Just a few more ideas down the road…

Right Race Orientation	Eminent Fart Boost	Current and Past Perfect Tense

Please overtake on the right…	Runner on steriods	I am on Reserve!

It’s a Thurday!
Finally, 3 dreaded tests are cleared early-week and reports handed up. So it’s a clear and a peace of mind for me this coming Sunday’s Marathon without any outstanding work to haunt me. I just love this feeling of accomplishment while it lasts… Furthermore, there was no wednesday GEMs as our teacher had lost her voice (as indicated as a pre-written message on the white board). Ironically it had given us the impression that class was canceled as she didn’t turn up even after an hour, despite almost everyone present for class.

Whats left is friday and the weekend! which means Marathon! hola!

Our PDD lecturer Mr Choong told us in class today that he had catered overseas ITP specially for us CIE students – it’s working a a plastic mold factory in Shanghai. It cost’s $1500 for the OITP after the 50% subsidy by the school. From what I see, it’s quite ridiculous to pay to work. Besides “invaluable work experiences” and a “better portfolio”, it just simply cannot justify the hassles and inconveniences incurred as opportunity costs to working in Singapore, (where we students will be paid instead). Furthermore, I have to pay for lodging, accomodation on top of personal items such as food, etc for OITP so the costs just adds up. My stand is if none of my peers go, I wouldn’t even consider going. Whats more miserable than working alone as an alien? Whats more I have to speak Chinese… Ewww!

Played some HOTD4 today at the bugis junction basement arcade after school. I could just smell the game there and I just know that I can find it there. But it costs $2 a game including continues, very very much more expensive than Zone-X’s $1.20 per game. Also P2 light gun trigger is not as responsive as the one at Jurong East, but at least the grenades don’t pop out when you don’t want it to. Got owned even before the 2nd boss “The Lovers”, but I managed to own and toy around with the first boss “The Justice” on stage 1. Now just got to work more on clearing the first 2 stages without any life loss, it’s not the bosses which takes your life off, but the damn stray zombies – you just have to know which zombies in a crowd to kill off first, leaving those with “shake off” attacks of lesser piority behind. My proposed workspace for ITP next semester will be near bugis so I will see myself HOTD-ing quite regularly after work.

Its just a matter of time before I complete the whole game in one credit… whee!

The Swissotel Vertical Marathon 2006 photos are out! (Search for yours at sportsphotoX) whoahaha and there is no stinky watermark placed over the photos this time on… Just search as usual using your name or Bib No, then all your photos will show… save! save! save! Whee!

Its Wednesday, 4 more days to Mara-day. Will be pasta-fying all the stuffs we call FOOD from today on.

Oh yea, if you are wondering what my hand sign is in the photos. It’s done by folding in your middle and 4th finger (held by your thumb), with your pinky and index sticking out. It’s and easier alternative to the “hang loose” sign they make in hawaii as a cool greeting, or like “hi!”

Did a 10km pacing run at Sunset way Canal Route yesterday evening. (my last training run before the marathon). Never actually ran there during nightfall, but the night air there is rather nice fresh & cooling, complimented by the resounding ambience of crickets and trickles of water splashing in the canal drains. Much better than the urban wildness of Tiong Bahru park.

After a few runs these weeks, got quite used to wearing the light cap I am intending to wear for the first time in a long distance event. I decide to go a with a cap this year as the mornings these weeks had been always been super roasting. (the pattern now is: very hot in the morning-noon then rain in the evening).

Especially in the light of last year’s marathon – The air at the padang was just watery wavey-HOT. So I guess I’ve taken the needed precautions this year against the sun, yet not ending up dizzy or light headed at the end of the race because of a head constriction.

The talk of the town recently are body analysis weight scales, which takes your body fat and body water index. The average of readings so far in my peers or talk are about 18%-25%, so I guess it’s in the normal range, as if there are boastful preceptions about how much fat they have: “hey I have MORE than you! I win!”… For me, it’s around 10%-12% so that means I have about 6kg+ of balast hanging on me?

Shouts to Geoffrey who came back from Aust for visiting. But things are a little packed on myside at the moment, esp with 3 Mid semester tests since Monday. So are the rest of the usual gang in college. To make matters worst, well he’s flying off Thursday & we have not actually got a plan set yet… Mmmm how how…

I’ve always longed for some sort of “monetary award” one can always get from being just the plain top few in class. Not that I’ve ever been the top few in class but it’s definately something to look forward to when you know you are doing well and not too hot headed about it. Moreover, I’ve applied for several bond-free scholarships in the SAA for the last 2 consecutive years hopefully to get some aid my Semester school fees, but always got rejected. So it’s like – unless you get get something better than 23 As & ADs in 3 Semesters, you are kinda out of luck. Till I discovered it had been only a bursary all along… which I can’t even qualify, either. Damn.

Then, my class tutor, Mrs Lim passed me this plain brown letter in tutorial class today. Besides the self-addressed stamp to the MM office printed at the rear, it’s plainly attached with a paperclip a slip with instructions to “please pass this letter to your student”. Inside that is a 3 fold, single slip letter which reads:

Following on are reporting details and invitation for a reception thereafter. The other interesting thing is that the presentation will be conducted concurrently with the 3rd year student prize presentation as well.

I was told before that students who perform well in a particular year will get some kind of a monetary award or so, I didn’t for my first year, but it seems this one is coming from 2 years 2005/2006, so am I supposed to Ummm get another as my name appeared on the honour row 2 times?

Mind me being naive, but the question in doubt now is what kind of prize will I actually be recieving? Because the word “Book Prize” can be rather ambiguous and I do not want to speculate so much at this point in time. So can it be at least $500 in cash? a $10 wooden plaque? or worst, a printed certificate?

Collected my SCM Race pack at Suntec today. Meeting my trackmates at Suntec itself (Weiwen, Xiaoqiang, Elrick, Youboon, Alex), after being 1hour late as I’ve to help Sheena with some photography works at the esplanade drive park. My Bib no is 3392. The race pack collection was fast, professional and a breeze. Just hope this year’s baggage collection would be just as fast, maybe as good as this year’s AHM.

Couldn’t justify the need for the zig zag queue lines which takes the space of one whole exhibition hall. Nevertheless, this year’s race pack is sooo much better than last year’s. What we get this year is a mini gym sling bag with even more interesting stuffs inside – like another sling bag, race manual, usual freebies/samples, goodies, discount vouchers and even a pack of pasta! There is no inline hockey this year at the exhibition, but theres some 3-3 half court Basketball matches which caught the eye of many of us (not to mention the Sexpo promoters at the ground floors). The polar RS800sd is a spanking cool watch but looks tad too huge for asians, not to mention dwarfing the old watches.

Dinner was at the Suntec foodcourt, had my long desired foot-long sub with steak & cheese… yummy, topping it up with the regular 2 cookies and 22oz drink. Zipped by the Adi/Nike stores as the rest wanted to spend their 20% discount entitlements, but I got 2 reebok dryfit swim shorts for $26.90 on offer at RSH to replace my hole-riddened speedos swim shorts.

Got an Adidas Adizero tag to go with my marathon bib this year and thought of some rather interesting taglines to go with it, rather than the generic: “to keep fit” etc… tags we all see pinned at the booth halls, here’s some I’ve thought of:

Finish Ahead!	Highway Codes	Fragile Runner

42km is more value for money!	There should be more toilets…	Shaunzer’s RoadRunner!

What’s yours?

Millege for the last week (7 day period 12-18th Nov)
SP Track Training – 5km not exceeding 1:50/400m pace – Tuesday
SP Gym 3+1 Sets Weight Training + Threadmill 5.4km – Wednesday
SP Track Training 50×400m- 20.1km LSD – Friday
Total Millege for week = 30.5km (100.0% of 30km/week target met)

My classmate JB today found a plastic file folder in the library when using the free access computers. Later do he showed us the contents of his find – Lecture pad, Singapore River Raft 2007 donation card and misc. homework inside – No tell tale sign of it’s owner.

Initally we thought of returning the folder to the MM office as theres no other owner info, also it’s the best way for “cannot be bothered people” like us to return finds. Furthermore, the lost of a donation card will lead to a police matter which is something very shitty for it’s owner of course. Later do we know, ahha the owner is smart enough to put a copy of his timetable in the folder, the owner went by a name of Seah something.. something… Matthew, an EEE student. And after my last class at 3pm today, he would be at T15XX. And thats where we went after…

We kinda disrupted their class by knocking and going midway. But the class was simply stunned when the folder was actually returned and the lecturer there just couldn’t stop thanking and appraising the kind gesture, “he thanked us like siao” as KM said. I guess it’s very rare case in SP where we can see such kind gestures in practice or even happening, and I am glad we returned it.

Well honesty is the best policy after all, I guess the feeling then was more rewarding than anything, almost priceless.

Well not till after returning it, and when we had to dig our pockets then JB said: “shit, was there money in the River Raft Donaton Card?”

The week started with my computer conking out on me again, exactly one year since I last changed the motherboard, it seemed that it went out again, this time with a blank system after it failed trying to recover the bios. Maybe I was too caught up with force booting the past month just to get work and projects done, I ignored it’s cries for attention and it just simply died foaming in the mouth 2 days ago.

Given this age of intel core duo & AMD 64bitx2 processing power, my current system is just a pentium 4 S478 system, which is like “so-technology” 5 years ago. Now with this, I am left with 2 choices, go for a $800 upgrade where I have to change everything (processor, ram, and GPU) to like a beefy AMD 64-bit dual core in time for Vista or at least the over-hyped Core 2 Duo system. Or should I just simply spend $100 bucks on an old S478 motherboard and forget about the whole thing?

Going with the 1st option, what I can only savage are my harddisks, PSU, soundcard and DVD drives, on top of the casing of course. Otherwise, my current AGP Geforce 6600GT, slow DDR333 ram & Pentium 4, B generation processor can be reused unless I get an old compatible board for peanuts.

I am a little lazy now and seem to lean over the cheaper latter. Anyway how many users out there are actually making full use of dual core, let be quad core or even running a 64-bit OS on their 64-bit systems now? Hardly! In this technology age, I find no point spending so much to upgrade on technology which will always be so expensive at first and cheap/obsolete later, just like it can’t justify the high prices now.

I guess what I can do now is to live with my backup system now, which is my ummm, tablet. There are 3 tests next week to study for and I guess I won’t be seeing myself able to drop by simlim to sieve out what’s left of the pentium S478 boards in this LGA era. Maybe like 2 weeks time or so, not urgent. Hope I can get a good bargain here or there then and maybe an occasional snicker from the store when I “clear their stocks”.

Amusingly, it’s funny trying to hook up my laptop to the monitor everyday back from school with a pile of wires and USB hubs here and there. What was once the heart – my desktop now transplanted my a mobile heart. So disorganised is also my desk now. But I guess at least my emails and files are keep sync on one system least and not over so many systems.

The other annoying thing is that my tablet running on the GMA 900 graphics solution only allows output of 1600×1200 resolution MAX and NO Widescreen options! BRwharr!! The new drivers don’t seem to support or output at my monitor’ native 1920×1200 resolution – something my mum’s laptop can do, but her’s is running on the newer intel GMA 950, so I may pass – mine’s old and have no such output support. So I am either stuck with 2 gaps at the side of my screen or if I want to fill the whole screen, my image will be stretched, which is a nightmare as all my design work involving perfect circles will all start to look like ellipses…. Dammit.

Sunday was the 2006 Swissotel Vertical Marathon, an event which I would see myself participating almost annually since last year. Maybe because of the love & uniqueness of the sport, not to mention my kakis who always participate the event together. On top of the usual annual line up of cross-country, adventure races and marathons.

I was actually more prepared for the event last year, gyming out on elliptical trainers and stair climbers just to train specifically for the event, but nothing much of such this year though- not even a pinch of carbo loading. All I just did was training for my marathon next month, which is not excalty the best of training for a stair climbing event besides builidng endurance.

I went light and easy, so it was very much get the bib (Bib No 3007) and climb! Very interesting, besides the unexpected appearance of the mysterious baggage deposit point (which I never saw coming at all), timings for this year had also improved for me: 11:27 from 11:43, which is a 16th postion placing contrary to my last year’s 22nd. Ahlong had the biggest “value added” at 25th position this year at 11:57 from 14mins plus last year. There are 127 participants who completed in the men’s 20-29 category.

And Singapore Marathon will be on in 2 weeks time, man that is fast, goodie bag collection will be on this coming weekend.

Would be posting more photos when I get them.

Millege for the last week (7 day period 12-18th Nov)
SP Gym 2+1 Sets Weight Training + Threadmill 3km – Tuesday
SP Gym 3 Sets Weight Training + Threadmill 7km – Friday
Swissotel Veritcal Marathon – 73 floors 1,336 steps
Total Millege for week = 10km (33.3% of 30km/week target met)

Coach won’t be around for training this whole week so it very much self training this week, adding alot more flexiblity into my timetable. Gymed out till 7.30pm on Tuesday. I think I might drop by the track, then the gym again on Friday evening.

Class ended at 3pm today, took the MRT to JE for a few rounds of House of the Dead 4 at Zone-X Jurong Entertainment Center. It was my first time playing HOTD4 and the most I’ve got to is the last boss of Stage 2 where I barely beat “The Lovers” with just a slit left on the last CANCEL bar. Haha pity, but I guess even if I got to Chapter 3, I won’t survive loong either…

To my astonishment, once I am done playing (i.e I lost aka died, gameover, nada life), I put the gun down, pick up my bag only to turn around and see 10 over people actually crowding behind watching me playing all the while. Haha quite paiseh, lost at 2nd stage only, but nevertheless a good game, and I guess I spoilt their movie by dying…. Which made me think about the interesting crowd-pulling nature of the game – I thought people actually wanted to play after me, but no one else actually came to play after I left, it’s like they all just simply dispersed like an electro-manget turned off.

I guess this game is something just like starbucks coffee, it’s almost like paying $1 for the coffee and $4 for the cafe atmosphere for your $5 grande. Personally I think arcade gaming is not much of action or just plain playing, it’s an exhibition of your skills, etc with a life audience, just like a coordinated performance, a display of precision, dexterity or arrogance if you are good I can say. It just swings on both ends of the pendulum, just like how brokes does it with the DDR machine.

It’s a good start for me, but what I really like is the spray of SMG bullets, which I took sometime getting used to unlike my previous games with Time Crisis’s with single shot triggering. I guess with more practice I aim to complete the whole game in one credit. Not as if I’ve done if before, compared to the 3 I used today.

Incase you wanna see the action, here’s the HOTD4 walkthrough:
Chapter 1 | Chap 2 PI, PII | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | End
And trust me, the game ain’t as easy as it looks on the videos. Though very helpful in finding hidden items…

One thing I like about HOTD4 is that this installment from SEGA is actually running the LINDBERGH hardware system which is actually a Pentium 4 3.0Ghz HT with 1GB ram, coupled with an Nvidia Geforce 6 series 256MB 3D card. Now that’s real power behind the panels, all complimented by a Toshiba 62″ Wide HD LCD screen, no wonder the graphics in the game kicks ass. The new Time Crisis 4 didn’t even raise any eyebrows.