Everest: The Art of the Possible

The Art of the Possible: Today marks the 25th anniversary of the first successful Singapore ascent of Everest. At 0558am Nepal time, Edwin Siew stood on the top in near perfect conditions. A half hour later, Swee Chiow, with our 3rd and 4th summit Sherpas reached the top. Together with Kami Rita ( yes, that one), Fura Dorjee, Nawang Phurba, and Dorje Phulilie Sherpa; they made history. For me, the privilege lay in my leading the team to success despite the odds. When I launched the project in 1994, the first contributor to the the nearly 1 million dollars needed, Singapore Pools, put $30,000 into the kitty. By comparison when the Malaysians announced their own national expedition to do it for the first time, they received $300,000 right away.

Ultimately, the monies were raised painfully over 3 years from mostly private sponsors and much of the expenses in 1994-1997 covered out of our own pockets. I forget to mention the 110 rejection letters we received from the the biggest and some of the best known Singapore companies and multinationals. If you had a self-esteem problem, this was not the job for you. If you didn't like being made fun of, this was not the goal for you. Also, the regular, mocking articles about the chances of our success were printed in mass media and online news. Leading camping shops would leave up mocking cartoons and such stuff on their notice boards. Social media did not exist then, but it would have been probably worse with them. You simply learned to tune out the noise of the rabble, and as Churchill said, keep focused on your journey rather than picking up stones to face every barking dog.

On May 19th, when the first attempt had failed, letters published in the main broadsheets again questioned the sporting exercise in a way that was never done to other million-dollar sporting failures in other games in Singapore. Somehow, many in our nation were the perfect armchair mountaineers. When the team succeeded, we received 64 congratulatory messages from our the globe. many had been following our progress and had tuned in to also check in with their friends’ progress as we were one of the few fully equipped teams that year in terms of satellite communications and email access. Only one email was negative, and it was from a Singaporean. "I don’t believe you guys climbed it”, he wrote. “where is the proof. where is the evidence?”. As the team was still their way down and not exactly completely free of the dangers of the peak, I restrained myself. 2 days later, the main broadsheet in Singapore, The Straits Times, published the triumphant photos and news on the cover of the paper. Then I wrote back. All I said was “Buy today’s copy of The Straits Times”. Never heard back from the idiot again.

Rarely have I found giving critics this kind of middle finger more satisfaction. For a lot of my life, I’ve lived it with people saying why I couldn't, rather than could do something. I loved to prove them wrong.

Since 1998, there have been at least 4 substantial efforts to attempt to climb Mt Everest by teams, and numerous individual efforts through commerical guiding offerings. There have been few, large team, ground-up efforts for more than a decade. The sheer cost and effort of getting more than yourself up the mountain; working with people with different agendas. the extended and uncertainty that the climb would happen - means it is unlikely there will anything remotely like the 1998 climb ever happening again.

The late President Ong Teng Cheong, and our Expedition Patron would say later in 1999: "some people make headlines while others make history. I would say that the Mt Everest Expedition did both.”

Here’s a tip of my hat to all those inside and outside my team who aided, encouraged, supported us both spiritually and physically to achieve the dream. Never let anyone tell you that you are not enough.