a table can be made of three parts - the laminate, the plywood and the glue. like a table, the army is made up of three main human components - the officers, the warrant officers and specialists and finally the enlistees.

that's a good way to see how organizations work.

one of the not-so-rude things that i found out today was - i'm out of wildfilms. not so surprising though, since i'm really a klutz anyway. now, i ought to get started returning gear to basecamp soon... after ict.

when i got to the venue of the wedding dinner, some things crossed my mind.

why would people want to marry each other? does it mean a person has to give up his/her own interests just to get companionship? is it a must to get "tekan-ed" by your (former) colleagues/classmates to alcohol etc just for the sake of it? is it a must to have shark's fin as part of the menu?

when i was sanding off the paint off my old bike frame this morning, i recalled some composition that i wrote back in primary school, but i can't remember the topic. i wrote in it, that i wanted to get married by 30. well, i have 3+++ years to go before i break what i wrote over a decade and a half ago. people say to me, that the right girl has not appeared in my life, that's why i'm still single.

i guess enjoying the brotherhood of good pals is probably more important. undoubtedly, a guy should have his female lifelong companion, but i doubt i will do so for pragmatic reasons. why?

why would two people want to owe a bank a massive loan for renovation and housing? and face a massive outflux of money on the wedding preparations? and have to set aside money for the red packets come lunar new year?

am i the kind of person to get married? i guess not. and to face a plethora of unknown (or forgotten) faces during the dinner, wouldn't that be awkward?

and this is what i did to the quintana roo tequilo frame recently...

just now on the way back.... i saw hui ge driving around sengkang - and he looked totally lost when i gave him a smile as my bike went past his car, which was coming out from a slip road.

the xc run event was a good biking event. what?



the location for the run was a good place to bike, because most of it was fireroad - and the rush to get from point to point, made it like a race somewhat. distance on the bike today... just over 50k.

happened to meet charleslim when i was in the canteen back in camp today. had a short chat with him about his shots of late. actually his shots are pretty good - but they lack of captioning. once the captions are up, his shots will be amongst the best watersports shots i've seen so far.

day 1 of my first ict... so far so good.

bought one olympus fe-100 on behalf of a colleague last night. pretty good pricing for a 4mp digicam, i thought.

and after months of waiting... i finally got myself a polar speed sensor for $79 from house of times. and i hooked it up the blue bike - scheduled to test it out later tonight on a night roadie ride with david_ng.

wow, the thrills of riding a new bike...

well, the bike is almost three days old now, here's a photo of it!

surprisingly, the 12-23 cassette still allows me to climb a 40+ degree slow! very tough, but not impossible! so far, the frame feels very nice and stiff. carbon seatstays seem to ease out the road chatter from those slightly worn roads. good feeling!



did the brunch ride this morning, first time leading. pretty fun, but i totally missed out the hyderabad area. oops. total distance today - about 55k. gotta try the thomson road ride next weekend if i can...

meeting people? sure!

first of all, i met kim siah in junction 8 - he was my av club senior. looks rounder than i remembered him to be, but hey, i could still recognize him...

off to borders. met mervin tang - he's now a coach. he guessed that i'm working as a pe teacher from my attire - oh no! occupational hazard! had a long talk with hamsterchick regarding his upcoming wheelset after i spotted him while on my way out, and just as we were talking, i spotted u.k. shyam behind him with some of his pals too. yup, he remembers me alright.

and just when i thought it was time to leave, i happened to bump into gillian from bwv who i found out later, stays around my workplace! we took a common bus back to her area, which isn't far away from mine... and by the time i got off the bus... it was already midnight!

i will have two major things to settle today -

1. get that upgrade to vip passes/tickets to dream theater's friday january 27 gig in singapore as mentioned on as mentioned on lamc's site

2. get my new road bike up!

i did two big things last night.

first, i managed to bleed my juicy 7 brakeset by myself. not a major accomplishment, but hey, i got it done entirely by myself!

second, i booked for my new roadie frame. woohoo!

yesterday evening, after shooting the school play, while i was at the reception room for the guests, cast and crew, i had a feeling that almost became overwhelming. i realized, that though i like to be in company of people; i do not like to communicate with anyone.



got a few shots that i thought were usuable for a pj-style shoot; so here they are...

just something i got in my mail from roadbikerider's free email newsletter... scott's spin...

6. Scott's Spin: Till Bike Do Us Part

Studies show that single people will be miserably lonely and die years younger than those in a relationship.

But a sad, short lifetime of Cup O’ Soup dinners is a small price to pay for the one great advantage of being unattached: You don’t have to get your partner’s permission to buy a new bicycle.

Countless loving unions have been ripped apart by these fateful words: “Honey, I’m going bike shopping.” To which your soulmate replies: “Oops, I just dropped our credit cards down the garbage disposal, which -- like our roof, car and bank balance -- is now in desperate need of repair.”

What’s a paired-off person to do? Use the skills you learned while forging a devoted partnership: subterfuge, cunning and outright lying. Here are two surefire strategies:

-Ignorance (like marriage) is bliss. This one works best with a non-cycling partner. “Golly, Smoochie-kins,” you say, “you know I don’t want a new bike, but my old one is just no longer safe. I read in Consumer Alarmist magazine that down-tube shift levers give you carpal tunnel syndrome. And studies show that chrome-moly tubing causes cancer in rats who, uh, pedaled little steel bikes around the lab.”

-Let’s get physical. Or not. “Listen baby,” you murmur, “if I buy a new bike, I’ll ride a lot and get in great shape. By the end of summer, I’ll look like Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie. Plus, all that endurance will come in handy off the bike, if you know what I mean.”

Increased intimacy not a selling point with your ol’ ball and chain? You can always cite those stories about cycling causing numbness and impotency.

interestingly, i finally found the official casiopea website and its discography!

had a good time coming across album covers from amazon as well as yesasia.com...

what is happening to the education system?

why are report books only carrying the band-grade numbers for subjects only, and nothing else? no percentages, nothing quantitive to measure oneself for the summation of a year. how in the world are students going to know if a band 4 grade means 1% or 49.4%? there's just no way to find out!

i made a boo-boo, such a big one. i thought a friend of dawn's didn't mind online conversations with a really laid-back, casual manner... and a little naughty too; but apparently it wasn't the case, and she got seriously turned off! as a result, friday dinner's slated to be cut... no, worse. cancelled, because she was offended. argh. talking face to face is probably easier... this isn't the first time i've encountered major miscommunication because people thought i was trying to be cheeky with them.

man, i goofed up. but even if the dinner appointment's back up again, i can't go - i'm helping out with sajs for their school musical on both this friday and saturday evenings...

came back earlier from east coast park with some of my students, as we did this sandcastle building workshop. on the surface, it seems like it's all only about playing with sand, but it has things about how people handle change. the students were asked to build the sandcastles... but most do it without planning. hence point number 1 - if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. then probably an hour later, all groups were faced with an amazing race style crossroads - all the groups had to swap between the projects they have already done up to. adding this twist to adult groups, may result in participants storming off, cussing and swearing, or sabotaging. it's a somewhat controlled situation where people would be able to see the leadership qualities that one has; see how good or how bad a person may be. one more catchphrase that i caught from this - "immerse, reflect, act".


yours sincerely in a grey sportsshooter.com bucket hat;
the sandcastle in front was constructed by my students,
the one in background by the vendor's men earlier in the morning

had a good ride with handbag for two laps at bt today; met clarenceoh and kevinox73 along with avin. rode off for lunch thereafter; then decided to meet up in the afternoon for some salomon shopping.

bumped into grace while at the salomon store, rode along for a 50% discount. shoe's a little too big though, so i think i'll exchange for a smaller size down instead soon. met eric and his wife jancy; later we'd bump into clara chia and elisha's family; along with en and his girlfriend.

after hitching a ride over to clementi via the 1150gs; i bumped again into raymond (from ndp 05) and mark (the male nurse). small world!

just sharing a thing that happened to me today, that i believe that stan's did the trick for me, somehow.

i was riding on the wetter-than-usual bt trail this morning, somehow my front flatted out... and i only discovered it when i thought the front felt... squishy. when i saw the front tire, the tire was almost entirely pulled off the rim. i stopped, and inspected the tire. still holding in air, even though seconds before, it was entirely forced to one side of the rim! all i had to do was to pump in air into the tire, then voila! i could carry on with the rest of the trail... simply incredible. inspected the tire later on, but no signs of cuts whatsoever.

i would guess to say if i were using a tube, i should have kissed the grit; but somehow or other, i got through with this. phew!

this photographer called ashley came over to my school today to cover an event. it sure must be really something, if more than three persons feel that she has to learn how to do some p.r. it wasn't hard to feel that there can be more dedication to the work she does, from her behaviour.

we'll see how things turn out in tomorrow's papers.

anyway, i bought mountain bike like a champion from borders tonight. seems like a good read...

one more colleague of mine asked me after school yesterday if i went for any photographic courses before, because to her that some of my photos were quite nicely done, with a particular reference to the photo i took at the temple on pulau ubin; and that she doesn't seem to be coming up with photos like that even though she has attended such courses in the past. i said, there are many many countless other photos that she hasn't seen yet.

but frankly, it leaves me to wonder, when people say that your photos are good, is it because they have been surviving with motion-blurred images all along. one of the things that i really don't want to hear would be, "what good equipment you have", would rather a "how did you get that picture?"

now i'm still sieving my way through countless school photos so that i can print some of them out for the ministerial visit tomorrow morning. now i pity photo editors... as i have to do essentially the same work now.

i'm not sure if this should be called a case of people acknowledging my strength(s), but this morning i've already one request to help a colleague to key in her class' final term examination scores in the component breakdown - i don't mind helping out, but when she asked me to help her look for the excel file that i did for her the last time, i thought it was preposterous. i copied the excel file that i did then for my class onto her computer, showed her how to key it all in (or did i key it in for her?); and half a year later she's asking me to look for that file for her... on her computer?... uh, that's her computer, not mine, how would i know where the files would be after so long? *groan*

then after this nearly ended, another senior staff was waiting for her to finish, and reminded me to bring my camera on tuesday for the umpteenth time in less than a week. i didn't know i had the look of going senile...

like my bde rsm said, it's a matter of perspective of whether to look upon a task as being honoured to do so; or just another "arrow" that just flew my way. but the first request was bordering on absurdity... and i won't be offering help to those who can't bother to even try using their own computers.

i got ballistic, and somehow decided to ride to bt in the morning, and just made three laps there. 1:37 for the entire three laps, including short rests and chatting time - when i met with the c2c group, kevinox73, clarenceoh and alex. if i'm not wrong, i think i took 32 minutes for the first lap... i think? nevertheless, though i couldn't clear some of the later climbs, i think i can count my riding in as one with some level of consistency. phew!

and after the ride? chanced upon my primary school classmate royston mok, who just finished playing tennis with some other friends.

for the energy deficit of missing out breakfast, i lashed out at four roti pratas with eggs, and three teh peng's. $8.80 bill, and i was feeling bloated after that, urgh...

and this evening, i took back the remaining half of my khs frame after putting it at tiong hin for so long; and i finally managed to get out the v-brake bosses from the kinesis frame... with help of a 15" adjustable wrench that cost $50 to $60... incredibly tight!

lent siva the quintana roo yesterday evening... and i just got it back. don't know what happened, but one of the rear spokes snapped.

good thing, in a way, since the rear tubular has nearly worn out anyway.

speaking of which, there is one very inspiring article on sportsshooter.com about an american football player, born without legs. go read it!