It’s Vesak day today, informally “Buddha’s Birthday”. Well wishes going to all Buddhists celebrating Vesak day alike. The day started with me crawling to to Aljunied MRT at 9am on a snoozy public holiday to meet Darius and Elrick for the Adventure race team briefing at Enamel house. Over there we were briefed on the conduct and expectations of the race. Interestingly this year, the inclusion of high elements back into the race with abseiling and natural quarry rock climbing in on top of the usual orienteering, trail biking and running (which will take up the bulk of the race).

We did a few practice climbs at the rock wall there but none of us can actually complete the practice climb! I mean I’ve climbed inclined tiled walls before, but presumably because of few critical tiles lacking in some parts of the wall (& I am not very efficient with the use of inserts either), we all couldn’t get up to a certain point! But that didn’t stop us from doing a “belay haul” haha which we managed to get Darius up to a point without much “climbing” on his side either! Though the natural wall we will be conquering at the quarry will be easily 3 times the height of this 3 storey synthetic wall, the organiser said that it will be easier to climb, about 5mins – so as he claimed. Free abseiling is fun, just like what I did in the Army before only this time, theres a 10 storey rock face to “walk” down from.

There was a outdoor tentage and a grand monument in front of the Aljunied MRT carpark in line with Vesak day, very impressive glittering landmark in the afternoon sun. Discussed the race plans and preparations with the team over curry rice lunch at the nearby coffeehouse, particularly how we need to go about transporting our mountain bikes to the race venue (there’s no bike and equipment rentals this year so we have to use all our own, which is quite a hassle having to bring to Bukit Timah). Nevertheless it was going about getting the needed race equipment at the Beach Road army market and cooling down with ice desserts before heading off. Met up with Mum and Dad at the Bukit Merah View Thai Temple to pray for the afternoon before heading home for a much needed rest.

Today is the last day SP swimming pool will be open, where it will be closed then to next year. Access to the Staff center and gym will be from the front glass door entrance from the Car Park, you can access it from Food court 5 after making a round outside Food Haven and the carpark facing the Stadium.

Excerpt from message to Staff and Students: Having upgraded the Sports Complex, we next shift our attention to the swimming pools. All three pools (competition, wading and children) will be closed from 1 June 2007 to end-Feb 2008 to facilitate upgrading of the pool filtration plant, replacement of pool and deck tiles and the renovation of pool toilets. The scope of work also includes the installation of a water ionization system which will provide a healthy, mineral water swimming environment for users.

We would like to seek the cooperation of staff and students, especially regular users of the pools, to bear with the closure. We also appeal to occupants and patrons of facilities nearby to put up with inconveniences and access restrictions arising from construction activities.

Should you have any enquires or wish to provide feedback, please contact Ms Chua Wei Lee at 6772-1628.

Got a letter few days ago that my Singnet broadband speed has been upgraded to 3Mbps from 1.5Mbps without any additional charges, maintaining the usual subscription at about $58/mth. This came very much as a welcome in sharing the bandwidth among the few ummm, 7 computers at home. It’s not the first time I’ve got a free upgrade – I remembered they’ve previously bumped up my old 256kps to 512kps and then up to 1.5Mbps previously, presumably to remain competitive with Starhub (aka ol’ SCV) cable who also have their own fair dishing of free upgrades on their own.

Remembering the old days, come to think about it it’s already more than 10 years since I’ve been a subscriber with Singnet, in fact about 13 years already since the ol’ Singtel “Teleview” days with those noisy but “cutting edge” 14kbps modems (yea- cutting edge… I always go laughing when I read dated computer magazines I’ve stashed from the 90s). Those were the days. I guess one can never appreciate broadband if they weren’t a 56k’s subscriber before – which I unfortunately have to put up during my growing-up years. Still can’t believed that was enough for Counter-Strike and Starcraft multi-player games back then. And laughingly, the whole house would be quiet whenever anyone is up online as no one can ever call through!

Singtel Mio
I had been considering the Singtel Mio for few months now and almost committed to it as my Net contract had expired sometime ago (sparking lots of annoying marketing calls from SingNet as well). Seemingly the Mio, 3.5Mbps Broadband, Home line and Singtel mobile line all at a low rate at $68 basic++ is indeed a very tempting offer (as the acknowledged by the horde of crowds at singtel stores at it’s launch). Though my current Net and Mobile bills alone are averaging a slight $20 margin above the basic Mio $68/mth package, I am considering putting Mio off as my current gateway modem and set-up is the most reliable I have to date- no DCs or home network crashes, so why fix anything which ain’t broke? So as I’ve learnt, Mio too have it drawbacks:

• Gateway modem have to be ON 24/7 or no phone line
• Cannot use existing VOIP software (for free overseas calls) with Mio
• Mio Mobile can only be used on “approved phones”
• Modem not exceptionally reliable (feedback from friends & acquaintances)

Besides chalking up your electricity bill for the modem, do take note that you cannot make calls (especially emergency calls) in the even of a blackout or power trip. Though that’s not very common in Singapore, but something you have to be aware of in such an event. The most disappointing thing is the limited number of phones which can be used for Mio Mobile- I mean $15/mth for unlimited wi-fi calls is a sweet deal and technically any phone with built-in wi-fi CAN make VOIP calls through Mio Voice, so why limit it and maintaining the partnership monopoly of “approved phones” to few Nokia phones only?

Mio is good, but it seems that I might put it off till something better comes by.

Sorry for not posting this up earlier. Anyway, here are the Penang bridge marathon details. The run is a major event and part of Visit Malaysia Year 2007. This is going out particularly to Norule who requested the details:

Event : PENANG BRIDGE MARATHON
Date : 24 June 2007 (One week after Phuket Marathon!)
Distance : 42km, 21km and 10km

Categories:
FULL MARATHON: Fee RM 50.00 / USD 50.00

• Men Open 18 y.o. and above 42.195 km
• Women Open 18 y.o. and above 42.195 km
• Men Veteren 40 y.o. and above 42.195 km

HALF MARATHON : Fee RM 25.00 / USD 25.00

• Men Open 18 y.o. and above 22.3km
• Women Open 18 y.o. and above 22.3km
• Men Junior Veteran 40-49 y.o. 22.3km
• Men Senior Veteran 50 y.o. and above 22.3km
• Women Senior Veteran 35 y.o. and above 22.3km

QUARTER MARATHON : Fee RM 15.00 / USD 15.00

• Men Junior 13-15 y.o 10.00km
• Remaja Perempuan 13-15 y.o. 10.00 km

FUN RUN : Bayaran Penyertaan = RM 10.00 / USD 10.00

• Fun Run 13 y.o. and above 10.00 km

(Thanks to Elrick for the specific addresses)
Entry forms must be submitted during office hours (9.00am to 4.30pm) to any of the following 3 addresses: (All Non-Singapore Addresses)

Malaysian highway authority
Northern region Office Batu 7, Jalan Sultan Azlan Shah 11700 Pulau Pinang Tel(604) 226 2959/ 226 2953

Malaysian Highway Authority
Jalan Serdang – Kajang 43000 kajang Selangor tel (603)8737 3000

Penang Bridge Sdn Bhd
Plaza toll Penang Bridge 13600 Perai, Pulau Pinang Tel (04)398 7419

One of my ram modules presumably went kaboom few days ago, as my “workstation” desktop system meter reads 510MB ram instead of 1024MB previously. so I am very much left with 50% of my available capacity with me now. As an analogy there are 2 ways to deal with a faulty car fan belt- you can choose to open the hood and fix the problem or you can simply just turn up the radio and continue driving. Seems that I am choosing the latter, until I can actually find time to troubleshoot.

With hardware prices coming down fast, finally I can look forward during the coming school vacation to get my quad-core system built and move away from the single-core and AGP era to something more respectable. Why quad-core? Well, everybody’s using dual cores now right?

New Items to purchase:

• CPU: Intel QX (6600/6700/6800) series Quad Core CPU
• Mobo: Asus Vista-Plus Mobo with Remote
• Ram: 2×1GB Kingston Hyper-X DDR800 Modules
• New HD: Hitachi E7k500 500GB harddisk
• Graphics: Geforce 8800GTS 320MB PCI-E
• OS: Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit OEM

Having used MSI, Gigabtye, Intel and Via motherboards before, this is my first with Asus, so hope they don’t let me down. Estimated price of all these components are $2000SGD currently, in time it will be within my budget not exceeding $1500, with the biggest chunk from the processor/mobo bundle taking up more than 50% of the total price (approx $1100SGD).

And no, Simlim square hardware prices are actually not affected by the “Great Singapore Sale”. Generally $1000-$1500 is my personal set limit on hardware, not that it’s “expensive” or stingy, but it’s just not worth to spend so much money on something which will be dirt cheap in a few months time, just like handphones, hardware prices will always drop- I’ve seen people spending $200+ on 2GB memory cards or equivalent one year back, and come crying back when it costs only $20 now. My point is that even if you have the cash to spare, it’s wiser to spend it on something else, given the opportunity cost.

Enough said, now here are the things I can savage from current system:

• Thermal Take SOHO casing
• 500GB and 2×250GB Hitachi harddisks
• Sony DVD-writer
• TDK CD writer
• WinTV Tuner/Radio
• Audigy soundcard
• 32-in-1 Media Card reader
• Antec Truepower 480W

Technically combined, the eventual system is a Quadcore system with 1.5TB Harddisk space with 2GB DDR800 ram. It seems that once you get a decently well built PC casing, you can stick with it as long as the ATX revisions are unchanged, so I generally advise anyone to get a good casing if you DIY and it can even last you a lifetime.

This system should be able to last me another 5-7 years till the next major upgrade, just like what I anticipated with my current system built in 2001, (with the exception of it already on it’s third motherboard!).

The Brooks life run and NUS Legs and Paddles was on today, didn’t go for it as firstly, I didn’t register for it, secondly am not quite the best of condition now (school school school) and lastly I already ran a race yesterday.

It’s quite packed during the week in terms of tutorials, but notably and commendably is the faster speed of the blackboard during this e-learning, maybe the offset of the e-mail servers to Microsoft for the SP iChat Email system definitely lightened alot of the CPU cycles and bandwidth bottlenecks. Just when I thought the road of homework was ended, I found out that I got my exam dates wrong, I actually do not have any papers next week! But instead the “29th” of next month! bummer!

Actually felt great this morning. Went for a sun-blasted afternoon 42 lap swim at the pool before heading for lunch at the nearby market – Yong tau foo duh, yummy “health food”. Started slaving back at home on the tutorials for the rest of the afternoon. Man that felt miserable, my running nose came back and just simply started flowing. Maybe I was still hungry, cus that always happens- finished a whole box of Kellogs Frosties and the flu went off, went back into the school work, Thermodynamics Steam tables & Library books and the flu came back again. Dammit I think I am allergic to school work.

Oh yea on Darius and Elrick’s team today at the Marina Bay NUS Legs and Paddles event, heres an excerpt from them:

“came back first for the run…”
“first team in my division to capsize…”
“and lost my specs to the sg river…”
“lol it was quite a chaotic event”

They completed the doubles race anyway. Was told the first position for the 10km brooks life run is strangely a 43mins, bummer most of us can complete round that timing as well!

Millege for week this week (7 day period)
Wednesday – 30mins Continuous Swim
Wednesday – Redhill/Tanglin Canal Route (16.6km)
Friday – 45mins Continuous Swim
Saturday – Moulmein Intra-Con Road Run (5.1km)
Sunday – 70mins 42laps (2.1km Swim)
Total Running Millage for the week: 21.7km
Total Accumulative Millage for 2007: 463.94km

Moulmein Intra-Con Road Run was on at MacRitchie Park today, reached the venue only to be greeted by overcast skies and a runny nose (which came with me from home). It rained during the race and interestingly, sinuses always clears when you run, just like how my smoker friends always exclaim at how puffing will cure their flus as well, for me it’s running, so does the saying goes “Feed the addiction and the flu will go away…”

Completed in about 23mins (I did say I had a flu right?), while the rest of the track team actually came in on 16-18th to a handful in top 10 positions, our girls came in 1st and last (technically), all bagging NTUC $10 vouchers. Anyway our team won 2 lucky draw prizes as well – a Akira OSIM-like U-zap and a table fan. There will be a related upcoming race in August held at Bedok Reservoir, will keep ya all in sync on that when the details come in.

Last but not least, would like to bid farewell to our SP track & field coach, coach Robin, who stayed with us over the last 2 years before having to leave now due to commitments and financial matters. He’s in Taiwan now for a track and field meet. Our new coach will be coming in officially when school reopens next week, bummer, new club officer, now a new coach…

well I am back from a period of relatively long absence, not much your typical case of fleeing from reality but actually getting in touch with it on the contrary. Yup with an “offfphh”, gravity caught back onto me after my day off on Monday (which you can recall being the last day of my round island expedition).

Things are pretty loaded this Semester, particularly E-learning which simply came with lots of homework, an equivalent of say 2 weeks on tutorial work-worth all dumped onto you to complete in one week, simple as it seems? The catch is that it’s all the same for all my modules – all 8 of them. As exclaimed by some of my peers it’s not much of a holiday as many intend it to be – with about 6-8 hours a day spend doing homework and I am actually only done with it by yesterday night.

To make matters worst, there is one Class Test (Thermodynamics) coming next Tuesday and the following week, one graded presentation and 3 more papers, all which I have not prepared… yet. On a brighter side, this semester will be my last academic semester, which technically means my last semester of E-learning, mid-semester tests and Semester Exams! Homerun!

Don’t know did I mention this before, but one of my Adventure race teammate, Ahlong won’t be able to join my team in the upcoming teengames adventure race on June 9th, due to his OCS commissioning parade. Together with Elrick, we were a formidable team, coming in 2nd overall and aiming for the pole this year. In his place this year is a rather anticipative Darius (aka my team manager for last year’s race) who will participate in Ahlong’s place.