus. So we had a couple of hours of waiting at the bus terminal and we landed up studying. I read Maria Lugones, which ChongMing eventually stole off me, while Mingde read Cortez. And of course, we had some great conversation about Levinas and Lugones once ChongMing and I were both done with the Lugones paper.


We set off eventually at about 8.30 in the evening and arrive in Perak at about 11pm. Our instructors let us have a coffee and they were going to take us to another place for dinner. As luck would have it, when we piled into this minivan which was going to ferry us around, the driver finds that he can't put the van into reverse. Murphy has struck again!! Anyway, they resolve the problem after a couple of minutes and we get ferried to this place where we have the BEST bamboo rice and rendang ever. Then it was off to Base camp.

Base Camp:
Base camp is an unfinished structure on a piece of land at Ulu Terong. Basically it's go the foundations, roof and the wooden framework of a house and nothing else. There are tarps affixed to the wooden battens and those were our walls. We go in and appropriate a bit of space for ourselves and we are instructed to unpack everything in our packs for an inspection. The instructors come around and start confiscating our gear. I was left with: one extra set of clothes (shirt, pants, sock, panty), first aid kit, torch, my groundsheet (had to chose either the groundsheet or my sleeping bag -- I chose the groundsheet; the sleeping bag would have been useless in the rain without the groundsheet). We were then issued with a parang, sharpening stone, 5 matches, 1 small candle, 1 half of a hexamine tablet, 4 packets of instant noodles, 1 orange and 1 tin of sardines. I was stripped of my swiss army knife (I never felt more naked in my life!! I mean REALLY -- that must have been the first time I've spent more than a day without my swiss army knife.) and my survival kit which had firestarter, signal mirror etc. etc. So ok, this is not going to be one of those situations where I am going to have the assurance of my backup gear.

We sleep at about 1am and at 5 am some irritating alarm goes off -- we think the instructors might have set it to disrupt our sleep so that we are pushed a little physically.