End of Year Blues

Its almost the end of 2006. The hiatus from blogging this time is due to blogger's block. It has been almost 3 weeks since my last blog.

I feel an empty feeling to blog, and every night I wanted to take a night off to write when I sit down on my notebook, I find I am laden with work related issues which never end. The feeling of "a lot more to do" has never been so obvious, and it is reflecting in the outcomes of my actions. I was taken down with my once a year sickness last Tuesday, when I was really tired from fighting the bug and took a day off, only to be laden with more concalls at home.

The end of this year has been very difficult for me, to focus, achieve both personal and work goals.

Tech Savvy Females

I recently invested in a new cell phone after my old cell phone kept hanging on me. The Sony Ericsson K800i to be precise. In the process of choosing, I was asked by the various salesmen at the phone shops what I needed, and it came down to - latest gadget, 3G, good camera. So I traded the useability of the Nokia for the stability of the Sony Ericsson. So far, a week has passed and I am pretty ok with the phone still.

Today, I stumbled upon this in yahoo's front page - tech toys which women would like for this holiday's shopping gifts... http://tech.yahoo.com/hw/gift-ideas-for-girls-gone-wired/198120

The list is terrible! It seems to imply that anything in red and simple technology is good enough for girls!!! How discriminating!!!

So, remember to please not assume if you are buying gifts for holidays, the modern woman is more savvy than you think!

Stop Hunting the Tiger

Tiger Trail Treasure Hunt, Berjaya Times Square 12-Nov-2006

Lance Armstrong sub-3 marathon debut

Lance Armstrong, marathon debut of sub-3. So motivating!!!! Can you imagine the last 1 km how he must've pushed to finish sub-3 with 24 seconds to spare? And imagine the pace - I am once again motivated to push for my debut next year.

See attached reproduced from Yahoo.

By ROB GLOSTER, AP Sports Writer Sun Nov 5, 9:29 PM ET
NEW YORK - About an hour after the men's and women's champions had crossed the finish line, the crowd really started to buzz at the New York City Marathon.

Lance Armstrong was coming.

The seven-time Tour de France champion made an impressive marathon debut Sunday, accomplishing his goal of finishing in less than 3 hours and thrilling fans who seemed much more enthused at seeing Armstrong than watching a Brazilian man and a Latvian woman win titles earlier on a crisp autumn afternoon.

Armstrong's time was 2 hours, 59 minutes and 36 seconds. His shirt soaked in sweat, he virtually walked the last couple of steps to the finish line. He shuffled into a post-race news conference, his right shin heavily taped.

"I think I bit off more than I could chew, I thought the marathon would be easier," he said. "(My shins) started to hurt in the second half, especially the right one. I could barely walk up here, because the calves are completely knotted up."

He called the race "the hardest physical thing I have ever done" — even more grueling than his worst days on the Tour.

"I never felt a point where I hit the wall, it was really a gradual progression of fatigue and soreness."

The 35-year-old Armstrong appeared relaxed for the first half of the race, smiling at fans and talking with the small group of runners that surrounded him for much of the marathon. His muscular legs and chest were in stark contrast to the ultra-thin elite runners far ahead of him.

He was paced for most of the race by former marathon champions Alberto Salazar and
Joan Benoit Samuelson and middle-distance running great Hicham El Guerrouj, and said he got a lot of support from fans packed along the course.

But his body seemed to tighten and showed signs of pain and fatigue in the final few miles. He started to fall off the pace required to break 3 hours before a final push allowed him to meet his personal goal.

"Before the race that was my goal, I wanted to break 3 hours. But if you told me with 3 miles to go, `You're going to do 3:05,' I wouldn't have cared," he said. "Honestly, at the end I was so tired, I couldn't care. Now I'm glad I did."

Will he be back?

"Now's not the time to ask that question. The answer now is no, I'll never be back. But I reserve the right to change my mind," he said. "I don't know how these guys do it."

Subang Jaya 10km Run

Photos lifted from KC - most dedicated photographer (taking photos even when he's sick - I know he is when he drives 500m to the stadium :-) and comes just before the start of the race!!)

It was very amusing to read KC's caption to the photo (look closely!)... I wanted to laugh so hard when I saw it as I am a very imaginative person, I could imagine the next photo I am either doing a somersault slipping on the dry twig, the dry twig jumps up and snaps my face, I fall over backwards, it flies backward and hits the oncoming crowd... well so many possible scenarios similar to the animation joke flying around the internet on the head-butt from Zidane in the world-cup finals. Excellent photography and light humor!

I was pretty impressed with the Subang Jaya 10km run. It was well organised, had a proper "atmosphere", got the sponsors and the media all hyped up. The morning started well as I found a reasonable parking nearby by following the BMW in front of me who parked next to me and was participating in the run too. Well, nowadays runners are all rich people...

The stadium also proved to enable the runners a proper ground for warm-ups. Well, my co-runners decided to save energy (as first time runners), so they were looking at me as though I was lunatic when I jogged once around the field, in two separate intervals to keep the warm-up going.

At the flag off everyone was whispering about the handsome MB whose youthful looks had gotten the media attention a few weeks back. We all praised how "leng-chai" he had become! At the shot of the gun, for the first time, I actually chatted with Azlan for about 100m - he was actually asking me a serious question! Then I decided it was his strategy to distract me as we bet on who could finish first (him being disadvantaged from the fasting), so I ran off without fully answering haha...

The water stations or lack of any at all totally distracted me from the 4km+ onwards. Normally I pace for water stations as a motivator, but to discover the motivator was gone really required me to do some internal meditating haha (in my heart, I amused myself with the thought of the girl who started off pacing with me who was clutching a gel pack and how she would encounter the difficulty to swallow like me during KLIM half marathon! well after being shamefully refocussed on people's misery, I managed to refocus on the butt in front of me again).

The finishing was so deceiving, but I have been deceived before (KLIM!). The u-turn was at the end of the road!!! So you would be seeing the MPSJ building, running past it, way past it, going downhill, way way past, then turn back...! What a teaser..

I loved stadium finishes. It is motivating to be running the ring around the track as though you were coming in for a real competition. Although this one was a bit messy (yeah, the silly A/B finishing was on the grass, I heard someone got injured rushing for the finishing), the atmostphere and track was still motivating for me. At about 50 m from the entrance to the half of the track before the finish, I actually sped up when I saw KC taking photos, this also turned out to be a good time to push the momentum for the finishing. For such a lazy attempt, position 62 is not too bad lah.

Definitely an easy and good run. See you next year!

Photo - running pals and met a guy with the same number as TKM.

Positive Karma

There has been a series of unfortunate events recently which led me to listen so attentively to a friend's passionate recount of how positive karma works.

According to her, karma is generated from each person and every time there is an accident it is because there is a collision or explosion of negative karma effects.

Recently I have been getting a lot of migraines, I am not sure if it is something I am harboring or a passing thing. I hope it is the latter. Also, there has been a series of unfortunate compounding events both at work and for those around me. So, for tonight, I will make a wish before I go to sleep, that we will all wake up, and generate positive karma and should we get together we will conquer what we need to together with our positive energy.

Wouldn't that be nice.

Happy Belated Birthday

Happy Belated Birthday! Yup I shutdown more often this year, but not as bad as last year (when I got deepavali as birthday company, it was total system downtime)

My birthday this year passed in a haze.

... a few early sms (not sure if you forgot the date, but thank you)
... a phone call at 12 midnite (I had to remind you but your timing is better than many other occasions)
... a few sms which I forgot to say, thank you (my phone is buggy and sometimes cannot respond sms smoothly)
... a lunch which was hard to eat (one of those occasions I thought I was losing my job)
... a walk to the wrong carpark in a daze (because I got off earlier? at 615pm)
... a chance meeting and a missed meeting somewhere lost in the other carpark
... not having enough money to pay for carpark
... dazed but drove to Vintry
... could only managed to call a handful of ol pals
... beautiful fresh flowers and a lovely small piece of cake from lovely girlfrens (you know we all hate to eat fattening cake)
... a smile, a few glass clinks and some photos
... lots of porky food
... intoxicating red wine
... thanks for a bottle on the house
... hangover when i got home
... can't remember a few phone calls I returned half asleep
... slept before 12 midnite !!!!

01.11... happy birthday, many firsts always.

Postcards from China I - Shanghai

To see my photos pls click here.

To summarise my trip, I will post three postcard series from my China trip, with some observations :

1. China is vibrant - I always find great photo opportunities in cities, people and life in general.

2. China is still developing - this third trip has taught me one more thing, sometimes the sheer lack of exposure of the interactions with the local can be overwhelming. One has to learn how to differentiate between expectations, insistence and how to get what you want. But in the Chinese people, there is always hope and you know they can improve and we know the Beijing Olympics will be perfect. Just how, we won't know. Change is imminent.

3. China culturalism can be stifling - I know a few people who has been stifled by the system, country and environment. The sheer daily barrage of Chinese culturalism and way of things can be overpowering and impact you, if you let it to.

Two years ago, I wanted to spend some time to working in China and eventually gave that up to pursue my ambitions locally here in Malaysia. Before I went to Shanghai, I was still not sure whether I would ever reconsider that ever again with my current comfortable position in Malaysia. After this trip, I learnt more realities of the work and life in China, and surprisingly I am more motivated to learn more and experience more. The interest has been rekindled.

One day I will be back, and I will spend more time to explore this enchanting beast called China.

Pic - Imagine the Shanghai Bund - colonial buildings with a flavor of old London, 6 lane highways characterising Asia's ambitious buildings, the beautiful seafront of the HuangPu river with a lighted chinese yacht - the contrast is as mysterious as it is exciting. This is really one shot which I feel the new band of China has some hope.

Temporary Hiatus

I closed my eyes and 3 weeks whizzed past. Blogging is definitely a discipline... I am finding it hard to get back to the blog mood after the LONG break.

Its funny why it is considered a long break - this was what I did - went to Shanghai for a week of vacation, and Beijing for a week of training/kickoff meeting (work). Came back for the long long Raya weekend, and just got back to work a couple of days in the quiet post Raya break.

My neck still hurts for funny reasons. I am suspecting it is serious, when I turn my head left, I hear a scraping sound of the neck nerves against the based of my skull. This is getting me worried as all the rest did not seem to have cured me and this new problem arised.... hmmm.

Planned resolution - go do a few gym exercise and rest the weekend, if it still prevails I would need to see a docter.

It was a dark night ....

Mystery surrounds the dark spot.

No this is not a red light area. Individuals are not meant to be hidden.

Guess where we were?

Hint : Its red.

Recharging my batteries

My dad just messaged me this today - Your car battery is recharged. It is time to charge your own life battery.

It has been 7 days since my last blog. I do not know what happened in between, but time flies so quickly that I forget sometimes who what where I am. Before I know it, it is October of the year, and another birthday coming up in a months time, and another fasting month has started, and 3 more months to end of the year. It is indeed frightening the speed of time.

I really need to recharge my own battery.

Fantastic Coverage of Terry Fox Run in Pictures

Outstanding shots from Jeff Ooi and Lensa Malaysia team at Terry Fox run and very interesting write-up on Jeff Ooi's report on the summons....! It would've been impossible to fit 4500 cars in KL near Lake Gardens area (assuming two a car on average), as it turned out the number of people were 9000! Furthermore, the earlier Mizuno race meant that majority of the "good" parking space at Bukit Aman were all taken up!

Luckily we escaped the summons, despite being parked right outside the door on yellow line of the police station near Bukit Aman for the earlier Mizuno race.

Screenshots

Lensa Malaysia (many pages of photos-click back and forth)

Good to see the "photographers" were actively clicking on that day, I noticed everyone pulled out their "big guns"...

Mizuno Wave Run and Terry Fox Run - Aftermath

Mizuno Wave Run 10km 7:30am
I saw the big shoe again, and it reminded me I have only been competitively running for about 1 year+. Last year, after the Mt KK trip (Aug 31st!), followed by the KL Rat Race 2005, I was motivated to running races, and did a spate of races after that, starting from 10km and finally to the 21km at KLIM.

This year, the Mizuno Wave Run 10km was the same route as last year, and I had put on a little weight since last year, and also not as fit as before, though the passion was still there! I arrived at the drinks (nearly halfway mark) quite pumped up and with good speed, only to be fallen by the "double hill" track following the drinks station. To be honest, I suck so badly at uphill because of stamina, and also the motivation "mind over matter"...! So I walked up the uphills part. The only consolation I had was that I finished the last 2km fairly strongly because of the flat and downhill parts and I was also motivated by the need to do it in 1hr 15min to run over for the Terry Fox run nearby!

On arrival at the finishing line (around 1:12-bad time, position 152 of ladies), to my surprise, my buddies were gone!!! I hung around, looked at the long drinks queue and finally settled for the bottled water in the goodies bag - and still no sight of my fellow running buddies whom I came with! Slightly cursing my slowness, I started moving to the Lake Garden area at around 8:55am, thinking that 5 mins would be sufficient.

Terry Fox Run 2006
The crowd here was shocking - there were too many people !!! It was good for the cancer research foundation, but not good for the race - people generally took off before the flag off, and most people took the wrong route because of following the others - and the beginning one has to walk because there were just too many people. I think there must have been about 3000 people there, because they sold 3000+ shirts.

Nevertheless, I am glad I took the family route with a friend, as my feet were really sore/blister was slightly bothering me after the Mizuno race, and the late start time of this Terry Fox race ensured that the sun was full blast out.

Aftermath : Arrived home and slept for 4 hrs. Feet and body recovered after that!!!

Am thinking - how to consider (yes, I am just considering) to run the Singapore Half Marathon with fitness like that? I've got to lose a few kgs and do about 40-50km a week within the next two months to even consider this.

My Father Graduates!

It was a very meaningful day for my dad today. He obtained a Certifate for the Certified Business Coach course with the Universiti Malaya Center for Continuous Education (UMCCed). This was the inaugural year for this course and it coincided with my own company's efforts to teach us to be "coaches" rather than managers, so it was a parallel track for my dad, who at the grand age of 60 something, was able to "graduate" for the first time in his life. What a feeling it must be for him! As a daughter, I am proud of my own father's efforts for lifelong learning, especially on his interest in human development, and also coaching to help others.

On a separate thought, it was my first visit, and a rather switch of roles (as the "ibubapa" instead of the "graduan", to the Dewan Tengku Chancelor as it was in this legendary hall, I have heard all of our local UM graduates has emerged.

My observations were rather strange of this occasion - that the diploma and certificate holders (post graduate and for working people to continue their education) were heavily skewed in race. A great 90% of the majority were Malays, whilst other races made up the rest of the graduates, strangely not reflecting our national race distribution profile. It is perhaps food for thought on why this is the case.

Continuous education should be on everyone's mind, and is indeed a reflection of the person's commitment to education, and a great example for our next generation.

Youngest World Golf Champion - My debut as a photographer?

A few weeks ago, I was asked by my friend to participate in an interview of a magazine with the youngest world golf champion from Malaysia. She requested for me to take photos for the cover of the magazine!

Whilst I was ecstatic about the "opportunity", I really had no idea how to take portrait shots. So, lugging my Nikon D70s to the golf course practice green at a local course in Shah Alam early one Saturday morning, I met a small young boy.

His determination amazes me. He is but 6 years old, but each shot was measured and all the pitch shots hit the green within a foot of the pin.

But when asking him more detail questions, his shyness really showed his youth.

Would you train your kid to be a professional golfer? I think this is a very mental sport - you are playing against yourself and is indeed a great character building for a young child.

Postscript - I took really poor shots with my Nikon using the kit lens. In my haste and short notice of this "free" photographer work, I did not have time to analyse how other covers looked like. If I had known, I would have taken the zoom lens or the 50mm for a more larger focus shot, or even (if it was possible), asked the kid to pose. All the adults shown in magazine shots posed!!! So, this was a great lesson learnt. However, I was later told by my friend that she will feature my shot in her cover, so I am waiting and holding my breath. You will know when it is out, as it is indeed my debut amateur work.

Hostage at The Table

Today my MD passed us a book each. It was called Hostage at The Table. In the Leadership Development Program training I underwent last year, the author actually spoke about his experiences and did say he was going to write a book about it.

I recalled clearly a few key themes of this book. The key message was that we were sometimes taken hostage by our "clients" and also people we deal with. In a hostage situation we tend to react emotionally. And the idea was to come clean with the issues instead of being taken hostage.

In a way, nobody has all the answers to everything. And as leaders we will have to overcome odds to bring our best to the table.

I will read this book and pass it on. I consider this an exception to my non-receipt of books as gifts - the gift of a book is a very non-Chinese thing. But there are always exception. I will put a post-mortem here on the outcome of this book.

Nearly Famous II

The momentary fame from the rat race has not receded. The key learnings I had from there is that marketing is a great art form - to make yourself stand out and be featured is itself an art, especially if you know you cannot run faster than others!!!

The Edge featured a 16 page spread of the Rat Race 2006 in last weekends edition. It was great publicity for us as it featured our photo with a caption "Accenture in the driver's seat!" and a short commentary from Joan Hoi for being the only female rep in the CEO race.

Furthermore, Pacesetters had kindly featured my longer race report in their homepage - this is indeed the first time I had written a "serious" race report!!! Pls click here for report on Pacesetters homepage.

Meanwhile, this weekend I hope to see you at the Mizuno Wave Run, followed by the Terry Fox Run!

The Power of the Nikon Zoom Lens at A Ballet Recital

A respite from serious stuff, running and a bit of non-conventional fare ...

I attended my niece's ballet recital a few weeks back, on the 26th August. This was a charity event held at the PJ Civic Center, organised by the various branches of the Lee Lee Lan school of ballet (a very famous dance school which I've heard of even when I was young).

The instructions on the leaflet mentioned to not have cameras with flash and video recorders - so I brought along my Nikon D70s, and comfortably (and lazily) sitting in a good position in the middle about 10 rows from the stage, I had a good position to use my 200mm zoom - without flash - it captured an outstanding set of pictures - the ones pasted here are already sized down to 100k from the full 6MP I set it on.

Most of all - it was a spectacular evening of dances, and I managed to capture my little niece on stage!








Pict 1- Lee Lee Lan on the stage after the concert

Pict 2- A more teenage pair doing a duet

Pict 3- The flexible young ballerina

Pict 4- The girl in the center is my niece! (doing a broadway piece)

Pict 5- What is a ballet without a piroutte (is that how it is spelled?)

The Edge-Bursa Rat Race

What a RACE!!!

Click here for photos

I had a blast of a time, we ran together, non-stop, in ridiculous looking props and gadgets dreamt up to signify our "solution" specialist (which none of the bystanders understood, but they all cheered us anyway)!!!

We heckled other teams, chatted whilst waiting for the CEO race, took promo pictures, and best of all, ran together as a team - single file, slowed down to take picture with our supporters in KLCC and acknowledged all the people on the road side. And ran the 4.5 km and arrived in a single file!!! Excellent teamwork!

Photo - This was taken just moments before it rained!!! We spent a good one hour last minute to pull together our "props" for this event.

Accenture imagination at work (we had 3 placards - one before race, one during race, and one after race - this was before race):
Boss (looking like going shopping!)

(Marcus) Driver - Relax lah, 1hr before submission
(Me) Sales Rep - How does my make up look? Pretty Right?
(Shahariz) Financial Rep - Should I add another zero
(Kell Jay) Tech Guru - This is the best solution I've done
(Azlan) Intern - So Tired! Spent all night printing proposal

The full set is reproduced below here... copyright protected!!!

See you next year!!!!

Black Friday

I have had a horrible weekend starting from Friday. Everything has not turned out well.

I had a car accident on Friday morning going to work at the LDP. The car in front of me took an emergency break because a taxi in front of him stopped and turned left suddenly. I also took an emergency brake, but I could not stop in time.

I was lucky to escape unhurt. I was calm, but really scared for a good five minutes. They say, this is the 7th month of the chinese calendar, it is the month of the hungry ghost.

I remember a split second that I could see the car's behind coming up and knew I was going to hit it. That split second was quite terrifying because you can see it coming, but cannot do anything.

After a police report in the morning, and back home, I went back to work in the afternoon. I am now grounded without a car, but one nice friend loaned me his car just now, and I am back with transport.

But the episode really scared me. There are many what if's that could have surfaced, and from picture it looks badly smashed, but really, am I appreciating the what if of life? And how precious each moment is? Why I can only think of work?

I am chilled by my own coldness towards my own most priceless asset - my life.

Yesterday I woke up with a severe whip lash on my neck and back, and was reminded of the what-ifs again. What I really need is a break.

Luckily I am recovered from my whip lash, and should still be able to run tomorrow's rat race.

Scold me if you see me. I need a wake up call seriously. For not appreciating life enough.