<photo: leaving base camp at dawn, and going on final summit climb to the peak of Mount Elbrus, southern Russia> a base camp is a place where climbers gather their resources (food, equipment, supplies) before attempting to reach the summit of the mountain. base camps are safe places where climbers can plan how to reach the peak - what routes to take, the role of each climber, what to do when an accident happens, and when to turn around. to turn around means to give up without

<photo: abseiling training> approximately once every 4 years, one day is added to the month of February. with that we have 29 days in February and 366 days in that year. how did the leap year come about? it's a complicated affair but the net effect is that birthdays, anniversaries and other important dates that fall on 29 February can only be celebrated once every 4 years. 4 years seem to be a long time to wait for an important date to come around. when climbing a mountai

<photo: at 3653m, it's just 5 more minutes to the summit of mount kinabalu. (actually it's at least another 2 more hours)> the summit height of mount kinabalu is at 4,096m. in order to reach the summit, you must first arrive at the halfway point. and in order to reach the halfway point, you must arrive halfway to the halfway point - which is the one-quarter way point. you get the point (no pun intended) - in order to reach the summit of mount kinabalu, you need to reach t

<photo: dawn at the peak of Mount Rinjani, Lombok, Indonesia> in the book "Outliers", the author Malcolm Gladwell claims that the key to achieving mastery in any field is to practice for at least 10,000 hours. at 40 hours a week over 50 weeks a year, 10,000 hours would roughly translate to 5 years of practice. it has taken years of discussions, planning and disciplined execution to develop Singapore's national professional accountancy qualification programme. to be precise,

<photo: El Capitan, Yosemite National Park, USA> gold was discovered on 24 January 1848 in California. prior to this entirely random event, the population of San Francisco at that time was about 1,000 people. the random discovery of gold led to many people journeying to the west, one of which was Leland Stanford who made his fortune from the gold rush. unfortunately, Stanford's son died from an illness while on holiday in Italy. in memory of his son, Stanford built a unive

<photo: Mogao Caves, located on the Silk Route at the edge of the Gobi Desert in Gansu province, China> the Mogao Caves, also known as the Caves of a Thousand Buddhas, were built in the early first century. over one thousand caves were built over one thousand years. sculptures were carved out of the cave walls, then covered with clay and painted, together with intricate murals, among which are many masterpieces of Chinese art. Xuanzang, the legendary Buddhist monk whose 17-y

<photo: on the slopes of Mount Rinjani, Lombok> because of the altitude, mountains make their own weather. it's not easy to forecast the weather on mountains. unexpected thunderstorms, clouds moving in unexpectedly, snow, hailstones and the list goes on. the forecast for the economy in 2016 seems to be cloudy, with possible thunderstorms and limited visibility. we can't always see where we are going in life. we don't know if the dots will all join up. but the summit is alw

<photo: above the clouds at Mount Elbrus> have you ever looked at clouds and started to see shapes of animals or patterns? the human brain is an amazing thing - it searches for patterns even when there are none. life is a bit like that. you think you are going somewhere but actually you are going around in circles to nowhere. take a pause in life and see where you are. and take time to look at the clouds. #bcc #journey

<photo: peak of Mount Kinabalu> on 1 December 2015, almost 6 months after the earthquake hit Mount Kinabalu, we made our journey up the mountain to watch the sunrise again. we reached the summit of Mount Kinabalu, my fifth time, at 6.15am on 2 December 2015. why, you may ask me, do I want to climb the same mountain so many times? my answer - because each journey up the same mountain is different, even though the sunrise at the top is always the same. each journey is a diff