it was a fun day to be able to actually opt not to work for one day with the rest of my agency colleagues. we essentially became beachbums for one day and despite no-one having a beach volleyball (myself included) - we borrowed a ball from another group that had a spare - and we had a fairly good time playing in the sun. thankfully, the weather was pretty good... i finally gave one attempt at the luge, though i would have very much liked to have descented using my mountain bike swooping the curves of the hill.

one of the places i was impressed for a private estate.
gotta set a target for myself!

i must say, the new concept camaro is such a beautiful car. after looking at the stills, my guess why it has such an appeal to me is the big hood and big wheels - when the engine's cool, it's big and comfy enough to lie upon with a special other to gaze at the stars. autoblog has an entire online gallery to the movie stills as well. did some research, and it's a big big 6.0 or 6.4 liter engine... woohoo!

autobots, roll out!

it was a pity reading about thaddeus who just passed on after completing the sea games trials after finishing third. i'm not sure what kind of thoughts one should have for him about his passing on - happy or sad.

finished the sea games trials in 3rd... happy or sad?
died before being able to represent the country... happy or sad?
received no cpr while on the way to the hospital... happy or sad?
died doing something that he apparently liked... happy or sad?

i personally gave up the sport called triathlon because i realized it was just another crazy sport, where the distances were fixed, and it was a mad rush to see how long a human body can sustain 185bpm, and to minimize the time spent to cover the entire distance. though i say this, i too draw a parallel to the mountain bike race i took part just on sunday. on my 4th lap of bt, my pedalling was poopy, my handlebar was swerving left-right adhoc, my fingers were cramping from braking... was i near that stage too myself? to be honest, i don't know. however i do have a strong parallel with him, i guess - the mind was strong but the body was weak.

for forgetful old me who can't remember the codes on the ndp pass this year...

V - VIP Seating Area
VL - VIP Lounge ( We won't be given this)
CC - Concourse
GA - Gallery
FPP - Floating Platform & Promenade
WF - Waterfront
GS - Grandstand
MB - Media Booth
OC - Outercorden (???)

the race was kind of fun, but i have to admit the weather was horridly HOT! i thought at a point of time i must have resembled a steamed lobster when i happened to see how flushed my thighs were with an unusually red tone...

however, i did not get to complete the 5 laps - only finished 4 of them. my intention was not to compete, but to complete. max explained to me that in the first place once a rider has been passed, he'd actually be required to withdraw from the race; however this option was not exercised. the only thing that was exercised was the fact that i finished my four loops over 2 hours - that was like a cutoff, to an extent. the truth of the matter was that i was using the race as a testbed for a bike product review - and it was entirely intentional for me to review under race condition. gotta get ready to write part one of the review soon...

say "hello" to the new fh-975.

i just made a visit finally to the athlete's circle/polar electro/hivelocity at boon tat street, and promptly got my polar s710 overhauled. got the battery, the strap, the back, and even the front case assembly entirely swapped out - all for 105 bucks.

then i made a short walk to larrikin - and checked with hope regarding the warranty standpoint for my old old oakleys.

this saturday will be day one shooting at ndp 07. so fast - another year has gone by already!

for some reason, the word "transient" just appeared in my mind.

a reminder to myself that all things are only temporary.

splurged on my bike again yesterday post-ride - a new selle italia slr gel flow xc saddle, as well as a set of nokon housings for my shifting system. finally a completely environmentally sealed shifting system - but it was odd that the rear derailleur shifting seemed more draggy than my earlier setup - could it be due to the grease that was applied in it?

it was great to meet mr chew at the bikeshop by sheer coincidence, he shared with me insights from a long career and life experience. will put it all down to paper now.

i was thinking and chugging along happily on the basic m1 broadband plan (that goes up to 384kbps up/downlink) and until i decide to do some math. if there's parity bits into the transmission, that would mean that it's only 38.4 kilobyte per second! that's back to the days of using a 33.6kbps or 56k modem... not too cool!

so with one phone call, i got mine changed over to the 1800kbps service. that's up to a maximum of 180 kilobytes per second... up to 5 times the maximum speed of the basic plan!

so far, so good. i've also called in to terminate my scv maxonline subscription. byebye to the long cat5 cable that has snaked its way from my room across the living room for the past few years.

on the practicality front, it's absolutely a good thing that this m1 broadband service is up. imagine paying 58.80 per month for broadband i could use at home (scv) but once i step out of the door, i can't use anymore. and then on top of that, to be able to access internet in the office, i have to pay another 7 dollars. small amount, but that works to 65+ a month... not forgetting the poopy quality of internet connection within the office building (that's my personal experience so far). so now i'm dropping it down to 38 dollars a month for internet anywhere with either my desktop machine or my laptop... it's a no brainer!