In the mist of all the war battle & gun fights with exams, presentations & projects let me just sit on no man’s land to recap the happenings of the week so far. The CNC turning test went well on Tuesday think can score in it, my previous class DME/25 is doing CNC milling, though different topics, the test format is very very similar overall, given the same module head. So much for hints, anyway they did say that the Pro-E test they had (& which I will be taking on friday) is easy peasy, so hope as it will be for my class. Submitted my Product Design model (one project done) & did my GEMS presentation on Online Entrepeurship, being “one of the better ones” as our lecturer says.

Also, for the 1st time since I entered poly, I actually FAILED an assignment. & So did 85% of the class too. Well one may say that through failur comes success, but I guess the teacher wasn’t clear in making his stand & requirements of the paper, quite unfair. Guess my “killing spree” & “godlike, monster kills” since semester 1 was ended by my DTS (design technique & skills, which is more like problem solving technique & skills) module teacher. Part II, the finals of the DTS test is tomorrow, Daming freakaziod!

& hey I am a left hander for the day! Having 7 blisters on both hands (excluding 2 open ones on my right) as a present from the bouldering climbs in the rock gym today. Now I learnt about the hassles of limited motion, whether is the sharp screaming pains on soap & water contact, its trying to brush your teeth with 3 finger & soap & bathe yourself with one hand only, not to mention taking a long time to actually get this blog post typed where I should be rushing assignments & studying… whoops!

Wow, this week is really busy dude, its school with 3 exams papers, 2 projects & 2 presentations to give, just to mention a few. Really really really packed.. duh! Guess I wouldn’t be attending track training this week. Need air to breathe.

Tuesday - CADCAM Test, Submission of Product Design Model Project
Wednesday - Online Entrepeurship Presentation
Thursday - Design Techniques & Skills Test, Product Design Team Presentation
Friday - Pro-Engineer Wildfire Test, CADMAC Project Portfolio Submission

If its not school work, its clients pushing for dateline of websites by mid week at work. Brrr!

Plan to celebrate the end of this week with a 10km victory run either on Friday or Saturday as part of my personal training schedule.

At least there’s the PC Show to look forward to this weekend, where I WILL be pampering myself with at least 2Gb of memory goodness, either it’s SD/CF Cards or Thumbdrives which I had been monitoring prices for months. Also another excuse to go impulse buying cus of my recent 20/20 score I got today for my Engineering Maths test.

Next week will be quite empty though, totally in contrast with this week. Marking the start of the 3 week term (summer holidays) break, with a chalet with my old class on the last week! Maybe I might be chilling out with a Scuba diving trip to Aur with my dive buddies too… Cheers!

Well, its raining cats & dogs out now, so I guess I won’t be able to make my morning swim today. With this new found time, Mmm lemme me recap the Moulmein CC X-Country yesterday (27/05/06) at MR. The run covers the 5.3 km route for men’s open & the ladies open, 4.1 km. Overall the racing group is a rather small (with the juniors starting off together & the opens & veterans at their own groups) but a rather managable & leisure one.

There were 10 over marshalls stationed at all the usual strategic locations round the route, so 1st time runners like Adison won’t go running into Subaru Forester SUVs like what he did yesterday near finishing line. The only hiccup is them being unable to unlock the side gates to from the road to the reservoir bridge route which caused quite a jam.

SP track have 3 runners coming in top 20 overall, not bad I say, whats more we won a CD mini-compo & vacuum flask from the lucky draw held after the prize presentation.

Put your Best Foot Out!	Darius Headchopper!	Ending Group Shot!

Runtime (5.3km) - 23:32

Intially wanted to bring the gang to Annalakshmi for an indian vegetation buffet where you can foot any amount for the bill (literally, as its for charity). But was scrapped due to delays & undecided on the actual head counts needed for reservation. Leading to about 20 of us raiding funan’s basement food junction before doing the same for the Running Lab store on the 3rd floor, which was the highlight of the trip.

Met SGrunner readytorace where he tended & gave advice on the shoes, especially on the DS trainer 11. Guess they were quite shocked to see such a large group entering the store all of a sudden. Whats more SGrunners get 10% off everything storewide! So got myself a Nike Clima-Fit Dry fit cap (1 item off my wishlist) for $18.90 after the discount from $21. Darius got his DS Trainer 11 at 30% off & Zhongyan got his long awaited running shoes at 50% off. Well, courtesy of the discount lobang I brought & so discreetly have to use “under the counter” lol.

Walked around funan to look for a laptop sleeve for my T4020, but ended up getting nothing due to many shops already closed at 8.30pm on a SATURDAY at funan? Only challenger superstore was open which don’t have anything special either. It was quiet on our way up only to come across a couple, one like 35 year old man hugging another like 20+ year old guy face to face by the walkway side railing. It was like so “wat the? in public…? omg… WTF…?!?” - An expression you can tell similarly sketched on Elrick’s face who was there & passing by at that time too.

Haha enough gayness, anyway, on a lineup… The PC Show will be coming up 1-4th June at Suntec, more details here.

Its exam period (3 Papers & 2 Presentations next week), so won’t be running alot this & the following week. So sorry everyone, have to turn down all your movie requests these weeks, I know MI:3, Da Vinci code, Over the Hedge & X Men 3 are damn nice movies to catch, but can please please please hold till mid June? Maybe on a bright side, our free-passes will be valid then! haha Thanks!

Millege Run Log for the week
Poly 50 training 20×200m, Tuesday - 4km
SP Gym 3 Sets Weight Training + Threadmill, Thursday - 6.2km
Moulmein CC X-Country, Saturday - 5.3km

Total: Approx 15.5km this week (50% of 30km/week target)

“Am I on belay?”
“Belay on”
“Climbing”
“Climb on”

These are the words ecthed into the heads of any climber during the rock climbing sports elective now. A very basic phase I believe, but we won’t be doing any belaying so soon either as theres actually a belayer course & certification to qualify for one, too far fetched for our 2 month rock climbing course. Didn’t touch the inclined wall this week, but scaled the easy wall with a little more challenges - taking restricted paths up the wall only on special taped routes to make each climb more challenging. The finale of the restricted challenge route on the inclined wall involves 1.5m distance jump from one tile to the other right at the top, only so far only seen achieved by our elective instructor, Jinli (she even beat the rock climbing guys to it, shame!).

We also learned that with lives at stake, a carabiner’s life is restricted to that of only 3 direct drops from waist level, where microcracks could form & will only rear its ulgy head when you don’t need it most - during a fall (explaining why all climbing areas have padded floors). There are 2 types of carabiner arm shaped, the inward-bent one usually more suited for ropes & the straight one for climbers. Furthermore, the chalk we use in climbing are not blackboard chalk but those gym free-weights chalk duh!. Besides that, so far we were introduced to the various belaying devices, such as the air traffic controller, a pig nose shaped spring belayer aka Bigger Brake, a GriGri & the figure of 8. You can view a whole list of them here.

Moreover, we also learnt rather interesting knots such as the double figure of eight & another niffy knot (which name I forgot) to attach on the climber’s carabiner side. From then we have to tie all our own lifelines before each climb, interesting…

Once we conquer the wall, Bouldering will be following next in the campus’s Climbing gym.

Though always heard so much hype about the NewPaper BigWalk this year is actually my first time officially partcipating in the event as a registered walker. & yes in case you are wondering, you can gate crash & join in the walk anytime, just that you don’t get the event shirt, goodie bag & all the freebies which goes with it.

Was there expectedly 1st at 6.45am only to feed 13 mosquitoes at our meeting point - The People’s Association front gate. Coach was there & so was a good attendance from the track team, about 30+, together with our seniors Ahlong & David. I guess being 10km runners, a 10km walk can be said to be quite an ordeal for us - preferring to run & get it over with that is! But nevertheless we walked all the way, often getting seperated from our main walking group because of the crowd. Some came in slippers & brought shoes, but later did we found out that neither do any of them even have to change to shoes to complete. The route brought us from the National Stadium (start point) to Kallang carpark over the Merdeka bridge towards Nicol highway, going straight & U-turning at One - Fullerton. There were some Ice-cream points where we stopped to chowed on a particular instance. Heard the route will be different next year due to the re-building of the national stadium.

The Walking Trio	Where’s the rest?	The Finish

Besides the all expected copy of The New Paper for the day, shining from all the other junk in goodie bag was a free Macdonalds Sundae coupon! whee!

The other highlight (Big Walk Part 2) was walking over 5km+ over to a coffee shop near the old Kallang hawker center for Lunch. For $3.50 I’ve got a plate of Mee Goreng + A Prata Egg, the most value for money option given the same prices for chicken rice + little extra chicken & rice or hot bowl mee pok dry which most had. Had a good talk with the juniors & interestingly learnt that one of them was from the 02 batch, same age as me, haha. But he kinda “retained” due to a recovery from a bad bike accident years before.

Darius so wanted to expend his free GV movie ticket & phys-coed Elrick & Addison to catch the Da-Vinci code with him, nevertheless everyone was too tried to do so (amazingly from the walk to lunch & not the actual event itself) & alighted at cityhall to take a tube home. Carried on service 16 home to catch up on projects & work, not rest for me I guess, tomorrow being another school day.

Got an intel from Alex about the Running Labs member’s sale up to 50% off off-season & 20% off on-season products, cool!

Millege for the week
Tuesday - Track Training 2.5km + 0.5km (excluding 1.2km for warmup)
Wednesday - Gym 3sets weights + 5.1km threadmill
Friday - Track Training 2.5 + 1km (excluding 1.2km for warmup)
Saturday - 11.2km (11 rounds tiong bahru park)
Sunday - 10km Big Walk

Total for the week - 32.8km

Training ended today with hopes of our new long distance coach coming in next week. He is a current SP lecturer in the school of MM, heard that he was quite good in athletics & events during his time. But I’ve never heard of or even seen him in person thought being in the same school as well. Heard he specially requested to coach the long distance track team, (which comprises the majority of the track members including me). Lets just hope he’s not the ultra “drill-sarge” type of coach…

800m time trails were hold today, did an average 2:48 which is ok for long distance runners lacking speed I guess, but up close with the best though. We got a few new track & field members to interact around with today. The training ended wth a 2.5km run around the inner school perimeter route with 2 laps round the Poly 50 route. This time mum & dad had dinner before picking me up (they had gotten smarter now!),. They accompanied me as I chowed with the standard servings of yong tau hoo & fish & chips for dinner thereafter.

Track & Field T-Shirt
A current job up on my neck would be coordinating the orders & printing of the upcoming track & field shirt. Design courtesy of Alex, its a black Dry-Fit shirt with the text SP-Athletics “Stamped” on the back, check out the concepts!

Overall shirt design	Zoom on shirt logos

Hope I can get Wenjian our club treasurer to settle the collection money for the job so I can concentrate on getting the samples, prints & graphics up in time for the SP Track & Field meet coming soon.

Poly 50 training will follow over the next few weeks, so it will be up a key in training for us soon. Moreover our competitors SP dragon boat (which teamed up with SP netball to form the “Dragonball Team”) had already started official training, in hope of getting back the champion title which we took from the the previous event. We will be a force to reckon with too though…

Note to Thiam Hock & Soma - You can only enter Poly 50 under track & field through the accumulation of time trail points, we will be sending in 4 or more teams if you meet the point cutoff & the numbers of members permit.

Might be going for a 10km run tomorrow at tiong bahru park to bring my millege for the week to 20km & finishing it with an additional 10km at the New Paper Big Walk on Sunday.

Meeting place for New Paper Big Walk - Meet at the People’s Association gate, Kallang

HP has a tendency to use gun metaphors when talking about their storage solutions, and the newest one is ‘bulletproof’.

Instead of the wussy technical term for it, they went out and shot a hole clean through a half-million dollar Storageworks XP12000 server while it was running.

The bullet went right through it, but only half way through the fishtank on the other side. That is what you get with .308 rounds, not enough stopping power vs high-end arrays backed by fishtanks.

In either case, they literally proved that their Storageworks arrays will take a bullet while streaming video, never missing a frame.

Download the video here (direct link). Read more on it here.

Today’s track training ended at 8:45pm, very much a dismay to mum & dad who came at 7:45 at school with Sheena to fetch me to dinner. Intially my parents intended to go to the nearby hawker center opposite Ginza Plaze for dinner, a place I can only vaguely remember from my childhood kindergarden days at Clementi Woods. Anyway, yea training carried on till late, which left them waiting in the car for me for about an hour, hungry too.

You can tell from their faces - disappointed for waiting so long, though they didn’t openly express it. Everybody in the car behaved rather normally, no hard feeling but you can feel the disappointment is in the air, which gave me a very loomy feeling of guilt in the car on the way to dinner. The delay too brought about a change of dinner location plans to a hawker center near our home (in place of the planned dinner location), as most stores (or good food) won’t be available/open so late either. I guess they very much got over it during dinner, where we all joyfully pigged out to our hearts content.

I know that they did nothing to deserve this, neither would I want my family to sit waiting hungrily for me to complete my track training. I was thinking from now on, maybe I can have dinner with my team (always turn them down for dinner with my fam, choices… haiz) after training & try to go back myself thereafter if it’s too late. But that is also very dependant on the day’s training schedule which always varies so I can’t usually give an accurate time or actually know whether I will be released early for the day, also a time for my parents to pick me up after training.

A good move will be for them to have dinner before coming to pick me up, but that would be interesting though too, as everyone will be only watching me having my dinner…

Nevertheless, got my Big walk shirt & number tag today too, 39275 quite a nice number I say but otherwise quite a large number considering marathon bib no being 4 digits. The shirt is free size too, oh man it does looks big on me…

RockClimbing part II is also on tomorrow.

Interesting how informative can a short browse at a local magazine stand can be while waiting for somebody, even when all their covers are wrapped up. From the covers, here are some rather interesting news:

From Top Gear magzaine - New BMW M3 Coming out
From Import Tuner - New Nissan Skyline GTR Out in Japan
From PC Gamer - BattleField 2142 & Command & Conquer 3 due to be out next year.

Maybe these are the only few headlines which caught my eye, other than that partly maybe because I love the BMW M3, not to mention the C&C series of RTS games, C&C3 will be no exception.

There wasn’t any official track & field training this week, but with upcoming events such as the New paper Big walk 2006, Moulmein CC X-Country, EdgeGames Adventure Race, SP Poly 50, RealRun 2006 (not to mention 21km AHM at end August). I need to maintain my stamina & fittness during this few weeks of relatively toned down track training with our freshmen.

Progressive training as coach wanted, training is “tough” for the freshies but not intensive enough for us seniors, so I guess that very much boils down to self-discipline for our own training. Come to think about it, since I left the army, I had not been running alot too. Used to be able to clock in at least 30-40km/week totalling about 150km/month on leisure runs, excluding company trainings. Things are very different after you ORD, with many other commitments, work & stuffs eating into training schedules. I guess it’s the love of running which drives most devoted athletes to the sport, despite our differences. Moreover, I get rather restless if I don’t run for a week or so. An addiction you may say.

Leisure Run Log for the week
Sunset Way Canal Route Run, Monday - 10km
SP Gym 3 Sets Weight Training + Threadmill, Wednesday - 5.1km
Tiong Bahru Park Run, Today Saturday - 15.6km
Total: Approx 30km this week (Target Met)

Didn’t get to run as intended yesterday due to evening rain, nevertheless completed 15km today. Would be finishing the week’s worth of exercise/training with a (40~50)x50m laps (or continous laps for 1hour) swim at Delta Swimming Complex Tomorrow Morning.

On a sidenote: I think I will give the Advanced Scuba Course next week ago till next year, as the monsoon season is coming in again, not a very good time for south china sea openwater dives at Eastern Malaysia.

Wahha, today is the first day of our sports elective rock climbing program. Scaled the 3-4 storey flat rock wall as part of an introduction with a bit of sweat. But while doing the forward inclined rock wall… wah cannot sia, can’t even go up halfway. It’s my first time scaling a proper rock wall too (let be all the other kinds of walls I scaled in childhood… not counted!), while some in the class can just climb it effortlessly, considering it not being their first, but all for the CCA points.

I learnt with sore & throbbing arms (the hard way you say) that rock climbing is not all about shear strength, but intelligence, planning & a very conservative approach. Not meaning I do have any of those (duh!), but our coach recognised that its a natural reaction for beginners use the upper body to always pull yourself up, instead of the legs (right way), esp while climbing to safety - Climbing have to be done in a relaxed manner. No wonder my arms feel more tried than my legs! Makes me wonder so this is how some free climbers can scale steep 20 storey cliff like gorges in just 2 hours. In other words, a buff top heavy person can even lose or fail to a slinky light climber with the proper techniques. Not bad for a first try/lesson, anyway I did manage to reach the top on the “flat easy” (aka pussy) wall. Gave myself a target to conquer the wall I failed to climb today by end of the month.

Think was crazy to go to the gym to do my usual 3 sets of X(20 benchpresses, 20 Weighed Ad strengtheners, 20 Tricep Free weights, 25 Pushups, 20 Shoulder presses, 20 Bicep Curls) before finishing it up 5km on the threadmill. I was not in condition to run the planned 10km distance due to insufficient sleep over the last few days & exertion over the previous rock climbing session. So I am like 5km short of my planned 30km for the week. 15km more to go, maybe I will finish the other 5km tomorrow in the gym again.

Anyway congrats to Khow Ming who failed his driving test for the 2nd time in a row, we will remember to celebrate that in class tomorrow.

Woke up at around 1pm today, skipping my usual sunday morning cardio swim. Considering being only back at home 7.30am today after an overnight stay east coast park. Very much conked out after reaching home then.

Yesterday was our track & field freshman BBQ, held at east coast. Met up with the gang at Bedok MRT where we made our way down with all our barang barang to the east coast BBQ pits via bus & foot. Almost all the seniors were there so were some of the juniors. Part of the spread includes the chicken thighs my dad prepared, together with potato chips I brought. Other interesting foods includes mushrooms, garlic bread, not to mention the usual chicken wings, hotdogs & crabsticks. We rented 4 bikes & 3 sets of roller blades overnight, given $6/bike overnight its quite good I say, not to mention an ease of convience. Night cycling is nice, quiet & peaceful at night, a moment to enjoy & appreciate too, not to mention at the bedok jetty where we spent some time on too. We found ourselves for few games of bowling around midnight. Where we cycled to & parked our bikes, (courtesy of the bowling alley owner who allowed our bikes into the complex)

Bowling at East Coast Leisure Bowl	The Bowl Group!	Night Riders

Scored 83 for my first game & a dinky 76 tied for the 2nd, 3rd & 4th positions from the last.. haha between me, addison, elrick & weiwen. Coach & Pohfong were up against each other in the hundreds for a drink treat battle, haha best we insignificant scorers better leave them alone haha. While coach left for the night thereafter, the rest of the late night was spent on a rather interesting night cycle/blading to the ends of east coast park. In a gang of 4 Bikes & 2 Bladers (I was on blades). Naturally having never inline-skated for years, going high speed skating was quite a little clumsy at times. Neverthelesss, it was a very unreal & cool relaxing journey along the east coast park, not to mention the occasional lazy attempts to “hitch” a hook off the bikes to tow us inline-skaters along. Given surpluses in our chalet budget, we quick-booked a chalet room for $65/night for us to spend the night which came very much a welcome compared to sleeping in our tents & canvases by the beach. I didn’t bring any extra clothes so the aircon in the chalet proved to be rather useful to dry our sweaty clothes after the night blading, anyway thats what the army trains us to do right? able to sleep anywhere not matter how soiled your clothes are.

Elrick bugged us awake at around 7am, where Addison & me crawled our way to catch a cab home this morning.

Oh yea, recieved an email confirming my rock climbing program starting next week. Tomorrow.. maybe I should go for a 10km run after gym at school to shed all the calories taken last night…