qian hu fish farm+essential brew+bambai food catering

the day started off with a field trip with meimei to qian hu fish farm at cck...i brought along dad's terrapin too...the idea was to bring him/her there to determine his/her sex and get him/her a partner...lol...

the little bugger kept scrambling around his tank during the trip...like chuah sai liddat...and thus he/she was named chuah sai for the time being...

as for the determination of the sex of terrapins, we learnt that if they have a depression at their belly area, they are supposed to be males. no depression=females.

the guy at the fish farm said chuah sai is a male...but it will not be easy to find a female in their tray of "for-sale terrapins" cus females are supposedly filtered out already...so in the end after touching a number of small terrapins (the guy said smaller ones got higher chance of being a female) in search of one with a flat belly, we decided to get xiao qing...
xiao qing on meimei's hand...we are still not 100% convinced for sure that xiao qing is a male/female though...hurhur...his/her belly like have/dont have depression liddat leh...

anyways we also learnt that terappins can only mate when they are bigger...so if chuah sai and xiao qing are indeed male and female respectively, they might be able to produce mini versions of themselves in the future. if xiao qing really turns out to be a male...hurhur...oh well...at least there is some good brotherly love for chuah sai...lol

lunch was at Essential Brew at holland V. a very nice cosy setting whereby there was an area for customers to sit on beanbags on the floor to makan...

we ordered honey mustard chicken which was splendid...sweet and juicy...yumyum...soup of the day was some vege soup which had some slices of carrots and celery...the berry flavored tea we had wasnt that amazing though...abit siap siap and sourish one...hurhur...the smell very very berry-ish though...but the taste didnt do it any justice unfortunately...

our dessert---apple crumble with green tea ice-cream...yum

as the sky kept pouring and pouring...we ended up spending our next 3hrs+ or so at the eating place...thank goodness we got the best floor seats...can lean back one...hehe

apart from the mini horoscope books, we completed meimei's first robot "model kit" too!
and we did a photoshoot for the 2 little green buddies

chuah sai and xiao qing in their tank...their water got dirty really fast for some reason...

chuah sai and xiao qing out of tank

xiao qing measuring at about 3.25cm as of 10/12/07

chuah sai measuring at about 4.5cm as of 10/12/07

walked around holland V (for my very first time) before making our way to tanjong pagar railway station for dinner...and guess where? Bambai food catering!! and no need to guess what i was craving for...

the ever so-delectable RAMLY burger...mmmmmmmmm...yum

and roti-john...fyi...it tastes just as wonderful as it looks...
dinner was completed with teh tarik and those 3 for $1.20 malay snacks which included goreng pisang and something flour-ish lapped with some excellent chilli sauce

a very very fun and memorable day indeed...

oh ya...i even got to try the fatty cheong char siew rice at abc market (sthg which i've been wanting to go eat for the longest time) with boss kevin on saturday...then sunday got to satisfy my RAMLY craving...hohoho...woohoo!

happy

today is a happy day...i've not felt so happy in a very very very long time =)

standard chartered marathon 2007

it's good to know what you are getting yourself into...last year's virgin marathon was a very very painful experience....
so with last year's pain in mind, i thought this year i should be better prepared...

i brought along a pack of powergel to fight the hunger that would arrive once nearing the ecp...and i rubbed loads of deep heat before leaving home...

during the run, i rubbed loads of deep heat once i saw pple handing out deep heat and kept myself hydrated...

so for the 1st 21km, i did pretty well...abt 1hr 42min...personal best 21km timing i think...

but once again...the dreaded ecp portion slowed down my pace by alot...could not maintain my less than 5min per km speed...all i wanted to do was to get the hell out of the park...and by the time i left the park...i was 2km behind my planned speed...sianz

bumped into familiar faces in ecp..for some reason i just looked at the right place at the right time...i saw tricia and waved...i saw thomas and waved...its nice to see familiar faces during races =)

another nice thing to mention is all the nice people cheering you on along the way...all the people whom you don't even know...but there they are smiling and clapping their hands...saying words of encouragement...

in the end i got back in 4hrs 1min thereabouts...slower by 1min compared to last year...argh...really thought i could improve at least by a little...but alas...could only hit my target of maintaining the 4hrs...technically i didn't also...exceeded by 1min wor...

but the best part of whole event (apart from actually finishing all that 42.195km of running) was after the collection of the medal and finisher T...i saw a familiar face waiting for me at the exit there...

nothing beats a familiar face flashing a warm smile at you after a 4hr run=)

dad's mini birthday party

ordered a cake from Panaderia to celebrate dad's birthday today...a mango tropicana...

the cake box

mango tropicana cake...darn good...not too sweet...very mango-ish

dad bought some satay too...peng-ed it using the oven toaster...

i'm soooooooooooo tempted to try the choc flavored cakes from Panaderia...mmmmm

emotional heimlich

emotional heimlich...that's a term for "a hug" i learnt from the dramedy "pushing daisies"

that particular dialogue in which the term appeared was pretty interesting too...

chuck: i cant even hug you? what if you need a hug?a hug can turn your day around.
ned: i'm not a fan of the hug
chuck: well then you haven't been hugged properly. it's like an emotional heimlich...someone puts their arms around you and squeeze. all your fears and anxiety comes shooting out of your mouth and then you can breathe again

episode 1 was pretty attention catching...interesting enough to make you want to continue to watch episode 2...heh

anyways, for more plot synopsis, visit http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0925266/

free hugs anyone?

TOS D&D 2007

the food...pics courtesy of jianxiong...
soy honey glazed cod fish with mango mayo (4th pic)...most yummy dish of the night...2nd most yummy was the fat juicy prawns (3rd pic)...

our table...minus jianxiong...mak, wengkeong, gary, me, sia, pierre and angie

my lucky draw coupon...
didnt win anything in the lucky draw again this yr...door gift was a much needed thumbdrive to replace the one i lost a few months back...better than nothing...heh

the aftermath...

bathed...ouch ouch ouch....
applied the iodine solution....ouch ouch ouch...
haha...shite...

1 week away from marathon and this happens...

didnt expect it to rain so heavily all of a sudden so i never expected to slip and fall also...hehe...

there was abit of thunder before i set off for my holland v route but the sky seemed ok to me...but it was dark clouds everywhere once i went past the british council...then rain started pouring once i reached holland V...

decided to take shelter at the hdb area but before i could even reach there, i took a tumble behind the alley where the restaurants were...the ground must have been slippery and i slipped and fell while making a left turn out from the pavement...

quickly got up and raced to the hdb estate and examined my wounds...my upper thigh near the left cheek of my butt was bloodied (heng it didnt turn out so bad as u can see from the 3rd photo above), my left leg had abrasions near the knee...my left shoulder also kenna orh cheh and scratches...my palms thankfully only kenna cut abit only...

the pain started kicking in...i was drenched(in a mixture of perspiration and rain water) and stuck in holland V...only wanted to reach home asap to clean up...i must have looked very the "lang bei"...hurhur

so once the rain quietened down, i tried standing up and walked ard and decided to quickly run back home rather than slowly walk back...

luckily the pain didnt bother me too much and i managed to complete my holland V route...once i stopped running...woo...the pain came back...

once i reached home, mum and edwin were like saying "see la, told u dont go running le la"....hehe...oh well...

grandma's birthday photos

these just came in the email from Zelin...our grandma's (paternal side) birthday lunch some months ago

all the grandchildren with grandma...for some reason my parents are inside as well....hehe

my uncles and aunts with grandma

training day

woke up at 8 this morning so as to make full use of the day... cleared the laundry, floor mopping and grocery shopping quickly and seeing how the sun was so shiny today...it was off to the pool!

thing about swimming on a nice sunshiny day is NEVER to plan for it...if u actually "PLANNED" to go swimming on a particular day to get a tan, that particular day will have absolutely no sun or it bloody rains...

after the swim..came home for awhile before setting off for my run...as much as i wanted to clock another 1hr+ run, the black sky was thundering with some bouts of lightning...and so i only covered the tanglin route...my best timing ytd for this route....hoho...37.15!

evening time did weights, push ups, sit ups, chin ups...

never did so much training in one single day before wor...

stardust

A philosopher once asked, "Are we human because we gaze at the stars, or do we gaze at them because we are human?" Pointless, really...”Do the stars gaze back?" Now *that's* a question.

my saturday night movie...not bad really...a very nicely written fairytale

MG strike w/ IWSP

took my own sweet time to complete this kit and it has been sitting on my desk for the longest time as well after completion...
finally decided it was time to clear it off my table and make room for it in my already very crowded display cabinet...
but before that...some photos...

vertical marathon 2007 results

i actually came in 23rd for my Men 20-29 catergory...

Deepavali at ecp

was supposed to go ecp for an early jog with Thomas, his friend Eric (i think), Angie and Yeeling...the morning rain didnt let up and we ended up having "breakfast" at the hawker near parkway parade

was supposed to go kayaking after "the jog" with Mak, Wong, Eugene, Angie and Yeeling...the morning rain still didnt let up and we ended up cycling at ecp...but i think none of the kayak rentals were open for business...so too bad...

we then stopped for a snack at gelare and then had lunch at shinai hk cafe...

was supposed to go watch doraemon movie after "the kayak" but the seats available only left the front 2 rows...

so after lunch everyone went home...i stayed back to jog while Angie bladed...surprisingly i didnt merlion my lunch as i only rested for like 30min at most....and i forgot to warm up too...hoho...but not too bad wor...jogged for abt 90min liddat

anyways here are some of the photos taken that day...

Eugene, Wong, Yeeling, Angie, Mak and me at Bedok jetty

me, Mak, Angie, Yeeling and Wong...beside some flowery mini tree

swissotel vertical marathon 2007

attended my first vertical marathon...

the duration of the whole event must be the longest for a race of its distance...hurhur...
u had to turn up early to register and then wait for your category to flag off...and after the race you had to wait about an hour after the last person for your category finishes before you can collect your race cert...

anyways...it took me 11min 06s to complete the 73 storeys...very very slow...sianz

the passing of a friend...

not the type of news one would like to hear...not now...not ever

before going for my jog on saturday evening, i received a call from someone asking if i was Kishore's friend...i said i was his army friend...the person said he was Kishore's uncle and that Kishore passed away that morning...

i was dumbfounded...went for my jog hoping that it was just a sick joke...

but when smses started coming in from army mates...

almost the whole of our lightstrike 4 company turned up for Kishore's wake last night...some of the guys we never saw since ord...even the officers and specs...how i wished we were meeting up for a different reason...

the look of Kishore's mum calling out to his son when we were all gathered around his coffin was just heart wrenching...

they said Kishore passed away in his sleep...we dont know the exact cause though...
i read up online about dying in your sleep...it had something to do with either heart failure or sleep apnea or asphyxia...the thought of falling asleep and not waking up is just scary...

everything happened so suddenly...we just had our 4th ict together in September and now he's no longer with us anymore...we'll miss you Kishore...

new shoes! new shoes!

needed to get a new pair of shoes to replace my very well worn saucony cohesion...popped by queensway on thurs evening expecting to get another pair of sauconys at the usual 30% discount...

had initially planned to get saucony trigon ride 5 actually...but after trying them out...didnt feel quite right...tried the lower end grid fusion...somehow the feel was better but i'm a sucker for nice designs and the grid fusion was somewhat of a obit-obiang design...so that was out too...

my next option was mizuno...was supposed to get cushioning shoes (either wave precision or wave rider) but i ended up with the wave elixir which is a supportive type kind of shoe...

only managed to get a 27% off...i think the norm at queensway has become 25% le...think next yr will have to make full use of the 30% voucher from the mizuno races le...then i'll get a pair of cushioning shoes...then can switch around more...then shoes wont wear out so fast...woohoo...

118 flight of stairs

had my first session of stairs training...

made my way to the 30 storey high boon tiong road hdb flats...did 3 sets averaging 4min per set...
i can just imagine how the 72 storeys next sunday will be like...

reached home and did another 2 sets of 14 storeys...

my legs are gonna ache tmr....

NB real run 2007 results

chip time of 1hr 16min 25s...with a gun time finishing of 146th

NB real run 2007

wasnt exactly very well prepared for this one...the extra 5km and the sand portion and the sun...

was trying my best to maintain my 4.3min per km all along the road+trail portion...but once into the sand portion everything went kaput...

the sun was glaring right at me but thankfully this year's sand was not as bad as the one at sentosa last year...there was this "path" higher up the beach which we took which was less punishing and since there was still some sand there so technically we werent exactly cheating...hehe....anyways the road marshalls also didnt say anything...

once out of the sand, it was onto the "runway" portion which was also the last stretch before the finish line...

kaoz...road was hot...sun was hot...the last 1-2km seemed to take forever to complete...clocked in at 1hr 16min thereabouts...

next up...my first attempt at the swisshotel vertical marathon...gonna have to start climb stair trng liao

pengerang trip--part 2

some of the stuff they did with ostrich egg shells at the gift shop

we got up close with ostriches and a host of other birds...pictures of which i think i'll post another time...
after the ostrich farm, it was a mad rush to some small kopi-tiam where we were supposed to relac and laaa-kopi...due to time contraint, we couldnt laaa very long and had to make it back to the customs before it closes at 4pm

leaving pengerang island...