So This Is My Why
So This Is My Why
Ling Yah
Ep 143: Becoming Singapore’s 1st Professional Adventurer - You Never too Old to Take Risks! | Khoo Swee Chiow
52 minutes Posted Mar 24, 2024 at 12:00 am.
Why Why Why?!
Fear of heights
Computer science in Kansas
Saw Mount Everest from a plane
Not giving up after 10 years
The mountain is magical & spiritual?!
Lessons learned
Altitude sickness / AMS
Pulling Singapore’s first Everest expedition together
You can’t fail!
What should people know about Everest?
Quitting his day job
Antarctica
Commercialising his adventure business
Swee Chiow’s value proposition?
How he builds trust with his clients
Risks & death
Any trick to staying calm?
Drifting to Taiwan & near certain death
Never let your ego take over
Dealing with the media
Never doing K2 again
The ghosts at Tibet’s Xishapengma
Adventurers hogging the limelight
Collaborating with AirAsia X
How Swee Chiow decides on his adventures
Advice for those in their 30s
What’s next?
The second act of his career?
Leadership principles to be an effective guide for his team
What drives you to push yourself to the extreme each time?
Do you feel like you’ve found your why?
What kind of legacy do you want to leave behind?
What are the most important qualities of a successful person?
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Show notes
Would you die for your passion?
Most wouldn’t but for Swee Chiow, Singapore’s first professional adventurer, it’s a question he must face every day.
And it all began when he caught a glimpse of Mount Everest from a plane.
He was working in IT (Singapore Airlines) then, but he decided from that one glimpse that he wanted to climb Mount Everest - a dream that took him a mere 10 years to achieve!
The journey was hard.
He knew nothing. So he read many books & even went on a 10-day mountaineering course at Mt Cook that he flunked because he wasn’t fit enough!
In 1998, he joined Singapore’s first Mount Everest expedition. It was a disaster at first because:
❌ Their tent collapsed during a freak storm
❌ Their first attempt at the South Pole failed as they didn’t have enough rope - the Singapore media hounded them & issued headlines declaring that the expedition had failed
But they didn’t give up.
Their second attempt was a success!
But an exhausting one.
In the midst of the media glory, Swee Chiow knew he had to take advantage of it so he immediately launched Singapore's first Antarctic expedition.
Since then, he has:
Climbed Everest x3 and K2
8,000km cycle from SG → Beijing (China) = 2003
Swam 40 km across Malacca Straits
Kayaked 3,000km across Philippines
Broke his first Guinness World Records for the longest scuba submergence (220 hours)
Rollerbladed 6,000km from Hanoi SG in 94 days (and broke the Guinness World Records in 2008)
Highlights:
Special thanks to Limpeh Studios (Hepmil Media) for the studio!
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📍Show notes: https://www.sothisismywhy.com/143
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