On uncertainty and fear

There’s something about uncertainty that throws us off. People generally like to know what they’re to do, where they’re going and how things are going to be like for a certain amount of time. Being uncertain brings with it fear of the unknown and I’d like to think that it’s this very fear that makes us edgy and causes our hearts to sink to the bottom of our stomachs as we think about things that are to come (or not, them being as uncertain as they are!).

Some writers have linked early man’s dabbling with primitive forms of religion as means of dealing with fear and uncertainty – we can’t really understand the unknown so we cook up supernatural means to explain those things away. While I could agree with this for a start, I’m aware that taking this to its logical conclusion would make some atheists very happy and many other people I know quite uncomfortable. But I digress…

While dealing with uncertain situations, we sometimes seek crutches to lean on and means of explaining why we’re in the state that we’re in. We sometimes forget that uncertainty is one of those annoying constants in our lives and how we deal with them determines how well we adjust to changes in life. I realised today after listening to a homily that we often hold ourselves back because of the fear that stems from uncertainty and lapse into the comfort of what we’re familiar with.

Standing on the precipice of significant change (and uncertainty), I too felt the fear that could be associated with things unknown but have grown to embrace it with a certain amount of trust, in myself and in the entire process that I will embark on. The more one fears, the more one will retreat into the comfort of what’s known and will never venture out. Shackleton famously set out from his icebound ship into the white unknown of the Antarctic – he conquered with endurance but had to face the spectre of failure and possible death in the inhospitable wilderness. But he did it anyway, stared fear in its ugly face and now sits in the history books as a man who led and explored without fear.

Franklin Roosevelt famously reminded us that ‘we have nothing to fear but fear itself’ and that rings true for all of us. We should stop ourselves from fearing  and start living. So we shall. Shouldn’t we?

A hundred to go

Back on the wagon after the longest time but am back with a little twist. There’s an expiry date of sorts for this blog and though I do regret not having written much over the past year, I guess starting up again represents a writing renaissance of sorts for me. If this preamble seems a tad ominous and somewhat mysterious, it’s intentionally so and will stay as such for the time being. I’m not quite ready to demystify things for the moment so will be writing in broad oblique strokes that I so enjoy.

It’s funny how one yearns and looks forward to something so much only to be at a loss as to hwo to deal with it when it actually does happen. I do realise that I’m being vague about things again but suffice to say that I’ve been at crossroads for a while and after having crossed them, I can see the path ahead fairly clearly but am still a little unsure as I take the first tentative steps down the road. People always tell you not to look back when embarking on something (Orpheus would have much to say about this), not to look down when you’re at a high place and to forge ahead when the opportunity arises. Easier said than done I say and it’s seems to be human nature to yearn for things that one is used to.

The pensiveness is starting again and as one looks towards the exciting yet daunting future, one realises that the oft quoted cliché about change being a constant does indeed ring true. One cannot help but worry about what is to come but at the same time recognise that things do sometimes happen for good reasons and change is no different.

100 more. The countdown begins – to change and a welcome newness.

Getting an Uplift

Been a while since I’ve updated this and I think many would have thought that I’ve allowed the blog to wither away, unloved and untended. While the later may be true to an extent, the sad truth of life back home is that one notices the time available to sit and think often gets whittled away to nothing as work, commitments and commuting takes up so many waking hours already. Excuses aside, the lack of time to oneself and the subsequent inability to reflect has taken its toll on my delicate psychological constitution. Well, maybe not so delicate but you get the idea.

With that in mind, I took an evening off a couple of nights ago to boldly step into a cinema, something that I haven’t done in almost half a year. I was determined to catch Pixar’s Up before it ended its run in the cinemas here. Even though one could easily wait for the video release – there’s something to be said for making the special trip to watch the show on the big screen. And I was glad to have made the trouble.

Going Up and getting out. (image from The New Yorker)

The show lived up to all the hype that surrounded it and more. It gave me the slight bump upwards that I felt I needed at this time and gave me much to think about at the same time. The plot’s pretty simple – a 78 year old widower ties thousands of balloons to his house to float it to ‘Paradise Falls’ in South America to fulfil the dreams that he and his wife shared. On the way, he picks up an over-enthusiastic boy Russell, who was part of a Boyscout-like Wilderness Explorer group, a huge bird-of-paradise and meets a bunch of talking dogs and a villain. Formulaic it may seem on the outset but definitely not in its execution.

**Warning – there be spoilers below!**

The one thing that struck me about the movie was the development of the characters and the subtle commentary about what one should do about one’s dreams. We should all have our hopes, dreams and ambitions but as with everything in the world, these dreams should not remain static in the light of things that change around us. Carl Frederikson started life admiring one Charles Muntz, explorer and adventurer extraordinaire – his meeting of his childhood hero later in his life started with wonder and incredulity but that too changed to horror and no small amount of disillusionment as he saw the darker side to Muntz’s adventuring. Carl dealt with it first by running away but that too led to repercussions as his younger friend Russell tried to take Muntz on alone. He too had to deal with the choice of freeing a friendly bird-of-paradise (to go back to her brood of chicks) from the clutches of Muntz or save his house from a fire set by the latter to distract Carl. He chose initially to save the house but Russell’s actions to go of on his own to save the bird

Carl soon realised that his own goals of putting the house atop the Falls as he had planned paled in comparison to the more pressing needs of the present. What followed was the action packed climax of the movie filled with improbable physics (how can a floating house overtake a powered blimp?), funny fights (two septuagenarians locked in hand-to-hand combat with swords and walking sticks) and poignant symbolism as well. Carl realised from looking at a treasured album that he shared with his wife that their dreams of ‘adventure’ though unfulfilled in the normal sense was fulfilled through a full life together. His letting go of the house symbolised his letting go of the baggage that he carried with it since the passing of his beloved wife. The image of the house falling to the ground was an apt one to show how Carl managed to let go of his grief at not being able to get there with Ellie, his wife.

In a roundabout way, the movie reminds us about finding what our hopes and dreams are based on. Quite often, we pursue the outward manifestation of what our innermost hopes and dreams are without thinking about the whys and the hows of this. Just as Carl just wanted to honour the memory and love of his wife by landing the house on Paradise Falls, we too do things to chase things that we desire or think to be important to us. But when faced with hard decisions and a re-examination of what was truly important, even Carl had to realise that saving his new found friends was the greater good when compared to setting the house on a particular place. His actions to save the Russell and the bird honoured Ellie far more than the house landing correctly. It was this letting go and setting himself free that also transformed Carl from an old curmudgeonly gent to a happier person.

Our hopes and dreams can be simple – boiled down to their essence most of us want happiness and a certain amount of fulfilment. I’ve had to make some hard decisions as to the direction I think my life is leading and while the decisions weren’t too hard to make, it was what happened after the decisions were made that made were harder. Up gave me a little nudge to remind myself of the essence of these decisions and how all things will lead to happiness and fulfilment. Only if I allow it to.

Quarantine Files – Getting out

It’s finally happened – the clock ticked down to the time when the quarantine order ran out and I was faced with what I was looking forward to for the past week. Freedom. I must say that it was a little more anticlimactic that I expected – no fireworks or lined streets but it was nice nonetheless. I’ve heard the phrase ‘breath of freedom’ once before and didn’t quite realise what it meant till I stepped out the door and went down to the foot of the block. The air tasted different. Fresher and smelling of unbounded licence to move where I willed.

I took a slow almost somnambulistic jog round the neighbourhood in celebration. Slow because I wasn’t sure how much of the bug was still in my system but the speed also allowed me to get my bearings and reacquaint myself with the ‘outside world’. Being out of circulation for a while has made me much more appreciative of what’s outside (surprise surprise!) but has also given me a new insights into what people in similar situations go through.

I was fortunate enough to have been only really ill for about two days out of the time I was trapped at home. The rest of the time was spent pottering around trying to get some work or reading done. While I did chafe at the confinement, I realised that it was but me staying home because of an externally mandated requirement that would expire after a while. I was well enough to look forward to a time when I could get out.

I realised that my problems were small in comparison to those who were ill and didn’t know when or where they were going to get better. Putting myself in their shoes, I wouldn’t even begin to think about how I’d cope with something like that. As I mentioned in a previous post, we’re adaptable creatures that can change ourselves to suit the environments that we find ourselves in – I’m sure we would be able to adapt eventually but the process would be long and arduous. I got a hint of what life would be like in such a case and my heart goes out to all who are in such situations. You have my utmost respect for putting up with and adapting to what you have.

On a more cheerful note, with the end of the quarantine comes the start of normalcy again. If I was doing before this whole thing could be counted as normalcy…

Quarantine Files – The unbearable stillness of quarantine

Rather than bemoan the fact that I’m still under quarantine, have decided to take a slightly different tack in today’s post. I’ve come to realise a couple of things that may seem painfully obvious to us when I write it but these are also things that we often overlook when we’re busy and rushing around getting our lives in order. Sometimes we do need some time away from everything that we’re used to for us to actually start living.

Fight not, flow.
I tried to fight the feeling of boredom and the sense of helplessness at being at home with a litany of complaints about what this meant and how I couldn’t go about my normal life for seven long days. That created an unnecessary amount of angst and negative energy that just made the first day less pleasant. Learning to go with the flow and allowing oneself to appreciate the situation as it is and not struggle too much against what cannot be changed helped. My acceptance of my getting stuck at home without recourse to the world outside the front door allowed me to better appreciate what was actually here.

Busy is not the cure
The first couple of days at home were hard – I tried to fill them with as many things as I could and tired myself out unecssarily. It didn’t help that I was trying to fight an annoying virus within at the same time. I was on the email the whole day and was frantically doing my grading like my life depended on it, fearing boredom if I stopped. I quickly realised the futility of doing all that and slowed down. At the advice of my colleagues, I put an out-of-office message on the email and began doing things at a less frantic pace. It helped. Boredom didn’t quite take hold, I still managed to finish a huge chunk of work and got rid of that dreaded flu bug.

There is peace to be gained in silence.
I tried to keep to myself for the first couple of days when the risk of infection was much higher and consequently had to spend long hours in my room alone. Even meals were eaten in silence as I wanted to keep my parents flu-free. We often fear silence because our lives are filled with noises (which are sometimes neither sweet nor give delight) so we fill it with conversations, music, the TV anything. I realised that the peace that one gets in silence is immeasurable – we just need to allow ourselves to quieten ourselves to appreciate it.

And placidly I went, and have but a day to go before I am once again unleashed upon the poor unsuspecting world. And this time, I’m not just proof that pigs flu, am also pig flu proof.

Quarantine Files – On adaptation and atrophy

It’s been a long couple of days – though things are looking up now that the end’s in sight. Was told that ‘Hey, this is the weekend and you’re usually at home during the weekends’ and while this is true, I usually do step out of the flat a couple of times a day. One really doesn’t appreciate how much just stepping outdoors means until one’s stuck indoors for a long time. And in the grand scheme of things, four days isn’t a really long time either.

One adapts and I guess that’s one ability that we has humans have perfected to an art. Just as I took a while to adapt back to the pace of life (and work) back home, so did I have to quickly adapt to the fact that I was facing 7 days of life at home without any recourse to the outside. It meant changing the pace with which I normally do things – the lack of a commute to work meant that I could start getting things done earlier. I had all the comforts of home and could choose to rest anytime I liked, though the weather seemed to thwart all attempts at afternoon naps for the past couple of days. I had more time to think, read and generally take things easy as I was supposed to be recuperating from as serious bout of the flu. The ability to kick back and relax a little after the pretty hectic couple of months was good but one always would prefer to have these on one’s own terms but I guess one cannot really complain.

The adaptation didn’t quite come easy – while I do like to spend time at home, not being able to go out of the flat was a bit of a stretch. The other bad thing about this was the fact that as I recover from the flu, I get much more energetic and want to do more with myself than just sit, read and think. The bicycles hang by the window almost taunting me in their languor. My running shoes smirk on the shelves. At the same time, my knees and calves begin aching from lack of use as the most strenuous things I do is to hike the 15 metres from my room to the kitchen to refill my flagon of water (which isn’t very often given the size of the flagon).

So as my mind wanders to far off vistas that no other mind has ever beheld and my muscles atrophy into little twiggy shadows of their former selves, one wonders how much quarantine it takes for people to fall into bouts of hyperbole.

Either the medicines or my lack of outdoor time is making me loopy. Either way, I believe I’m getting a little loopier than normal. Which may not be a bad thing.

Quarantine Files – Freedom

It’s a lovely day out and I’m stuck here, staring out behind grilled windows at the perfect azure sky. Wistful sighs and thoughts of being out in the open, feeling the sun on one’s back and the wind in one’s face. But that’s not quite to be as one quickly realises that it’s the four walls of the flat that I’m going to be facing for another three days till this dreaded quarantine runs its course. Do I yearn for freedom? Of course I do! But one also realises that this longing has to be put into perspective – my quarantine is but for 7 days. What is that to others who face a much longer time in house arrest or similar situations? Why do we yearn for freedom so?

I remember writing about freedom over 10 years ago, making an argument that sometimes we get so trapped in our yearning to be free from something that this very yearning blinds us to other types of freedom that we may have. My case in point – I yearn for the greener pastures of life outside the flat but at the same time, I forget the almost limitless freedom that the internet allows me. I’m free but only to the extent that I’m willing to allow my fingers to fly across the keyboard to send bits and bytes across cyberspace. The quarantine’s definitely been made much more bearable as a result of this but the yearning remains.

I’ve been drawn to the writing of Isaiah Berlin of late because he’s a thinker of note in two fields that I’m very interested in – political theory and the history of ideas. One of the things that he’s very well known for is his theorising about there being two concepts of liberty – positive and negative. Negative liberty is often described as being the lack of constraints or restrictions on the person whereas positive liberty is all about self-determination and the freedom to do what one wants to do. Berlin argues that the latter is often used to justify abuse of power by anyone as one is never quite sure when one’s liberty ends and someone else’s begins.

Strictly speaking my quarantine at home isn’t a huge curtailment of liberty but one does chafe at the inability to be out where one wants to be and one does feel that I’m a little short of both at the moment. However, one does need to put things into perspective by recognising the fact that my curtailment of negative liberty allows for more liberty of others to move around virus free. More or less. In fairly simplistic terms, my giving up of some liberties allows society to function a little more smoothly because people are free to exercise their positive liberty. Well, that argument just makes me feel a little better about things.

Before anyone catches me out for complaining about my pseudo-incarceration allow me to state that I’m not complaining about being stuck at home. I recognise why I’m here and though I’m not the happiest at not being able to be out, I’ve decided to be, well, philosophical about it and make the most of facing these walls (which I must add, are still a pleasing shade of lilac). My to-do list has shrunk considerably as the days go by and I do believe that my enforced break from classes will make me get back to it with renewed vigour. Or so one hopes.

The view from…here.

Quarantine Files – The price of paranoia

Sitting at home does things to people. Some get all melancholy and withdrawn from the lack of external human contact. My email and instant messaging ensures that doesn’t happen to me. Some get anxious and worried about the reason why they’re quarantined. I’ve got medication and since the fever broke feel like I’m well on the road to recovery. Some get morose from the lack of direct sunlight. I sit next to the window. Some get bored. That is I.

I’ve been trying to fill the days by catching up with work that might otherwise get pushed to the background (no I’m not a workaholic but I don’t want to start up again with a huge inbox) and some reading that I’ve neglected. I guess it’s making the best of what I’ve been saddled with – I’m staring at 4 more days of being stuck at home trying to survive without scratching at the walls to try to claw my way out. As Jess my fellow quarantine buddy mentioned, I need to try to lean more towards my nerdy self to be content with reading and such while leaning away from the side that yearns for adventure and the outdoors. Bit tough because the grass is always greener.

Been thinking about the flurry of activity that characterised the past 2 days. The aftermath of my positive test for H1N1 sparked a wave of paranoia that even I couldn’t have expected. People tend to get worried most about their health and for good reason too but I did find the extreme paranoia that was worsened by the newspaper reports a little disturbing. I was inundated with calls that always started with concern for my condition (thanks!) but that soon turned into a detailed cross-examination of my symptoms, what I did that led to my decision to get tested and how the testing went. It was hard to allay their fears when they were already fairly worked up by the media hype.

While I did feel a little guilty at being the cause of the paranoia, one also realises that while my diagnosis was the thing that sparked it off, the wildfire would not have caught and blazed if there wasn’t ample kindling there to begin with. One can be tempted to blame the media for all this but there’s something else about the human condition that seems to predispose us to paranoia – our innate fear of the unknown. People have been trying to explain things that we don’t know since time immemorial and try to find all sorts ways of giving reasons to things they cannot understand. In a similar vein, people who fear the unknown of a disease try to react to it the best way they know how – to fall back on the ‘reason’ of science and medicine and try all possible means to find ‘rational’ explanations for their fears.

As fear gets thrown into the mix, irrationality sets in. The slightest cough or sneeze gets turned into an object of suspicion and people start second guessing their own health whenever they feel a little odd. Fuelled by the general perception of what the disease is and not what it actually is, everyone just goes down the slippery slope of unconfirmed conjecture and large leaps of logic towards the unknown. My work as an educator is aimed at reducing the incidence of this so one can imagine the frustration that one feels when faced with this on all fronts.

We sometimes get so worked up over something that’s new and dangerous that we ignore it as it develops. The case-fatality ratio of people infected with H1N1 when the news broke about it was stunningly high (5% for the confirmed cases in Mexico) and this prompted comparisons with the 1918 flu epidemic that had similar ratios and was also caused by a similar strain of Influenza A viruses. This seemed to remain on the consciousness of people even when the number of confirmed cases went up but the fatalities didn’t. Even when governments and the WHO realised that H1N1 had all the trappings of a seasonal flu and was no more deadly than the bugs that go around every year around autumn and winter, people still clung on the belief that the virus was deadly and acted as such. Times change but mindsets and perceptions based on old risks evidently don’t.

All it takes is a large dose of common sense and some opening of one’s eyes to recognise that following the herd would lead to a stampede that wouldn’t do anyone much good. Just slowing down to stop and think can do wonders. Stop, smell the roses and think for a bit. One might even see the pig that flu.

Quarantine Files – When pigs flu

A bad pun on my part about the looming pandemic that seems to be on the consciousness of everyone these days. Initially dubbed the ‘swine flu’, the powers that be at the World Health Organisation (WHO) felt that renaming it to a more scientific sounding H1N1 (Influenza A) would help to knock people out of their false sense of security with regards to pandemics. It has worked for the most part and the consciousness of the flu and all its possible implications are there for all to see.

We often see these things from afar – we hear of friends of friends of friends who are affected – rarely do we see things from the eye of the storm. This time, I’m staring things right from within the eye of the storm. Or from the wrong end of a cotton swab whichever the case may be. To cut a long story short, life as a happy camper was quickly turned topsy turvy with the onset of H1N1 and all sorts of things that had to be done in school to mitigate its spread. That was all well and good and until yesterday, I was dealing with a couple of letters on a page that translated into people getting a virally sort of flu. Purely theoretical – the way I like it.

Then it happened. A colleague of mine was diagnosed with the virus and was immediately quarantined at home. No biggie but worrying nonetheless. Then I began feeling a little woozy at work and because of my contact with her over the last couple of days, I was told by school to go home. Feeling slightly socially responsible for once, I decided to present myself to the Communicable Disease Centre (CDC) for checks. And check they did – swabs in facial orifices are not pleasant at all.

Was sent home to wait for results and just as I was dozing off the fateful phonecall came. I was positive. I had become a statistic. Was told that the quarantine orders were on their way along with medicines and a package of medical goodies. So I’m officially stuck at home, not allowed to leave on pain of a hefty fine or jail term and am supposed to be at least 2m away from everyone else at home. Visions of me walking around with a bell round my neck so people can make way did appear at some point.

And so it happened, what seemed to only happen to ‘other people’ happened. The flu is relatively minor and all the doom mongerers who predicted that this would be the next deadly flu epidemic were quite off the mark. All the hype that surrounds this whole thing has made many people extremely concerned about the health of me and my parents but I think that’s all it is – hype. People tend to get quite carried away with the whole paranoia and fear that comes with something like this. It’s easy to follow the herd and get worked up over things – it’s much harder to sit down and think rationally about what’s actually happening and realise that things aren’t as bad as they seem.

So even though I’m just having a little case of sniffles, coughs and a fever, I get a pair of burly auxiliary police officers in bio-protection aprons come to the flat, serve me a quarantine order and make a hasty retreat. Almost pythonesque in its absurdity but I guess this is a case of being safe rather than sorry. One good thing that should come out of this – the brush will be revived in my efforts to stave off the impending boredom.

Oink.

C2C Chronicles 5 – Team 354

One of my fellow competitors (or participant) mentioned that doing the Coast to Coast as an Individual is a bit of a misnomer. We’re actually competing (or participating) as a team because it’s impossible to do the race without our trusty support crew. I couldn’t agree with him more and my lining up at the start and crossing the finish line would not have been possible without the help of three great and slightly crazed individuals who actually paid to be my willing slaves for three days. These were the three unsung members of Team 354 who had to drive the overladen car, endure the cold, heat and rain but didn’t get to savour the joy of running through the finish at Sumner.

To put things into perspectives, allow me to detail what the support crew had to do while I was busy traipsing across the Southern Alps and its environs.

• Prepare breakfast for me on both race mornings so I won’t have to worry about that.
• Rush to transition points, set up transition according to my specifications and wait.
• Wait some more.
• Scramble at first sight of me, rush me through the transition, making sure everything is accounted for.
• Rush to next transition. Repeat.
• At end of first day, set up camp, prepare dinner and stuff me silly. Then feed me some more.

They also had to manage the mountain of gear that I required for the race which includes and is not limited to: Kayak with all the associated safety gear, Bicycle with all the associated safety gear, Mountain run equipment, shoes and clothes for all events and weather.
I guess the worst part was having to rush to a point and wait long hours (almost 8 hours between transitions at times) only to have to rush through 5-10 minutes of activity, pack up and rush again. Not the best way of spending holiday time but they did it anyway.

And they could still smile after all that…

It wasn’t just a matter of managing the race logistics – they also had to manage one tired and occasionally insecure participant who was unsure about his ability to complete the race. Though to my credit I was able to avoid hissy fits and other undignified behaviour, just keeping up with the race and keeping me focused on the race was difficult enough for them. They were movers, packers, logistics managers, coaches, psychologists and fussy siblings all at the same time. That they were cheerfully doing it all the time was amazing.

All the training and preparation in the world can only bring one that far – it takes a team to get a person to the end of Coast to Coast successfully and I’m proud to have had Team 354 with me from Kumara to Sumner. We were the only Singaporean team there and we were the only Singaporean team to complete the race. That makes us top Singaporeans there. But I digress… Guess it’s time to wax lyrical about the crew and what they did.

Jean was the designated spotter who waits at the transition chutes to spot me and bring me to the transition area. This may seem a strange choice given her relatively diminutive stature but what she lacked vertically she made up in energiser bunny-ness. How could I miss an orange clad, beanie wearing, orange camp-chair waving, ‘oh lo lo lo’ yelling individual even amidst the crowds at transition? She made sure the camps were in order and I was fed and sufficiently watered every time I came in.

Jean doing the patented Jean-rush. Bananas optional.

Lishan was the race-driver (in more ways than one) and kitchen aide extraordinaire. I had her to thank for the many breakfast and snack sandwiches that I inhaled through the two days and she was the driving force behind the chopping and more chopping that went into the dinners we had. She also kept me honest – and reminded me (often) of all that was done just to get my sorry rear end from one coast to the other. Yes it was in a sorry state by the end of the race but would have been worse no?

Lishan trying to smile after chopping the (n-1)th carrot. No wonder one turned orange…

Michael was the pack-slut (and I mean this in the best possible way) who ensured that everything was in place and transitions were arranged in exactly the way I asked for. His meticulous planning and eye for detail meant that the organised chaos that was the car was always turned into smooth transitions. This resident cook also ensured that I was well fed through the race and beyond. Ever the optimist, he was able to get me out of the trough that was the end of the first day and set me back on track to face the river and beyond on the second.

“I wait 7 hours and all I get are smelly clothes?!?!”

Support they did to the truest sense of the word and though I don’t think they realised what they were getting themselves into when I first asked them, I’d say they were the best support crew one could have. Mush aside, I remain humbled by their long suffering efforts in getting me to the finish line and was extremely relieved to have completed the race, ensuring that their work actually did pay off.

Team 354 extends to beyond the crew that came with me to New Zealand – I count very supportive and slightly bemused parents who constantly wonder why I bother putting myself through all these events. I count friends whose little words of encouragement help me through bad days at work and keep me on the edge of sanity. I count the students in the Adventure Race group in the polytechnic whose constant encouragement in training and all the way to the airport I appreciate awesomely. I count Wilson, their coach who became my C2C advisor being the first ever Singaporean to complete the 1 Day event. Thanks!

So it wasn’t this one misguided brush who completed the Coast to Coast 2 Day Individual race but Team 354. Allez Team 354!