In Bed With...

To be honest, this is where I have been spending most of my time for the last one week of Gong Xi Fa Cai "on and off" vacation....



Stop! Before you go delusional about who I've been in bed with, this is really a "fun" posting about two totally unrelated matters....



This Chinese New Year has been kind to me, I've managed to spend time to eat moderately, start back on my pacing runs (on new year's eve!!!) and also rest, ie. really spend time in bed.


On the second matter is this picture which was taken in a bar called Bed in Heritage Row. It was a pretty interesting name - imagine the commotion it caused when people heard...

"Come, lets go to bed together"

"I am going to bed with Ms X and Mr Y" (three-some!)

"Join me in bed?"

"Are you coming to bed or not?"

"But the night is just young, I thought we were going to bed together?"

... many more hilarious ones!

My verdict was that bars and pubs are really imaginative nowadays, thinking of interesting and catchy themes to attract crowds.

Just the week before the night we spent in "Bed", I was at a company organised "pub-crawl" (by great persuasion...) and the third and final bars we visited were called "My Home" and "Apartment 101" in Sri Hartamas. You can imagine the ruckus when people started asking, are we going to My Home now? And whose apartment are we going to next? It turned out Apartment 101 got a shock when as many as 100-150 people turned up in full force cramped in a small 2nd floor shoplot which is a bar pretending to be a "village" looking apartment. Seats looked like a vietnamese bedroom!

Now, I got to go back to bed, I am getting up late tomorrow :-)

KLIM here we come...

As part of the ongoing running SIG we just recently formed at the office, Kell Jay (our coordinator) and I have succesfully convinced the company marketing team to sponsor our vests for the KLIM - this year we are both racing in the half marathon category - it is ok for me and I need to improve on my timing but a waste for Kell Jay who had in the last year posted great timings for the marathon but this year is also lamenting a lack of practice!

Nevertheless, it is with great pleasure for us to have successfully convinced 42 runners from our company to participate in the various categories in KLIM 2007 - 10km, 21km and 42km. Together with one resident photographer - we will attempt to storm the race in our bright orange vests - I have told some of the younger guys that if they do not meet the qualifying time, to please take off the vest before the finishing line!!!

It would be a good race to watch, as some of my colleagues have never raced before - but because of the ideal kiasu-ness and this "I can do anything" type of attitude, most of them have gamely signed-up.

To my colleagues - welcome to the racing world! But, please respect the distance.

See you at the starting line on 18th March 2007. (I have been starting my runs back during mxchinese new year, hurrah!)

Happy Chinese New Year!

Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Picture of "Loh Sang" last friday as part of end of year closing meal, at a very nice price of RM 788 per course of 10...! Even food is getting expensive nowadays!

I believe my K800 camera is fogged up, but suffice to say that the food was quite nice, and it was a good closure to the year and we welcome the year of the fire pig with much more gutso!

Lessons from The Amazing Race Asia

I am a great fan of The Amazing Race Asia. I was definitely delighted when the two young Malaysian girls won the first of the TARA series.

I thought the following were great short lessons to be learnt from the race :

1. Perseverence - the girls worked really hard all the way just to keep from elimination, and when it came to three, they got one better position than their usual second last!

2. Kiasu - be thorough and use money to pay for guidance - the taxi driver guidance was a brilliant masterpiece - there is only that much of intelligence, brawn or speed - sometimes being thoroughly smartly kiasu wins!

3. Don't be overconfident - finishing the race first a few times does not necessarily mean you will have a higher confidence to win. Again, this showed in the other Malaysian-Korean team I was originally predicting to win.

4. Luck - no matter how hard you persevere or work on the physical challenges - you need luck to win.

5. Its all for fun - the girls had fun - they deserved to win!

In the race of life, it is not the fittest who wins, but the one who tries the hardest and with the right element of luck and opportunity.

I look forward to TARA2.

Valentine's Day His / Hers Gadget Gift Ideas

Taken from Yahoo - his and hers gift ideas for Valentine's Day... Guess which is his and which is hers?


The photo keychain (the last photo here) is perhaps the most interesting gadget - it can store up to 56 pictures - it is definitely a cool gift!


Trust Yahoo and the Americans to mix romance with "gadgets" hmmm....

Forming a Running SIG

Pic 1 - The race that started the Running SIG idea

Pic 2 - Our GE race after picture

Pic 3 - Lance Armstrong, my inspiration

Our office running SIG is officially almost 1 month old. We have organised 5 runs, the first three in KLCC park, and the next two in Kiara hills. The running SIG was born during last year end party when after many many months of convincing my colleague and fellow Pacesetter runner and racing comrade Kell Jay to spearhead this challenge, we decided to take on the SIG for 2007. Thus the running SIG was formed...!

The first run was held at KLCC park on Jan 7th. After rounding up almost 30+ people in a mailing list, Kell Jay informed whether I was able to "lead" the inaugural practice session at KLCC park. I agreed but underestimated my own procrastination skills. Once again, it was difficult for me to get up after a long series of late nights at work rushing out something, thus I was not able to get up on the 7th morning!! I SMS'ed two comrades - but rest assured it was a pretty disjointed session and only a handful turned up.

The second practice run we were more organised. Both Kell Jay and myself went, and we picked up another young colleague, so collectively we were 3 even before we started. As it turned out, about 7-8 people turned up, so we had a good second chance to start the SIG afresh. We took on the KLCC park 1.3km - which was a good track for people at different levels as you could do more or less according to your own pace. Kell Jay did 10 laps, and I struggled with 8 - this was our one and only warm up for the year for the GE 20/30km race which we did the 20km option.

For the third practice run, I heard a larger group turned up at KLCC park whilst myself and 3 others went for the GE race nearby. It was quite a good start to the year, pumping up with 20km of practice run.

Therefore, as you would have guessed, by the fourth practice run, I skipped it to sleep in!

For the fifth practice run, we were determined to keep the pace going and we turned up (some from far) at the Kiara hills last week - if you heard someone muttering past it must be me, I was cursing the young fella who suggested such a knee-wrecking route! Still, Kiara hills possesses the spirit of hill climbing and hill running.... but suffice to say, it was difficult for me.

Happy 1 month birthday running SIG!

We have almost 50 people signed up for the KLIM in various categories. We are very excited that this will be the event of the year for the running SIG - a special commemorative vest will be designed for us to show off our achievement during the run! Also, thanks to Kell Jay who managed to get Saucony samples which will be the brand of our new running SIG.

The beauty of forming a running SIG was really simple - we were going to motivate each other to run socially and competitively - we were also able to seek companions to run together and challenge each other to achieve their firsts this year.

We are planning to move our venue for next "training" session to Bukit Aman.

See you around in the next race.