just watched the japanese movie on arts central called haunted school 3. i won't try to impress anyone by trying to tell a sypnosis of the movie, but the effects were just so cool! and the best thing is, it's shot in 1997 - five years ago! the girl in the movie as mayuko looked just like a dead ringer for eriko from the now defunct j-pop girl group speed... she's so sweet. in a way, this movie reminded me of battle royale, where students are made to kill each other on a remote island - but some of them only grew to love each other and how to trust each other - which was also existent in haunted school 3. maybe these two films were by the same director, i have no idea.

anyway, yesterday, i paid a visit to eric's office in selegie complex and i was basically called in to determine if a zip 250 disk drive was dead. verdict - i can't say for sure. initially trouble in paradise, aka "tip" at steve gibson's site caught the internal drive to be unable to read the proprietary z-tracks on the zip disk, but an hour later, the drive seemed to be back in business again. huh? anyway, i'll be back at the office to do some rewiring stuff and rearrangement of the computer hardware - i foresee $100 shouldn't be too high a asking price for this cleaning service i'm providing... and the pun is that, the company is a cleaning company...

after finishing the work, i popped over to gee hin chan at waterloo street, and picked up 10 inner tubes - 5 x 26x2.0" schraeder tubes, 3 x 26x2.0" presta tubes and 2 x 26x1.25" presta tubes. later i swopped two of the 26x2.0" to 26x1.25" instead, because i bought for myself a pair of panaracer pasela tires! i was given a treat of a can of coca-cola by the botak ah-pek boss as i looked through his catalog... what a surprise! the tubes cost a total of $37.50, while the two tires cost together $56. that's already $93.50 for one day! but you may wonder, why so many tubes? because, come november/december, i'm gonna try something out in ntu campus... details coming up later!

and as i was about to leave, i heard fuzzybear's voice! and there was another guy with him, after introduction, i learnt that was kit leong's benefactor of sorts, roadster! small world...

ok lar, gotta immerse myself in the wonderful, wonderful music of hillsong's music now and get cracking with my exercise physiology, mathematics and socio-psychology revisions now...

p.s. cervelo has updated their line-up with the new 2003 models... yaay!

still remember back in '98, i couldn't join in as the "ca-le-fare" cast of the teenage textbook movie. what a sad thing, then. i think i was grounded back then, if memory serves me well. it's been four years now...

cannot take it, look at these gems i grabbed off talkingcock.com...



and a rejected ghost story too...

possessed
There was this guy who lived in Bukit Gorblok Block 666 who told me once that he believed his constituency was haunted by ghastly figures in white, who would go round possessing people's minds and making them do strange things like drink their own pee. I told him he was just having a nightmare.

anyway, i'm enjoying myself watching this video of dream theater covering metallica's master of puppets in one of their performances somewhere... john petrucci and his legendary "liquid" fingers...

i just woke up! wow!

oh, a little comment i have for fhm magazine singapore this month. just look at the cover! melody chen! wakeboarding babe, and look at that tattoo that's so "her" on her washboard abs... it's near the navel somemore... wow! long time haven't seen her since this mtv/teenage textbook movie promo thing back at junction 8 back in 1998, i think.

oh, for yesterday, the eed101 paper was fairly easy. thank God for that! after that, i went over to church for the 3rd and final instalment of the bible study series on the book of 1 samuel. and it lasted till 11:15pm or so! dead tired, so that's why i woke up at this unearthly or unhumanly waking hour...

and do help yourself to the smileys i've collected...


and there's a little "bloody" smiley...

what's wrong with this pic?



it's an advertisement for a product similar to ky jelly - in other words, a sex lubricant.

here is the original site where i read it.

the life you've always wanted - how to achieve it

1. continual achievement
2. contented rest
3. consistent celebration

celebration is the fuel of joy

1. celebration produces joy, and joy produces strength
   nehemiah 8:40 - "do not sorrow, for the joy of the Lord is your strength."
2. celebration is the photo album of joy
   look at the work pattern of God in genesis chapter 1: work, celebrate; work, celebrate; work, celebrate; rest

how to enjoy life the way God has planned it to be:

1. write down the little things that you can be joyful about
2. hang out with joyful people
3. put aside time every week to celebrate
4. eliminate hurry from your life
5. begin now

how to know if you're too hurried in life

• when you line up in the supermarket line, do you count the number of people in front of you?
  and the number of people in every other queue?
  and count the items in every single trolley?
  and calculate how much worth each trolley is carrying?
• do you get frustrated each time the person in a separate queue originally behind you, gets served before you?

hurry is not of the devil, hurry is the devil.

ps 118:24 - "this is the day the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it."

He is so big that He created the universe, yet He is so small that He lives in our hearts.

everyone has his or her own idols, but i have this feeling that lot of stars are all staging concerts all over the shop (and in singapore too) to earn money during these times. piracy has run high enough, i guess, to the extent that the artistes' ricebowl have been shaken. so of course, the most glam method for them to earn money is to drive hormone-charged audience to watch them perform for 2 hours. 2 hours, $120. to me, that works out to $60/hour. too high a rate for me to spend my entertainment dollar. no offense, but what's so special about watching jay live in person? can't touch him, can't really see him up close... cd enough liao lor...

at least watching a movie is at most $5.66/hour. that's assuming $8.50 over a 90 minute celluloid. cycling is better.

ok, got myself a new piece of work to keep myself busy during the vacations - reviews moderator of togoparts.com it's voluntary and unpaid stuff - so i won't spend too much time on it, but i'll definitely do what i should do.

high resolution picture after our dinner last night. kit boon look a tad like a mafia chief with two jokers on either side, ya?

i doubled up to serve as jeam's mobile atm, because the girl forgot her wallet (huh? not purse meh?) again... wow!

moral of the day - never, never give a person who's leaving singapore a hug at 11:35pm just when your bus arrives at the bus-stop - because it will leave without you because you didn't flag it down! one up, jeam!

wow! eunice has her article on magic: the gathering published on gameaxis liao!

and speaking of appointments, i've got one more meeting with a. prof angela wong on november 7, 930am at her office. 02-03-75 regarding the practicum. 3229 (jessica's the name to call to reappoint the meeting, if the need arises)

some of the most violent cows on the face of planet earth - hotlinked from bloocow's website

"you there! mai cow-peh! take this!"

just watched home team on channelnewsasia, thanks to a tip-off from kit leong. today's episode - the hoongs - and family, and their involvement in the sport of triathlon. reminds me too, that i should ensure that zhi chun is drafted into the 6 division team for next year's army half-marathon. and to reply the mail that hui min just replied to me a couple days ago...

man, it sure makes me drool to see the number of bikes they have! colnagos (yes, more than two!), spinergys, cadex... oh man...

oh yeah. to remind myself, tomorrow evening at 730pm i'm meeting jeam and a few more kakis from the project care ride at buona vista mrt for a send-off dinner for kit boon...

giro has released their new helmets! yaay! look at these beauties!




and how could we forget lance?


and team usps? the one just on the right is the last season's edition of the team helmet:



which means that the helmet i have (below, rabobank) has really become a limited edition! same for the once-eroski helmet owners too!


and note the cool paint job on this new helmet!


pricing for the pneumo : us$159.99 for the standard version, us$174.99 for the limited editions and us$199.99 for the premium edition!

and for you non-cyclists, take a load of this from david etxebarria from team euskaltel during this year's tour de france's stage 7:

kids, don't even think about this...

i'm wondering now - how popular is my site? i mean, i've got this odd impression (which is possibly faulty) that people like anne, ash, lyndy, mavic, kalene (new!), sugarine, tricia, ash ng and many other people seem to have gotten each others' links through my site. is this true? pop a little note to let me know if that's the case (or not). and one more thing - anyone else i forgot to mention, but got to know other bloggers through my site?

You Are A Romantic Kisser!
You'll only kiss if the mood is right and if you think you are falling in love.
Some may say you're old fashioned, but when you kiss, you see stars!
One kiss from you, and anyone will be hooked forever.
How Do *You* Kiss?

hand holding - you like to be in constant physical contact with your
special someone but you don't want to take things too quickly.
What Sign of Affection Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

took the quizzes through phoenix's site.

while smitty and i were cycling down changi road leading into joo chiat road, to our horror, xooey disppeared into the air behind us! we started worrying about what could have happened to her over a 150 meter stretch with one bus stop in between. where was she? if anything untoward happened, then she would have been able to at least scream or shout (doesn't apply only to guys, you know) something that would instantly get our attention. but we heard absolutely no audible signal of any sort! i immediately tried to call her - there was no response from her handphone! i asked smitty to stay put at a gas station while i backtracked to look for our soon-to-be roadie. my goodness! she had vanished - with no trace! i got back to smitty and we discussed quickly - there was no sign of any accident of any kind - nor there was a crowd or anything associated with a bicycle accident of any form. how now? we decided to go for one big loop around the area and try look for her - no luck. oh no! no sound, no visible trace of her - what? and she said she didn't have a knack for roads and how-to-get-where! alien abduction? we hung out for about 15 minutes around the area - but no luck.

we were feeling so guilty - what if she was upset with that we two guys decided to cycle on a road with fairly heavy traffic, and just promptly decided to trot back home without us? but at least her handphone should be functioning! wait... if nothing happened to her, how come her handphone is not responding? with this deep guilt that we had, we decided to try going to the bikestores at joo chiat road anyway - for in case she went to the bikestores there using another route? smitty and i both reached cyclecraft, and we still couldn't account for what happened to xooey. we couldn't concentrate. in the end, we went over to marine parade food center and try waiting, in case she called either of us to tell us that she was lost somewhere. the situation was tense. while we were at the food center, i decided to give xooey a call. imagine, for the past one hour (or thereabouts) there was zero response from her handphone. this time things changed. the phone was working! yes!

i asked her if she was ok - and she was. i asked her where she was - she was at home. i asked her what happened. she said she lost us. but she didn't call me because she didn't have my handphone number off her mind, and her battery went flat!... to think that the two of us were panicking over her life, and that was the truth of what happened.

moral of the story - please escort soon-to-be roadies in between at least two experienced cyclists when going anywhere.

oh. and the way from upper changi road east to soon watt is to go via east coast park... that was advice from a err... roadie?

anyway, i met up with one of the toiletduckies, fuzzybear, arnhem and his girlfriend at tiong hin...

going out cycling with xooey around the bike stores at east coast soon. mavic, if you read this in time, let me know if you wanna join us. we might be popping by rodalink bedok...

went for a coastal road ride with xooey - boy, is she fast on her bike or what! she's using panaracer t-servs. we went for bak chor mee at bedok blk 85... sorry mavic, too late liao, so i didn't ask you to join in...

had a good rest in yesterday afternoon, and then off i cycled back to nsdc on my bike - so that i could attend the 6 division army half-marathon team prize giving function. it was definitely much lower key than the first time i joined the team back in 2000, but nevertheless, better than nothing. received a sigg jogger's belt along with a sigg action bottle with a capacity of 0.75 liters. not bad. but i haven't mentioned how long the event went far beyond the time i anticipated it would end - 9:45pm! once it was done, i practically raced on my bike over to hougang to join in the fenr (friday eastside night ride), expecting to have around 12 people waiting for me... but when i met up with the group at the junction of upper paya lebar road and lorong ah soo, it was practically a peloton that appeared! especially a large group of roadies, too!

anyway, photos are up at http://community.webshots.com/user/sehsuan4. just look under "fenr 181002". for those who are curious about the route we used, it was upper paya lebar -> paya lebar -> guillemard -> nicoll highway -> keppel road -> mount faber (killer!) -> telok blangah -> keppel -> lau pat sat -> nicoll highway -> mountbatten -> east coast park -> tampines -> bedok reservoir -> hougang ave 3 -> tiong hin. tada!

p.s. of all things that unlucky, i was "fortunate" enough to step on a lump of cat's shit right when i was back outside tiong hin... one of my shoes got the crap and the associated smell. and a little section of my front wheel. argh... fancy this kind of stupid thing happening when the ride is over!... and the best part was, the cat's poop was probably only the size of a 50 cent coin and i stepped on it?...

i don't know what hit me - i woke up at around noon, and a dull soreness came all over my back again.

anyway, check out my newest site - my yahoo auctions page. right now i've only upload some pepsi cans to be sold off...

debbie ar, the oil on the lens very hard to clean off properly... looks like i have to enlist the help of my neighbor liao, the one with the dry box. no matter how i try to clean the lens, there's always the spot of the cleaning fluid dried up there... even if not, there's always the oil stain on the lens! tolong tolong, you have to learn that camera optics are not the same as a pair of spectacles - it's a $1500+ camera optics!... for goodness' sakes, it's a four-digit priced camera, if you weren't sure of how to handle it, then why in the world ask me to let you look at it? thought that people knew how to take care of my camera after i passed the camera to edward... i can trust him with the camera because he's pretty serious about his own... sigh... looks like tonight i can't sleep properly until i can get the lens properly cleaned up... otherwise if mold starts growing... guess i'll only bother about the etm tutorial later in the week - not in the mood to do it now...

when i just asked my dad how do i go about cleaning the lens, he said, "i knew if he took over the camera, it wouldn't be in the same condition anymore." ARGH! and he said, the reason why he didn't let me handle the digital cameras that he bought all along was because he expected that i couldn't take care of them! the agony!

moral of the story - NEVER lend a camera to anybody who doesn't have the logic of how not to handle a camera - by its lens! and fancy this - it's only the 3rd day that i've taken over the camera that something like this happened!

fawg. i don't think i want to attend tomorrow's tutorial at all now - not until the lens get TOTALLY cleaned up.

pretty incredible - after being blessed with the olympus c4040z digital camera, i had another day straight of blessings! in the morning i went over to eric's office around sim lim and looked at this upgraded hewlett packard pavillion computer (old one, of course), and diagnosed the hard disk as d-e-a-d. preliminary indicator - s.m.a.r.t analysis failed. i reset the bios and let the bios autodetect the hard disk - and it detected the hard disk correctly as 10gig. tried to boot up - s.m.a.r.t. failed. case of d.o.a. took a sum of $159 from the company petty cash, went over to bryan's and picked up a fresh maxtor diamondmax plus d740x for $159. went back to the office and installed the hard disk, installed windows 98se from the office's own cd, and then it's more or less done. although i must complain about the crappy realtek network controller - giving me headache for a while. got things up and running after that hiccup though.

the blessing part? i earned $40 for my work just like that, without expecting it!

oh my goodness! my dad just spoke to me! after goodness knows how long we didn't have a single sentence to talk about... he asked me whether i knew how to handle the olympus camera - and by the way, he's just bought a sony dsc-717!

i can't believe it - dad's giving his newly-bought olympus c4040z 4 megapixel digital camera?!?!?!

new pic of my bike shot with the camera (click on the pic for a high res pic!)

a vote of concern on a person's site for another person (her good friend) turns into disbelief by them, and scorn. but i won't hold anything against them, for they won't see the big picture that things are over already. just as He has forgiven me that many times, i shall not begrudge anything against them - for i do not intend any ill intention.

went to pulau ubin for the first time of my life on a bike - what a good hard workout we had! after the ride, i went to uncle choo's place to change a stem, a generic one, for only 10 bucks. after changing the stem, i realised that the rear derailleur housing was too short - and i promptly changed the cable housing along with the cable for 10 dollars, although i did the changing myself. a bit on the expensive side though. now this is how my bike looks like:


photos from the ride are available here.

food! glorious food! you're looking at the sumptous dinner paceman, wer, wonkers and his girl val, and i had just last night.



and yes, nic and pling are ok, although they are (were?) in bali for the last one to two weeks... phew!

oh yeah! this coming week i'll be checking with peter on the combined pricing of the polar s710 heartrate monitor, as well as the usb-to-infrared adaptor... the s710, should be priced at $440... and boy, will it come in handy to help me get motivated to do some training for the year end marathon, though i have yet to register for it...

don't know why, but jude is a hot lil' chili. she seems to either like seeing people fall and climb up again... but is it to glean a deeper sense of inspiration from me? frankly, i don't know - and it won't get me anywhere about it. but boy, does she form some opinions about me.

on the topic, can i have fully-fledged Christians (sorry, non-Christians, catholics, rc's are not included) commenting on the previous post?

anne, what has happened to you of late? i've been reading your site, how come you seem to feel so unhappy inside? call me to talk ok? you always have ah-kor here for you.

the round-island cycling trip disintegrated somewhen around woodlands, as some roadies broke up the group. another group broke off for prata at sembawang. champions...

something i dug out of my old eudora mailbox - apparently by mother teresa

"people are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centred;
forgive them anyway

if you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
be kind anyway

if you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
succeed anyway

if you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
be honest and frank anyway

what you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
build anyway

if you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
be happy anyway

the good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
do good anyway"

good news - there's been a spate of people getting hitched of late. first up - two of our pess juniors - whom they are, i shall only reveal that the girl seems to like the bak chor mee at blk 85, bedok north road. and of course, another two people from my class - whose identities i shall not divulge. psst! xxxxxx! i told you i wouldn't let people know you attached to xxx xxxx one...

feeling achy all over because of the intensive last-day practice i did yesterday afternoon for my vaulting test - i did it for about one and a half hours. surprisingly, though i was alone practicing by myself i thought it was very much easier to overcome my fear of vaulting, and landing successful vaults (albeit on the bum for most of them). i had the occasional guest appearances by edward, and sabrina, of whom i enlisted their help to see if i've been able to do kipping on the boxtop.

last night was something different - i thought that i was different too! despite being tired from the vaulting practice, i actually mugged down at the ongoing assessments for the etm201 module - and boy, it sure didn't feel like me! had to borrow protractor, compass and ruler from this guy called ervin who is staying in blk 52 as well. finished my work around 11:30pm last night, went for a pooping session in the toilet, then i just went out for a leisure round of cycling around the campus, and met jackie (also a blk 52 guy) who was walking back to the hall... and later when i returned to hall, i went to kar-cheow wing and priscellia. later on, serene got dragged into the scenario when i asked her over to join us - in the end, it because a ghost story sharing session. apparently, according to serene, blk 70 of hall 15 apparently has one cause of haunting...

ok, enough for yesterday.

the etm201 lesson today was a puzzler - but paul (our lecturer), from what it seems, is really, a very interesting chap - he has some interest in computers - just like me. our topic for the day was to find out the relation between pythagoras' theorem, the area of a circle and its circumference. in the end, i asked him about fans and strips, culling and such. i think he got boggled by what i said though. learnt that from the days of 3dfx and directx 5/6. paul also mentioned that the worth of a $150 toy is infinite when it drops into the toilet bowl and causes a jam... infinite worth? because 150/0 - zero arising from the eventual worth of the toy! yucks... apparently that happened back at his home, as we were having his class! ewww... but it's funny, you know. his british humour.

after maths, it was the vaulting test - on my practice, i ended up sitting on my bum from the vault. but for the actual test - all my three attempts - i did them well enough - but not that good enough that i landed standing up on the mattress! feeling good about it still...

stupid alwyn "let me go on aeroplane" when he changed his mind about going for a swim around noontime. bo-bian, so i went swimiming alone, since alwyn was probably too happy that he is getting two ponderosa meals on two guys in the class for getting hitched earlier. at the pool, i ended up chatting with jonathan from one of the two pe diploma year 1 classes, and found out his knack for cycling too - he owns a second-hand eddy merckx bike! woo! did ask him to join our class for next wednesday's cycling trip as well...

to sum up the evening, i met jeanevere on the 199 bus leading back to boon lay interchange. we talked and yakked, and went on a "-since-tomorrow-is-payday-why-don't-we-go-walk-around-jp-to-see-what-we-can-buy-when-we-get-the-money" window shopping trip together. edward, lily and siva saw me with this pretty young lady who was in an all-white dress on the escalator while we were all moving in opposing directions. confirmed one, from the looks on their face, they were surely thinking that either i'm wooing jeanevere or she's already my girlfriend!

one thing that's bugging me somewhat - now tell me, if a person is known to be a Christian, should he/she even get together as a couple with a person who may be a free-thinker or non-Christian? when the Christian goes for church service on the weekend - what does the other partner do? when the other partner is off to a place of worship (other than a church; or doesn't go anywhere, in the case of a free-thinker/atheist), what does the Christian do? it may help to think that the situation may be resolved by conversion - but the point is, getting together with an "unsaved" person in the first place is frowned upon by my church (and most churches, for the matter). so what now, brown cow?

that's about it - eyes automatically closing liao...

oh, forgot. yesterday mr. anwari gave a solemn talk regarding his inability to really make a breakthrough in his career, because he doesn't have a doctorate in physical education - he was strongly advising us to get at least a degree in this field, or rather, any field for the matter to be able to progress on.

dr. clara almost got herself into some trouble with me today. saw her at the library atrium, and she was apparently so joyous (why?) over the starhub promotion booth there, saying, "phone ar! very pi!" (hokkien for "so cheap!")

and i said to her, "the next line that would rhyme with it is, 'sponsor me'..." then she sort of "regretted" what she said...

hey guys (and gals), i'm thinking of moving my site to another place, because i'm sort of not getting anything nor anywhere with my singnet email. something screwed up, and i can't do anything about it after they did the last system maintenance. anybody willing to host my site? less than 2mb needed, and i just need a url, that's all. any ready helpers?...

woke up in time to work a little on the imagery topic that the group of alvin, henry, faisal and me are gonna present tomorrow during socio-psychology. once i got it done, then i pedalled my way over to singpost paya lebar and met up with faisal first. funny how things were - i messaged henry that i would be late before i started out, but when i reached singpost, alvin messaged that he would be late... what, a cycle?

once finished with the meeting, i cycled over to techpoint and got back the bell influx helmet back from jeam. she looked very much prim and proper, with a lil' choker made of a thin leather-looking strip. long-sleeve shirt, and pants. her eyes... she looked just as captivating as ever. and i like that look she had today. she's got me attracted to her, again, for a moment. oh, whatever. am i tempted? i don't really know.

went for service today - after a five week hiatus - and yeah, it was good, this service - manhood service. summary for the day - "i am male by birth, and man by choice". had a birthday cake - in my name, of course - boy, it sure feels good to have a lil cake to share with your cellgroup members too! and i received a card too, which was constructed by chief architect ah hui. err... the straws keep on falling off... how ar?...

hey, try this cute penguin game. you'll love it!

also found out anne appeared as a subject for gatchaman's artwork... his first digital portrait! cool!

p.s. here are the photos for friday's offroad ride

heh heh... didn't do much today, except to zzzz up to the early afternoon, where i just loafed online on togoparts, and slept again. (what? again?) when i woke up, i decided to clean up the frame of my bike - it's been well around two or even three weeks since i last cleaned it up. kit leong popped by my place to pass me back my older, shorter seatpost, which i plan to use on my bike when i go offroad again - it's damned scary going downslope when you can't pull your butt behind the saddle for added balance. furthermore, the slightest miscue on the front of the bike will equate to an endo! i will need to get the seatpost sawn shorter by 3cm though - it's not significantly shorter than my current seatpost now. so that means when i go offroad, i'll swap the entire seatpost and saddle - so that means i'll pick up another saddle this coming month as well. will get the sawing task done off at hup leong's when i pop by there.

as i was cleaning my bike - one of my neighbours popped in front of me and asked if i could help to inflate the tires of this children's bike that belongs to his family, to which i gladly obliged. it felt good that people can entrust your expertise in a field that you are proficient in, you know. didn't have the time to take off both wheels and correct the position of the inner tubes though - the valve stems are very much misaligned, and could end up in a rupture via a valve stem breakage - but i asked them to bring back the bike to me when they're free.

taken from effy's site...


What kind of porno would you star in?
brought to you by Quizilla

and from there,


What box do you get put in?
brought to you by Quizilla

ooh-la-la! yesterday marks the first time i've tried to ride offroad with my bike... at the cycling trail starting at chestnut avenue.

the sequence of events for yesterday - in the morning, due to the oh-i-haven't-run-so-much-so-often syndrome, i woke up at an astounding 10am. plus some lazing around before i set off back to nie for microteaching, when on the first bus trip i saw hui hui, who was from vjc last time. she didn't see me - anyway, we don't know each other well. got back to the nie mph at only 12:40pm, and probably got myself killed by dr. clara, but i'm convinced it's because it's my lucky day, so that's why i'm alive to tell the tale. stupid 199 bus had a queue ongoing for 15 minutes, that's why i was late... sigh. anyway, edward and wooi ling were those presenting the microteaching lessons, and the late turn-ups by both me and alwyn gave wooi ling quite a bit of last-minute shock... gotta apologize for that though... once all the taping and whatnot was settled, only then did i learn that debbie, siva, ban hwee, henry, wooi ling, and alwyn were going cycling together! yes, c-y-c-l-i-n-g together! once i got wind of that, i zipped back home and tried to "fly" my way down to the bukit timah community centre where they would be waiting for me - and as for me, i reached there at about 3:50pm. ban hwee was on his gary fisher bike, wooi ling on a no-brander rigid bike, debbie came on xuan's generic mtb, siva on lily's polygon (with slick tires! ), alwyn on a muddy fox and eat this - dr. henry came on a bmx!

once we got down to work, it was pretty good to go through chestnut avenue and chestnut drive all over again - to cover what i previously ran in the past, using a bike. i admire the folks (which essentially means, everyone except siva and me) who weren't using helmets... the jarring immmmmpp-aaa-ccc-ttt on the downslope sections gave me quite a jitter! i mean, those not wearing helmets - they're almost kamikaze without knowing it themselves! (yes, debbie, that's what i thought!) of course, both siva and me let them know that braking should be done more by the rear brakes instead of the front - unless they wanted to endo. for those who are unknowing, endo means flying over the handlebars, in loose definition.

we'd cut the session short, since mr bmx had a flat, and the day was starting to transit into night, and so we went out via rifle range road, to veloroutes (a bike shop around the area). after having fixed his flat, we all went over to boon tong kee for dinner. i'm surprised - there's nothing that outstanding about the chicken rice there... what's that special about it? oh, i met wenshan there too, with her cell group mates.

i ended the night by cycling to take a look at hup leong, which was closed by 9pm when i reached there, and thereafter, mohammad sultan road. got back home just before 10pm. well deserved rest...

came back not too long ago from a simple birthday dinner with big sis stacey and her boyfriend lawrence. basically we had the dinner at chomp chomp, for my convenience (what a sweet girl stacey is!) to my place! the joke of the night, though, was stacey - she ordered for chilli fish and chilli stingray, and when the order came to the table, i thought so too, that it was too expensive, $24 for only two small slabs of chilli-smothered fish on a piece of banana leaf! in the end? i was somewhat taken aback by the apparent 100% price hike - incredulous! but about 10 minutes after that - dig this - came along another dish of chilli fish on banana leaf - from the same storetender! apparently, our dear girl ordered blindly "this and that" (in her own words) one piece of fish and one piece of stingray, so who could blame the stallholder for screwing up the order! somemore, when she ordered, she didn't find out the serving size...

of course, prior to all these travelling stuff, i met stacey at the ntu src around at six in the evening, and i brought her on a run up most of those killer slopes in the entire ntu/nie campus. imagine this - when we were running in front of the chinese heritage centre (and various places where slopes were abound), i was cajoling her, "hey, let's run up that slope... wait, no, no, no... i'm too chicken to go up... let's go somewhere easier" and while pretending to chicken out, i was in reality leading her to the b-i-g killer long slope up the comm science department slope! of course, it helped that around the bend at hall 7, the base of the killer slope just appeared slowly! oooh, that was so evil! but i like it!

we finished the run, and the silly big girl decided to try pull off 6 sets of 400m repeats, claiming that it's beneficiary for her. i told her flatly, no, and challenged her to why a yes instead. she couldn't answer. we'd walk back slowly, chatting our way back to hall 10. i took a quick shower and soon enough, miss smelly and me walked over to hall 11 canteen, where we met serene and diana. serene left pretty soon, but after diana left much later, stacey said that this demure, sweet diana was suited for me, and that she was a fan of mine! (what? i've got fans? huh?) well, frankly i don't know - it's nice to have a girlfriend (as stacey said, i need someone to take care of me) but i think God and mom are the most important people in my life.

i think this year, the most important thing that i should celebrate is not my birthday, but my mom's. she was the one who carried me around for practically a year before giving birth to me - she's the one who did the hard work, and does the painstaking task of caring for me as i grew up. and i only have one mom. i should also celebrate her strength and inner fortitude in battling cancer. she's a strong, iron-willed mom, this mom i have.

p.s. forgot to mention that i saw my polytechnic coursemate jacqueline in the moring at the boon lay interchange...

sammiay asked me if my dream bike wasn't cannondale... my reply? yes, it was, but that's about it. was just reading, by coincidence, that saeco-cannondale snubbed lance armstrong when he just recovered from cancer and was looking for a team to join. you can read a mention about this in his autobiography, it's not about the bike - my journey back to life. so, i can tell cannondale to go suck a lemon and fuck off - making an appointment with his agent and then not appearing at the supposed meeting to discuss terms - what is this!

on the contrary though, giro, oakley and nike were the big companies that practically stuck to him during his cancer chemotherapy. so no prizes for guessing who i support there. oakley, in particular, practically twisted the insurance company's arm to make sure lance was covered during his sickest moments...

when i got back home earlier this afternoon, i talked to my mom some stuff regarding her breast cancer condition. she said, what she went through last year during june (18th, specifically) was removal of the lumps, and subsequently went for five-days-a-week, continued radiotherapy over a 30-day period. finally, had started to understand some more rationale why she wouldn't want to eat chicken in any form - you know it too - they're fed/injected with female hormones to assist in early "harvesting". ah well. kfc will take a backseat for me then. at one point of time, i sensed that she almost broke down when she was explaining to me her dilemma when she's presented with so many food items that she can't eat when she's outside, because of the chinese sinseh's caution.

i told her too, that when i'm free, we'd go to pay a visit to this auntie (no relations though) whose daughter was my sister's playmate back in primary school. i'm not sure of the prognosis of her cancer, but then it doesn't sound too good, from what my mom told me. in his book, lance mentioned that cancer doesn't really have to be a death sentence - "it could be a route to a second life, an inner life, a better life."

i'm getting older already. ah yes, time to move on in life...

i wonder why, but i got a tad too technical during dr. michael chia's exercise physiology lesson, regarding thermoregulation in young people. what is happening to me?

last night i received a sort-of-happy email back from the folks from cervelo - they've posted up a full sized picture of the cervelo p2k after i emailed them that the picture was missing! yaay! no coincidence though, that's the baby i'm gonna buy when i get my funds up...