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Singapore - A city in constant motion
Douglas Oliveiro - The musician
David Lim - Climbing new mountains |
David Lim - climbing new mountains
By Alistair Harding
First published: Destinations Singapore 2008/09
I had no idea what David Lim looked like before I met him. I had seen photographs of course. As Singapore's first professional mountaineer, Lim had been the subject of many a summit snap. But, it must be said that climbing jackets, hats and goggles are not passport photo material.
To begin this story, it had seemed appropriate to meet at the start of Lim's many expeditions. His training ground where he and his climbing mates put in the hard work before taking on some of the world's highest peaks. Bukit Timah Hill. That's right - Hill. It stands at a foreboding 164 metres tall. At some times of the day it casts a shadow over the whole carpark.
I watched after-work joggers disappear up the paved track leading to the summit. Then, barely 20 minutes later, I watched them all return, drenched in sweat. And all the time I wondered how this could be the place that prepared Singapore's first successful conquerors of Mount Everest.
It is though. I knew this because Lim has written two books detailing his climbing exploits. Both tell of his treks up and down Bukit Timah Hill's many staircases, complete with weight-laden packs. And both also tell of the successes Lim and his climbing mates had in rather less tropical environs. Mount Everest is the obvious one. Out of his two attempts, Lim was never one of the lucky blokes to make it to the top, both times being the target of injury and bad luck.
But there were others conquered. Kenya's Mount Kilimanjaro (5895m). The Himalayan giant and sixth highest mountain in the world, Cho Oyu (8201m). Turkey's Mount Ararat (5137m) and Argentina's Aconcagua (6962m), the highest mountain outside of Asia.
There were many others of course. And you could categorise them in many different ways. You could go from tallest to smallest. Or you could do it the chronological way. But once you meet Lim, it's hard not to categorise them into "before" and "after".
As in, "before" he contracted Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS) and came so close to death he couldn't even breath without the help of a machine. And "after" he regained enough functionality in his legs that he could learn to walk again.
Which is how I was able to recognise him as he emerged from the shadows of the Bukit Timah Hill carpark.: "A man with a limp like that can only be David Lim," I say in greeting.
Everest
As a young man, Lim says that he was first interested in climbing when he began to read mountaineering books. Then he started climbing rock faces, like the old Hindhede Quarry one at Bukit Timah. It was only a matter of time before Lim began climbing real mountains.
In those days, the Singapore mountaineering community was limited to a dedicated bunch of rock-climbers and a small, but expanding, group who had actually climbed in snow.
Lim's role model in those days was a man called Lawrence Lee. In Lee, Lim saw all he wanted to be. A climber with the experience to tell true stories and the wit to keep an audience.
It was Lee that had floated the idea to send an expedition of Singaporeans to Everest in the early 1990s, but after one too many rebuffs from various official bodies, Lee gave up. Lim, with the advantage of youthful enthusiasm, took up the cause and in May 1994 he received the Everest climbing permit from the Nepalese government.
Four years later on 25 May 1998, two members of that expedition, first Edwin Siew, then Khoo Swee Chiow, had the distinction of becoming Singapore's first to the top of the world. For Lim, it was a bittersweet moment. Injured and unable to summit himself, he was still the leader of Singapore's first successful ascent of Everest. In the back of his mind though, he must have thought "what if?".
The reception in Singapore at Changi Airport was unexpected for Lim. Thousands of people turned up to cheer their heroes home. It seemed to Lim that his expedition had achieved higher goals than just conquering Everest.
"I think that we did more than climb a mountain. I think we proved to the average Singaporean that this small island can achieve big things."
Proof of life
"Scars," Lim says, "are proof that we have lived."
We are sitting in a quiet spot at Bukit Timah's Ranger Station and by the looks of it, he has lived a lot. His most obvious scar sits at the base of his neck, jutting into his windpipe. It is the scar left by the pipe that helped him breathe as he battled Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS).
GBS is, in short, a freak of nature. There is a chance for all of us of 1-in-100,000 of contracting this condition. In Lim's case - an extremely rare one - the odds were lengthened to 1-in-2-million.
In this particular stroke of bad luck, a stomach bug that Lim had caught in Kathmandu as the Singapore team returned from Everest was mistaken by his body for something else.
Within weeks, his body began attacking its own nervous system. Lim ended up in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of Singapore General Hospital, lapsing into a state of paralysis.
He couldn't move. He couldn't eat. He couldn't even breathe for himself. A machine did that for him. And because of that machine, he couldn't talk either.
"My friends thought it was great," jokes Lim, a man renowned for being talkative. "'At last', they said, 'David is quiet'."
But apart from the little jokes, Lim was in a bad way. One of his doctors helpfully suggested later on that GBS "is the worst thing you can get, and not die from ".
Lim did recover. First there was 42 days in the ICU. Then about a month in a general hospital ward. Finally some rehab time at Tan Tock Seng Hospital. In total Lim spent about six months hospitalised in various states of paralysis.
After only a few weeks home, his parents left him briefly once they felt he could fend for himself.
On his first night alone, Lim went to the refrigerator for a bottle of orange juice his mother had left for him. Lim laughs now at his struggle to open that orange juice. His hands, left weak by paralysis could not turn the lid to open the jar. A simple quiet night turned into a feverish quest to open the jar and drink the juice.
True to his character, Lim did open the orange juice. If a journey of a thousand miles begins with one small step, that was it.
New summits
"Most people have no idea what their potential is," Lim says in his trademark thousand-words-a-minute style.
"I would say that most people only ever realise about 50 per cent of their true abilities."
Following his battle with GBS, Lim worked like a man possessed to find his new potential.
First he wrote a book, detailing the Everest success. Then he began climbing again with the aid of special foot braces. He returned to Bukit Timah to train. By 2001, with a string of successful summits behind him, he was back at the base of Everest.
But heartbreak would strike Lim again. About 200m from the penultimate camp leading to the top, he was pushed back by high winds and exhaustion. With that, Lim and Everest reached a kind of modus vivendi.
"The climb showed me where my physical limits lie," he says without a hint of remorse.
So Lim returned to Singapore to focus on his business - Everest Motivation Team - training corporate types in the arts of leadership, motivation and change-management.
Clients include Fortune 1000 companies from Singapore and around the world, eager to give employees their chance to hear the hard-learnt wisdom of Lim.
"The lessons you learn climbing mountains like Everest can be used in all walks of life - especially in business," Lim says. "There is no better place to learn how to deal with pressure than at 7000 metres in a snowstorm. What is the problem? How do we solve the problem now? Let's look at what matters right now.
"When we get down, we'll deconstruct what happened and figure out how to do it better. But in the midst of battle is not the time to start apportioning blame."
But while the corporate world now consumes him like Everest used to, it's impossible to take the mountaineer out of him. As we begin taking pictures, he points out that he dressed in company colours especially for the shoot.
"That's one bright shirt," I say, commenting on the dazzling orange hue.
"Of course! It's the best colour to be lost on a mountain in," he replies.
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