just some notes that i found...

"the sun is life to the earth, love is life to mankind." - anonymous

"love can never say enough of itself." - sesto properzio

"real love does not recognize distance." - anonymous

"there is only one happiness in life: to love and be loved." - g. sand

"love directs your course." - k. gibran

"one forgives afor as long as one loves." - f. de la rochefoucauld

"one does not judge the beloved one." - j. p. sartre

"where you find friends, there you find riches." - plauto

"in dreams, as in love, all is possible." - janos arany

"the worst solitude is to be destitute of sincere friendship." - f. bacon

"how can you not be consumed when the flames of love lick round your soul?" - yunus emre

"the sentiment of love presupposes the sentiment of ownership." - f. nietzsche

"do not speak of love which, if real, is always hidden." - w. blake

"a loving heart is forever young." - proverb

"love is life and life hath immortality." - e. dickinson

"participation in happiness, not in sorrow, is the foundation of friendship." - f. nietzsche

visited two jc's yesterday, where i had friends working in. one around bukit timah, one around home. it was interesting to see how i could try to apply the stuff that i learnt at the nyp course for real live subjects...

sometimes, you hear of photographers talking about a "workhorse lens", that is, a lens that is used to earn money. here's my version...

anyone wants to buy my old pess t-shirts? 8 bucks a piece... majority are adult small size, two of which are adult medium size... by the way, ONLY trained or trainee pe teachers can get them. ethics of the business lah.


anyone still remember these newswatch t-shirts? circa early 1990s...

sat my butt off, on the trip to penang. set off 9pm friday night, reached there 7am saturday morning. and i was wondering where i ended up, pretty lost with the traffic signage there.

day 1
check out route
lunch at mario's
dam visit
dinner at indian "champoh"
fish shop visit


o-ring for divers, olympic rings... day 1's lunch

day 2
race day
lunch at charlie's corner
race
dinner around umno tower
gurney mall (mph)

day 3
walked all over town
penang rail
kek lo si
bak kut teh at jln datoh keramat


a view of the penang hill climb... which isn't even halfway up!

some things i must remember from this trip:

humility and discipline

stop talking. silence is carbon fiber (i don't like gold)

city planning is important. otherwise a city ends up hodge-podge messy.

don't look around so much, want to eat, just eat.

leaving a little moustache on lets people think you're from japan instead.

walking around town with an eos-1d with a 17-35 and a 70-200 with a 550ex is pretty tiring

happiness is a conscious decision we have to make daily

long bus rides are stressful on my back. gotta stretch more at the pullover stops

people are free to make their comments about us, but only we live our own lives

it rains incredibly heavy in kuala lumpur

universiti sains malaysia is in penang. and i didn't know it all along!

just happened to watch a video of a ghastly stoning execution in some middle east country. it's appalling what cruelty are still meted out in the days when even these very same people doing the stoning, are dressed in clothes that are based in western design, but with the people that had control over them, garbed in military uniforms and traditional middle-east clothing. eh, if the infidels did something that heinous that they ought to get killed, stoned or whatnot... what are these very same people using the things created in the west they hate so much? read this for an idea.

http://www.danishmuhammedcartoons.com/Home.html
http://www.faithfreedom.org/testimonials.htm

watching the young lions trounce sarawak was a good experience... after such a long while. i didn't talk to the players because i didn't know who's who, though i found out some of their identities... but knowing 28 players one-shot, offhand is a little tough...

but most of all, it was a totally new experience to have an old lady probably in the 50's ranting along "hao heng ah!" and other cantonese stuff, switching between the language and english.

marine aquarium shops are amongst the most twisted, and most cruel places on earth. why do i say so?

1. proprietors are more concerned with earning money than caring how many fishes are maimed or sick.
2. marine fauna will never be born and belong to the land of the freshwater.
3. sickly or dying fauna will spread disease to whatever you purchase. and spread it in your tank (although some people practice quarantining)
4. what do you think the corals are growing on? normal rocks? more likely cut away and harvested from the bottom of the sea!

please do not support the marine aquarium trade. if you have one that's doing fine, stop buying lifeforms that don't belong inland. thanks!

the last few days were fairly interesting. got to borrow a canon 1.4x tc, shot the rugby sevens, shot a basketball match, sold off my canon handstrap... coming across even more books from allworth press that's worth the money...

though my financial position isn't really rosy right now, come to think of it, i achieved what i wanted when i was younger.

1. i wanted to stay active, and not flatten my butt off on a chair in an office cubicle - i became a pe teacher.

2. i wanted to be more than just a teacher who shows his face to the class, do the lesson, end the class, and disappear; i wanted to be a person whom children can relate to - i did just that.

3. by right i shouldn't have been able to go into nie via disruption - but i perservered and made things work in my favour.

and now, i'm intent to be a decent photographer who can surpass expectations - i'm on the way to do it, now!

came back from a 40k ride with yonghao... seems either i was correct, or he was really lucky not to have a rear puncture again.

time to go to canon service centre later this morning to get my manual focus ring settled.

well, only a few folks fell for the april fools' joke i tried yesterday. not bad, considering most people actually can tell right away!

the immediate pre-race prep was ok for me. handbag was helpful to hop on the vehicle and assist team slow n steady to drive to the bike deposit point, but as an experienced racer he left his helmet there and only realized when siva drove into the esplanade parking lot for the second time! then we had to go for a third time (counting for siva) so that we could hunt for his helmet. talk about being in a rush!

the start was reeeeeally delayed. a little lacklustre for a start, but what the heck. first stop - run to prince edward rd carpark, inflate those sculpting balloons to a sword. cycle to mt faber. park bikes. run up. hunt for bearings. pencil shadings to "adventure singapore 2006" in capital letters. scurry to telok blangah hill's terrace gardens. figure out seven handsigns to form a word. scurry back to bikes (at faber). ride into sentosa. park bikes. traversing at ferry jetty. one monster round of sokudo or whatever that japanese brainmasher is called. team biathlon (after loss of time from being misdirected). bike out of sentosa, back to prince edward road carpark. go into marina south. checkpoint, then bash through vegetation and fields to jumar site. jumar up. other side of sheares bridge, abseil down. water jump, memory test of john heng's photos. (one was something like this) was asked funny questions about the photos. final stop, rockwall climbing - FINISH!

finishing time - approximately 4:59. phew!

the race was ok. i was freaking bossy on the bike. if any of my team members were to drop off, i'd holler out at him, "drop to an easy gear, crank up your cadence!" but i do believe that my team benefitted from my pulling on the bike sections. in fact, there was only one time when we were overtaking during biking - that was early on in the race with lots of confusion and i wasn't sure how fit c.h. and handbag would be. the later sections, i might say i forcibly made my teammates comply with my biking strengths, to help conserve their energy.

the diagonal abseiling was actually quite fun... and during the later stations, i kept on bumping my former hallx mate, esther and her teammate, li hui. both ladies are in the local women's everest attempt in a few more years' time.

so says my polar hrm... 6.8km bike (after i missed out the section from prince edward rd carpark to mt faber), 3508 kcal expenditure, 150 average, 189 max heartrate.

most of us have heard or read of, "rangers lead the way"... but for the race, i'd say, "vehicle mechanics lead the way!" actually it was quite odd to have both teammates ko'ed for a moment each because of cramps. maybe i'm the rubberband man in the team... absolutely no problems with that!

i've thought about it.

i'm very tired, i'm not going to race tomorrow. one day of break after consecutively tiring myself for days on end, is not a wise idea.

come to think in deep... there's always another time and chance to race, really. s$60 for a race at a time when i'm in debt, spent money on the climbing gear, bike etc... but they'll stay around for a couple more years to let me race when i'm really ready.

ok, i'll skip adventure singapore tomorrow, and aim at the next feasible race, hopefully the action asia race, should it come by singapore this year.

i'm tired. going for a rest.

so seems from today onwards, khcycles will not be the distributor for shimano in singapore anymore. and coincidentally, today also marks the day when the embargo on the xtr 2007 groupset would be lifted.

interesting bike industry stuff - let's see what comes along!