Author: sarahbmalik

fashion · travel

Climbing Kinabalu

sarahbmalikLeave a comment
Smiling from delirium.
 Smiling from delirium inspired by lack of oxygen. 

I want to die. But first I want to kill my editor, then the PR woman, then the smug athletes racing past me.

It is this train of morbid thoughts that sustains me as I struggle up South-East Asia’s highest peak – Mount Kinabalu.

It is dark, about 2.30am and freezing. I have my thermals on but quickly discard them as the energy needed for the climb generates body heat.

I am aching in places I didn’t know existed. I am finding new reservoirs of endurance as my mind baulks at the miles still above me, illuminated in the dark by the twinkling trail of headlights as climbers crawl to the summit.

But I am not in the mood to appreciate the beauty of the scene – the stately neighbouring peaks and wispy white clouds enveloping us as we ascend into the sky.

The mountain is in Kota Kinabalu, Borneo in the state of Sabah, about two hours flight from the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur.

It stands 4,095m above sea level and to conquer the beast requires a round 17km two-day trek.

Mt Kinabalu is regarded as holy by the local Kadazan people who believe it is a resting place of the spirits of those who have died.

The Kadazan perform regular ceremonies to protect climbers attempting the trek.

That a team of people are praying for my well-being calms me down.

We start Day One at 8am on Ground Zero ready to scale a 6km trail made of steep formed steps and large rocks.

The climb operator, Mountain Torq, provides our group of journalists with a guide, Taising Samadin who becomes my personal saviour.

Taising is a 55-year-old Malaysian man who has been conquering the mountain for over 30 years.

He has smiling eyes and accompanies me patiently through rock falls, tricky crevices and hallucination-inducing altitude.

He is my Tenzing Norgay in the Everest-like battle for this non-sporty beginner to accomplish the impossible – reach the summit before sunrise the next day.

We reach the Mountain Torq’s Pendant hut at base camp at around 2pm where we will spend the night and then prepare for the final haul of the journey the next day.

I am feeling weak and mumble to the group something about “this not being my thing” and staying at base camp.

The group (all men of superior physical strength) look at me in pity.

Georgia, the PR woman, assures me it is my choice to go on.

There is only after all 2.7km left to reach the summit. It would be a shame to stop now.

But it is the last leg which is the steepest, with more climbing and using ropes to scale steep rock in high altitude.

I think of my story and the impossible triumph. I think of who I represent – women, the unfit, the fearful.

I must do it for them.

Taising tells me to hold his hand, I grab him like a liferaft as he navigates my climb through our last kilometre.

We have done the scary rope climbing and now are doing the steady upward climb across smooth rock, our legs like lead.

We have passed the checkpoint where those deemed unfit are turned back or voluntarily retire.

But the idea of going back through those ropes is more painful than going forward.

I munch on the granola bars with Taising as we silently scale forward.

The summit looms ahead but is still so desperately far.

It is a sheer almost vertical rocky drop which stands separately on the flat part of the mountain.

Finally, I am at the top. I understand why this mountain is considered sacred.

We are on top of the world, with the orange red colours of daybreak bathing us, high above the clouds.

I feel like dying. But this time in a good way.

My satisfaction at having reached the summit is dampened by realising we still have to go down.

Many climbers maintain that the steep 8.7km trek back down the mountain is the most difficult as jelly knees struggle to get a grip on slippery rock.

I take my time hobbling down.

When I see the team back at the hut, they are pleased and proud of my accomplishment, especially since being lean, mean climbing machines even they found the trek an intense challenge.

If you are considering the trek be sure to cushion your journey in the comfort of five-star luxury.

We land in Shangri-La’s Rasa Ria resort post climb and are rewarded with a luxurious room with an outdoor hot tub, spa massages and attentive room service that provides a welcome balm to our exhaustion.

Our preparation for the climb was spent lounging in Sutera Harbour’s Magellan Sutera hotel in Borneo.

Sutera Habour resort provides adventure packages to the mountain and to Poring Hot Springs where you can rest your weary limbs in hot baths in the World Heritage listed Kinabalu Park rainforest.

It hurts to walk but the pain wears away as amnesia sets in and I start to grasp my achievement.

I am quick to share my mountain war stories to whoever will listen, bragging unashamedly about my triumph in Borneo.

I find that every Malay I meet has a mountain story – those who have climbed, those who failed and those who are thinking of climbing.

We share strategies, stories and memories.

I wave around my certificate of completion.

I find I am now part of an exclusive club – those who have reached the summit.

IF YOU GO:

Malaysia Airlines flies 47 times a week from Australia to Kuala Lumpur and has regular connections to Kota Kinabalu.

To book a holiday to Malaysia, call Flight Centre on 1300-939-414 to book or visit: www.flightcentre.com.au/world-travel/malaysia.

* The writer was a guest of Malaysian Airlines, Sutera Harbour Resort and Shangri-La Rasa Ria resort in Borneo.

blogs · books · culture

Pleasures of reading

sarahbmalikLeave a comment

I’ve recently made the transition to nine to five life of the worker and I find myself trying to fit my reading around the rhythms of my new life. A few chapters on the train in the morning through bleary eyed half sleep, a few on the way back squashed in peak hour traffic. Some more snatches of reading in between skimming the papers and keeping up to date with work reading.

 The kind of reading I do has changed too. I find myself attracted to stories of utopias and dystopias. There’s something about being settled in a pattern that makes one attracted to the alternate visions of reality (if anyone knows where I can find a second hand copy of Brave New World let me know!)

 There’s no time anymore to scour second hand bookshops and stay up enthralled in new book when you come home exhausted (even from a job I love) and fall asleep at depressingly early hours.  There’s no more languor of endless escapism enraptured in a new world.

A lot of  friends tell of similar experiences. When they start working or have kids its easy to become overwhelmed with the responsibilities of their new life and time to read for pleasure becomes scarce.  Or conversely pregnancy or illness provide an unexpected opportunity to indulge in what has become a forgotten pleasure.

 It made me think,  is reading an essentially bourgeois activity for students and those with endless leisure time, kind of like golf? Or is there something more essential about it? I always thought there was something egalitarian about reading, more so than any other art form being so varied and relatively accessible.

I often wonder why humans find art so essential. Is it because we are essentially social animals needing to communicate, express ourselves and understand others? Or is there something about seeing life reflected that helps us give meaning to our experiences?  

I always find myself out of sorts when I haven’t read something purely pleasurable for a while. It’s like something is missing and I need to come out of myself and see the world through another person’s eyes. Then there is the aesthetic pleasure of simply enjoying the contours of a perfectly formed piece of prose that invokes exotic scents and colours from the ordinary and extraordinary aspects of life.

Why do you read? How has your reading changed through different phases of your life?

From ABC bookshow blog

books · culture

Literary heroes and villains

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We all know them. They are those characters in books who feel like real people, who live on with you well after you finish the book. Their thoughts mirror your own; their struggles resonate with you and leave you ruminating. Or conversely they infuriate you and challenge you to think differently. Here are my top five:

1. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte’s ‘Jane Eyre’)

It probably helps if you are brainy, angsty teenager suffering from an identity crisis to really ‘feel’ Jane, but anyone who feels they were not blessed with life’s advantages can empathise with Bronte’s heroine.  Lonely and poor, orphan Jane forges her way from a cruel boarding school to love and independence.  Even when she falls for Mr Rochester, she has the confidence to negotiate the terms of their equal partnership.  She is not beautiful, wealthy or connected but she has self-respect damn it, and that’s why she is No.1.

2. Raskolnikov (Dostoevsky’s ‘Crime and Punishment’)

The tortured soul of Dostoevsky’s classic, Raskolnikov’s journey from his philosophical experiment to eventual redemption, is the ultimate in existential literature (the only other exception being Dostoevsky’s other foray into The Meaning of Life ‘The Brothers Karamazov’.)  If you have been a starving student in Sydney’s overblown rental markets, you will feel Raskolnikov’s pain (and the Russian winter too, viscerally.)

3. Atticus Finch (Harper Lee’s ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’)

Some may like their bad boys, your Dorian Gray’s and Heathcliff’s (two who were hotly contested for this list), but I’ve always loved the noble man. Atticus is the ultimate straight shooter, a widower who uses his skills as a lawyer to controversially stand up for justice by defending a black man accused of rape in America’s segregationist south. It is Atticus’ love for his children, his integrity and quiet humility that make him a winner on my list

3. Elizabeth Bennett (Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’)

Bright and beautiful, Elizabeth Bennett, the heroine of Austen’s classic, is beloved precisely because she has the confidence to be haughty despite the manifest disadvantages of being a woman in Victorian England and coming from a somewhat dysfunctional family.  Ms Bennett wins because she is another strong woman who has the courage to navigate her own destiny within and even transcending the limitations of her circumstances and unlike the earnest Jane, she does it with wit and style.  When she is not trading barbs with her love interest Darcy, she’s laughing up a social custom or absurdity.

4. Channu (Monica Ali’s Brick Lane)

The Bengali husband in Monica Ali’s Man Booker prize short-listed novel Brick Lane, Channu is a favourite, because he is complex and nuanced. One of those characters one cannot help loving and hating, sometimes at the same time. It would have been easy to relegate him to the 2-D cliché of the overbearing patriarch, but Ali’ genius lay in her ability to give even her make even her  ‘villainous’ character sympathetic,  flawed and human.

5. Mrs Dalloway (Virginia Woolf’s ‘Mrs Dalloway’).

The wife of a Tory MP who ‘had parties to cover the silence’, Clarissa Dalloway is chosen, because despite being conventional and insipid, she loves life and gives an insight into the sometimes uncomfortable mind of comfortable privilege. We meet Mr and Mrs Dalloway fleetingly in Woolf’s first novel ‘The Voyager’ and are immediately intrigued.  She is one of those superficial, yet mysterious people you’ve always wanted to be able to decode and somehow get inside their head.  We know Mrs Dalloway is more than meets the eye because she attracts interesting people like the marauding Peter Walsh and the once outrageous Sally Seton. She’s also an archetype, the natural socialite and gravitational centre from which everyone is brought together.

Who are your favourite characters?

From ABC bookshow blog

blogs · books

What is your type?

sarahbmalikLeave a comment

My previous post looked at how what we read, wrongly or rightly creates a perception of who we are. Superficial though it is, have you noticed yourself finding a lot about someone’s personality by what they read? Here are some outrageous generalisations on a few personalities I prepared earlier!

The Capitalist

The Capitalist thinks the The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is the best book ever written. They would rather watch the movie version than read the book.  Also likes– crime fiction, Dale Carnegie.

The New Ager

New Ager has the zeal of the newly converted and awash in pseudo-spiritualism. Men may be vegetarian and girls may wear beads and make constant references to ‘The Universe’.  The New Ager loves Kahlil Gibran, Paulo Coelho, The Celestine prophecy. Also likes– India, self-help. 

 The Bonnet Girl

BG is named as such for her love of Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters. She is an idealistic romantic who watches period dramas on the ABC and has fantasies of a modern day Mr Darcy sweeping her off her feet. She often engages in mock-Victorian speak in everyday conversation and thinks it’s hilarious (though nobody else does). Also likes– Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James and Edith Wharton.

The Existentialist

The Existentialist follows the prophets Camus and Sartre. They are postmodern, melancholy with nihilistic tendencies, often ruminating on the futility of life and human condition in general. The Existentialist has Marxist/revolutionary  tendencies.  Also likes– Russian writers, Kafka, Che Guevara.

 The Feminist

The feminist feels morally conflicted about enjoying artists that don’t jive with her politics. She often judges a writer by his personal life (only the male writers are judged.)  She loves Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, Maya Angelou and Alice Munro and will often go into rants about patriarchal hegemony.  The Feminist makes a good pairing with The Existentialist and despises but is also strangely drawn to Cowboy/Seducer.  

The Cowboy

The Cowboy thinks of himself as a freedom loving non-conformist. Cowboy fancies masculine writers such as Jack Kerouac and Norman Mailer. He thinks of homelessness as a fashion statement and may justify cheating on philosophical grounds. Also likes- Hemingway, Updike, Steinbeck. The more idealistic Cowboys are inspired by Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

The Seducer

The Seducer is an unapologetic libertine who find their inspiration in Byron and Oscar Wilde. He may actually think he IS Byron or Oscar Wilde. The Seducer enjoys saying droll and witty things in order to impress and is depressingly self-conscious.  Also likes– Marquis de Sade, Choderlos de  Laclos, Kama sutra and the romantic poets.  Attracted to– Everyone.

The Sci-Fi geek

The Sci-Fi geek enjoys all things science fiction.  They are usually massive Lord of the Rings fans. Generally warm, nerdy, loyal, uber-smart and  mathematically minded. Also likes– Star Wars, Star Trek, astronomy and obscure fields of interest like nanotechnology. Sci-Fi geek and Bonnet girl are a match made in heaven.

The Witch

The Witch will refer to herself proudly as such and regards herself as somewhat of a femme fatale. She adores Anais Nin and has a fascination with erotic literature and the occult. Also likes–  Lolita, horror novels, Stephen King,  Lady Chatterley’s lover.  Attracted to– the Seducer.

The Serious Literary Person

SLP can quote from the Iliad and the Odyssey, and will often drop in conversation their love of Proust and Ulysses.  SLP disdains all things commercial and will often hunt for the most obscure literary titles to show off their encyclopaedic knowledge. SLP enjoys getting into arguments and generally has a background in criticism or academia.  Also likes– guilty pleasures , hates- the Capitalist. Attracted to– themselves.

Do you see yourself or anyone else in one or more of the types? Can you think of anymore ‘types’?

From ABC Bookshow blog

books · culture

Guilty pleasures

sarahbmalikLeave a comment

When I was first invited to do this blog I admit being slightly apprehensive about my (lack of) literary pedigree.  I was a bit like a fast food junkie when it came to books, my lack of discrimination seeing me everywhere from the literary equivalent of high end cuisine to slumming it in the book version of McDonalds when it came to getting my next fix. I never felt any qualms about this state of affairs, always feeling that books were supposed to enjoyable and delicious, even scandalous and never laborious.

A BBC article recently interrogated critic and academic John Sutherland on the ‘guilty pleasures’ phenomenon. In the article Sutherland admits there is a kind of  ‘naughty’  pleasure in enjoying what feels like illicit reading material. He admitted to having a stash of bad airport novels on his bedside table and a secret love of mega-selling UK  novelist  Jilly Cooper. “It’s strange how embarrassed you get about what you’re reading or enjoying. There’s always this feeling that there’s this school mistress over your shoulder grading you,” he said.

The most amusing is the article’s suggestion  that reading ’smart’ books increases a person’s  level of attractiveness. Breaking up over a love of Pushkin may seem extreme, but is this reaction perhaps another reason why our less admirable book addictions are best kept in the closet?

In fact some of the greatest novels were condemned by critics as ’gutter’ literature. Novels  like Nabakov’s Lolita and D.H Lawrence’s  Lady Chatterley’s lover popular underground appeal lay precisely in the fact that they were initally banned and disapproved of.

So I am here to make my confessions.  I make this declaration to the professors and book boffins, to the writing students and reviewers. To anyone who expects me to be anything except a book lover not expert. The difference being that a lover is full of moods and qualms, whims and compulsions, where nothing is mandatory and everything is shared. On the other hand an expert makes pronouncements, declarations on language and technique boasting a profound encyclopedic range and knowledge of which I must confess some inadequacy.

I confess to never reading Homer’s Iliad or the Odyssey.  I confess to trying to crack James Joyce’s Ulysses several times but failing (atlhough this is not so uncommon). I confess to coming of age to Sweet Valley High, the Babysitter’s Club, Virginia Andrews and Anne Rice.  “Chic-lit’ has also graced my bookshelves, my favourite being Sophie Kinsella’s Shopaholic series.

I confess to devouring anything in a doctor’s waiting room or bargain basement table.  I confess to having read Barbara Taylor Bradford and Jackie Collins and even those horribly racist “Behind/beneath/exposing/forbidding the veil” melodramas (only to denounce them of course!)

And yes I even confess to reading Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and here is the depressing bit… actually kind of enjoying it.

Ah I feel so much better now.

If that hasn’t seen you fleeing in horror, feel free to join me on what should be lively and entertaining musings on what we hate and love and why.

So now it is your turn. What are your guilty pleasures?

From ABC bookshow blog