Crocker Range and Microclimate

Mt. Kinabalu, the summit of the Crocker Range.

In the early 1960s, as a child I travelled the Ranau-Jesselton road, and the Penampang-Tambunan-Keningau road in the late 1960s, that traverse the Crocker Range. As the oldies in this group can attest, those were newly built roads then, still mostly just red earth routes with only a few sections laid with river stone gravel.

Now what has changed today are the roads are much better, but we have lost something too: the microclimate afforded by the much thicker growths and extensive coverage of virgin forests.

Travelling across the Crocker Range felt much cooler then because it was colder: rain clouds and mists extended far lower towards the plains. Kundasang was misty and so too was Sunsuron in Tambunan. Even Ranau town, as was Tambunan town, was shrouded in morning mists on most days, at least until the sun was higher—one could barely see the old Liwagu bridge near Ranau town while crossing it in the morning.

Easter Island, Chile in the far South Pacific has a few trees now, but researchers, having done many pollen studies, showed that it was heavily forested at one time. So why were the old Easter Islanders such idiots to even want to cut down the last groove of trees (probably used to transport and erect the last of the giant stone heads—chieftains’ vanity projects, these seem to be)?

It was a case of “creeping normality,” the example above being shown by Pulitzer Prize winner and author, Jared Diamond in Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005). It is a process by which a major change can be accepted as normal and acceptable if it happens slowly through small, often unnoticeable, increments of change. People tend to think only within the span (and experience) of their lifetimes—call it a species of “recency bias,” if you will.

I wonder if one day the temperate vegetables of Kundasang will refuse to grow because of deforestation and climate change.

The summit of the Crocker Range in 2024.
Picture owner:
Published here with the kind permission of Ankol Tom
https://www.facebook.com/ankoltom

Movie: The Sound of Freedom

The kind of movie that producers salivate to make:

Made at a cost of $14.5 million, now (20-03-23) $110,314,440 at the box office, and it has not even released yet outside of the U.S. Even Tom Cruise’s latest Mission Impossible movie (costs, $290 million, now (20-03-23) $273,832,336 at the box office, including world markets) will not get close to that rate of return.

Jim Caviezel may be familiar to you as the main actor in “The Passion of Christ.”

Probably can only watch this via streaming in Malaysia, hopefully soon.

“I Love You Too Much.”

I am an aspiring screenwriter, kind of.  Although we see a lot on the silver screen seems to be throwaway lines of speech, believe me, there is a lot of thought given to each line of dialogue. “Tell me something I can hold on to forever and never let go.” ^quote. And there’re many life lessons to be learned if you care to pay attention. Here’s a lesson about letting go.

My first-born—a bundle of joy, that she was. There, a bawling healthy pink lump of humanity I carried home for the first time.

Then, as is the course of all beings, she grew. And grew: pampers, Enfalac, toddling, school, swimming pools, hockey, university, then work. And in between, learning to use knives. And cooking. And more. Then, driving a car.

I am a kind of permissive parent. I believe in letting kids do stuff to learn. Experiences and lessons stick more when they are allowed to actually do it. I let them be—to learn. As I told one parent, you cannot build stuff by subtraction—they don’t learn if you constantly tell them, don’t do this, don’t do that. That’s taking away stuff, not adding. But I tried to be always there: a watchful eye; a standby pick-me-up, just in case; a parachute. There were times when I was not there—who wasn’t when you were a full-time working parent?

Handling knives as a 6-year old? No worries, as long as you don’t stab yourself in the heart. Frying French fries as an 8-year old? That’s ok; you will learn soon enough that hot oil do pop out of the pan. Cook your first Maggie mee? Sure. You will cook a lot for yourself in the years to come.

And then, it’s time to learn to drive a car. First, driving instructors, “P” licence, driving around in circles at the Likas Stadium parking lot, chaperoned driving.

Finally, it’s time to go solo: first day to drive to work, alone, 14 miles away from home to Pacific Sutera, fighting the early morning rush hour jams.

I told my daughter, “Marion, I will tailgate you in my car till you reach Pacific Sutera.”

“Thank you, Daddy!”

When some of my siblings heard about it later, they laughed at me, saying, “You should trust her lah!”

They misunderstood me. It wasn’t about trust, or lack thereof. It wasn’t about not letting go. Part of being a daddy or a mommy is learning how and when to let go.

I once told my daughter, “Always remember, wherever you are, you can always go home. Wherever I am in this world, that’s your home. I don’t care whether you are successful or not. Happy or sad, old or young, rich or poor, married or single, don’t feel you can’t go home anymore.”

Back to the tailgating story: First time driving alone in the real roads is a one-time occurrence. We drivers have all experienced it. It’s exciting, trepidatious, and I believe, at least in the minds of new drivers, frankly dangerous. I am gonna drive into a drain. But soon enough she will be like me—a jaded and shop-worn driver, able to drive just with mental autopilot, and frankly seeing driving as a chore, not a potentially dangerous but exciting adventure.

I wanted her to know that not only daddy is together on this adventure but I had her back—that the parachute is right behind her, tailgating. Daddy had this only chance to demonstrate to her (at least in this context), and Daddy took it.

All was well with the 2-car convoy until… well what do you know, of all the days, the traffic lights near the Likas Basel Church died! The morning rush hour traffic was in a chaotic free-for-all, and she was caught in the middle of it. It took all of my willpower to not alight and “save” her. Gotta let go and let the little ones negotiate the bumps and jams on the road; there will be bigger ones in life later. The profound heartaches will come later. I wish that I can be there, hovering, tailgating.

These days she is driving her own car in the hectic roads of Kuala Lumpur.

Suffice to say she reached Pacific Sutera safely. Sometimes, it is about letting go, about ❤️. I wish mommy could have seen us.

^quoteThe Age of Adaline is a 2015 American romantic fantasy film directed by Lee Toland Krieger and starring Blake Lively.

Social Media and the Net Mobs

Football aside, part of the allure of going to a stadium-full of like- minded fans to watch a match is to be a member of an angry mob—to rant and to curse, to spill your bile on the villains, whomever that is, for the duration of the match—the blind referee, the hapless goalkeeper, the incompetent players, the cheating opposing team, whatever. So we scream, we show our middle fingers, and we moan for the whole duration of the match to our buddies in make-believe anger.

But, you know what, nothing really matters. It won’t cost you anything personally and nobody will die. It’s entertainment. We finish the game, stop for a pizza and go back to our quiet safe lives at home. Until the next match with MU.

That was what Vince McMahon provided when he built his WWE empire into a billion-dollar wrestling entertainment industry—the villains. We cursed the evil Undertaker while we cheered kilowatt-smile The Rock; we threw our arms up in disgust when Donald Trump decked McMahon outside the ring; we act ape-shit crazy when some villain wins with underhand moves while the stupid referee was distracted.

But we knew it was all make-believe—we knew no wrestler will die nor lives will be destroyed. Just something to while our time, to release real-life pressures, to watch our proxies act out our primal inclinations.

Now, we have something bigger than an WWE arena or football stadium to act out—it is with us 24/7: it is called Social Media. Facebook. WhatsApp. Twitter. Heard about MJ and exotic pets today? No? Of course not. That was last week’s programming.

Just rant away—go with the flow, be part of the faceless mob below Pilate’s praetorium, baying for blood. And oh, by the way, release Barabas; we are not exactly a heartless lot, you know.

Only this time, real lives and real reputations are at stake.

The problem with social media is it falsely amplifies a lot of things

Take for example Wawa. We all have been guilty of losing our temper once in a while. Some of us have uttered worse than her rhetorical “kasi telanjang kau.” Yet netizens have excoriated her in social media in the thousands and thousands. Now she is symbolically “kena telanjang” in a press conference. Is that over-reaction? Someone being vindictive? Pressured by social media?

Netizens spew their bile on social platforms because it is the easiest thing to act in order to do virtue-signaling—be one of them and show your righteous anger on Facebook and WhatsApp and move on to the next new shiny thing. It does not cost much. Just blah! Remember? Only a few days ago it was a lawyer and his exotic cows that filled the hatewaves.

One time or another, we are all guilty of squeezing the maximum self-righteous juice when we know we are absolutely right, and someone, conversely, is wrong. Most times, things are shades of grey—debatable and uncertain, but when we know we are right, there is the temptation to be self-righteous and feel entitled. And so, we feel we are, in every sense, justified to knock the wrong to a thousand pieces. To, in a manner of speaking, cut them to size. To be like God for once: infallible, and so what the heck, let me ride this horse called “wrath” to the maximum.

I can bet you in a few days time the virtue signaling will have moved on.

Sad, really.