The 2nd 10 km run

Last year I ran with 2 good runners and they kept me going till I lost them at the 5km mark. Later on, my ankle gave way and I stopped at the 7km mark and walked pretty much on and off from there till the finish line.

This year I ran with this guy. He was a veteran runner whom came in 3rd back when he was in secondary school. My bro was too suppose to run with us today, but I called a frantic call from him this morning. He said that his wife not feeling well, then added her breathing was heavy. It took some time before he actually said that he think his wife is going into labour.

PS. He is a dad of a cute baby girl now :)

Oh and months ago, we actually had this joke that he may have to sprint to the finish line if he knows his baby is coming during the run.

Anyhow, I met M in the dawn of the morning. He complained to me about the lack of sleep, a slight headache and a damaged bonnet which surprisingly din crash his hand. I myself had 4 hrs of sleep, mild flu like symptoms and pretty much lost my voice. We were 2 misfit runners.

We set about to complete the run in the best we can. And as soon as we are line up to start, the kenyans were finishing their 42km stroll in little more than 2 hrs.

I had targeted to run throughout this round without stopping. Also hope to better my mark of 1:13:20 (official) which I did last year. The ran was enjoyable and fun for most part. We ran together right up to the 5km mark (top of ECP bridge). Its there that M spoke to me like a wounded soldier. Go on, he said, dont let me slow you down.

Anyhow I went on my own. My ankles were starting to ache and my throat was killing me. The devil on my left said, its time to take a break. Walk like the rest of them. The angel said, WTF! you ^($^%@#*# better not stop.

So I carried on till the the 9km mark where for no reason at all I stopped. I was just passing Esplanade at that point and within a few short steps, I pushed myself on. Ran to the finish line and cross the counter at 1:13.

M ran pass not too long after at 1:20. He had been thinking of nasi lemak throughout the run and as soon as we were rested, we went for a good meal.

BTW, I am suffering from some dehydration. Gotten a mild fever since I came back. Dun think I would ever try running again when I am not of good health.

The Italian Police

This is what the Italian Police has in its arsenal to combat against the illegal racing speedster and the getaway bank robbers.

Its the Lamborghini Gallardo. Much much more powerful than the Subaru WRX which our local police has.

Unfortunately, one of only two of this beautiful machines had been totaled by a careless driver. You could almost felt the tears in your eyes when you see the picture below.

more info

new plants

The office tank (see earlier post) now has 2 lovely baby lobsters.

Now onto the home tank. I had remove the bottom netting that holds a bundle of moss. It was meant to be a moss flooring but the moss din ended up growing too well. Upon removing it, I shift it to the back of the tank.

this reveals plenty of shit. lots and lots of shit that have been lying underneath the netting. This is where the filter fails to gather the necessary dirt. Having said that, I set the filter on high and immediately the tank was cloudy shit. Everything looks like a dirty washing machine.

I bought 5 plants which were neatly pack in the bag. Having open them, I realise 3 will be all I need to cover the background. I have no idea they could expand so much.

Anyhow, I would pose some pics after the shit settle down. May take a whole day. In any case, I do hope my inhabitants wont mind living in a peculiar condition.

Update: Apparently the renovation is quite stressful to the little creatures. About 5 were spotted dead this morning and 20 more are missing. Sighs

baby lobsters

This is my second attempt at raising lobsters. Previously my $4 crayfish live for a week before laying dead in the tank. I could not find out any reason why.

Now I have spent $14 on 2 smaller lobsters. They seemed to be enjoying the new tank life. One is even feasting on a dead cherry shrimp as I speak.

They are no larger than 50 cents. And I mean the coin, not the rapper.

Long Weekend

I took leave for last Thursday. And with the Public Holiday on Friday, I practically had 4 days of weekend.

And boy was it bad for health. After all, with the thought of 4 days of rest, I spent Wed night out late, and slept at 2-3am throughout.

Only for last night to get used to this "jetlag" mode and slept for only 4 hrs.

Already today I had 2 shots of coffee to keep me going. However the effect is wearing off.

I should have come back to work on Sunday :S

ps. I realise I am talking rubbish throughout

the tea break

It was a pretty quiet day for me today. Seems like the people I am working for are away on leave. Time has been passing by slowly and was contemplating a nice teabreak in the mid afternoon to perk the mood up.

Coincidently, a colleague needed to get some table lights. I pop the suggestion, abt Ikea and in 10 mins we were finding a carpark lot there.

The coffee was good, the chicken wing was tasty and the meatballs were always fabulous. Which also brings to mind, the meatballs are made of pork and beef. Particularly taking away the halal and firm buddhist customers.

Anyhow, every teabreak should be this relaxing.

Behind the scene of Sesame street

Sure seems fun to be a muppeteer

work

If you notice my blog had been quiet for the past couple of weeks. You are not alone.

Aside from posts which I found interesting to copy and paste, the only other post I wrote was about my Maths problem. Well the truth is my Maths problem still exist and I would have to swap the adults and babies soon.

Anyway, I had quietly pass my 4 years of work mark. Interestingly, there were no joy, no sadness. It was simply another day.

What I could not believe is that I had been in the same organisation for 4 years. I recall wanting to leave twice but relented due to various reasons. And well, I planning to leave by early 2010. If only I could find the right place.

Speaking of which, there was a climate survey carried out for all employees. Strangely the level of happiness is as follows

1 year and less - Very satisfy
1 - 3 years - Not satisfy
4 - 5 years - Satisfy
5 years and more - Very satisfy

My director explained this to us that its a general J curve seen everywhere.

When you join a company, the initial excitment carries you on. After the first year, you realise what a mistake you had made. After the 4 years mark, you kinda become accustomed to things and managed to find the joy of work once more. It could also mean you have been promoted to a certain level where you can make the newbies life a living hell :)

Well, I never believe in torturing the newbies. Always enjoy working in a team to get things done. Its the teamwork that helps make the workload feel lighter.

To sum it off, I guess if I failed to leave by early next year, I may never leave. *insert Hotel California*

Maths problem

My fish tank at home is having a healthy population of 30 prawns and a handful of baby prawns

The fish tank in my office is roughly 5 times smaller and its meant for just baby prawns. It has however having a population of 20 teenager prawns reaching adulthood. In fact some teens are pregnant. ---- yes i know.

So I would have to bring the little ones from home to work and bring the bigger ones from work to home. The problems are as follows

1. Its difficult to scoop out the tiny ones from the big tank
2. Its even more difficult to scoop out the big ones from the small tank
3. There has to be a safe way to transport them

I have 5 tetras and I wondered where I should put them.

How to eat a chicken wing

I find this information very useful

Notes for my mom and dad

Elena Desserich was diagnosed with brain cancer at 5 years old. She began to hide hundreds of little notes around the house — in sock drawers, backpacks and tucked between the books on the shelves — for her parents, Brooke and Keith, to find after she was gone. In “Notes Left Behind,” her parents share the journal entries they kept....

Read on

Nessie

This Nessie. She has been with me for abt 1.5 years now. A faithful and dependable worker whom provided me with the valuable cup of coffee.

Due to my work schedule, I could only indulge in the espresso during the weekend. Its not as much as I would have like. So just last week, I brought her to office. Sitting at my desk, she caught the attention of many of my co-workers.

In no time, she was giving out FREE coffees every few hours. After they have their caffeine fix, they came back for more. And soon enough, they gotten paiseh and wanted to pay me for this.

This got me thinking, hey this may make a good small income for me. I would sell the capsules at 90 cents (got them for 60 cents from France) and make a tiny sum to keep up my caffeine addiction.


This is until one of my co-worker decided that she wanted one too and would be importing the machine from US next month. She decided to get the newer machine too.

Camera tricks

I just came back from an island much compare to the one I am staying. Yes its Hong Kong and did you know its not spell Hongkong in one word. I actually din.

Anyway, in pursue of a decent camera, I had tot of getting the awfully good looking GF-1. This is until my dear CB whom advise me to stick with a lesser camera without the fancy lens changing. Looking around I targeted the Panasonic T27 (aka ZS3 in some region)

It was offered at the airport at a reasonable price including casing and a 8Gb card. And that became my baseline. Walking along Nathan road, I noticed that there were plenty of camera shops. Interestingly all offered Tax free and there are barely any locals patronising. Just a couple of tourist whom are mostly white.

I went abt asking their offer price. Most quote 2500 HKD. Thats about 500 and it was a good price to me. I finally settle on one that look "trustworthy". They quoted be a reduction of 100HKD after some bargaining. They did offered some accessories to up the price but I din budge. Strangely midway through they replaced the person assisting me with one that seems to have been awake for 5 days.

His eyes were red and he look tired. Not to mention impatient. I asked to test the model and he was rude and insist that I hasten up. After some time he informed me that he did not had the stock for the model I wanted and offered a lower range for a cheaper price. I din budge and left.

Crossing the road, there was still time before my shuttle was to arrive. I walked into another shop. I merely asked for the price and he said 1800 HKD. Now thats 360. A big drop. A part of me and glad that the earlier deal fall through becos of the lack of stock.

However this shop was cunning in their own way. The setting of the test model was dim and aimed to let you feel that you are using a entry level camera. They then started encouraging me to try the Canon SX 120. And it seems to be a better all rounder.

The interesting thing is that he too need to get the stock. Amazingly such a well size shop cant house a small camera box. They did however house many lens and filters for the DSLR ranges.

Anyhow while waiting for the stock to arrive, he kept persisting me to get the SX 120. Even offering improve pricing. I am skeptical. I din play along and just waited. And this in total was a 1.5 hrs of wait.

In that period, there were some ang mohs whom came in asking for a particular lens but were enticed to get more expensive ones. I began to realise there is no stock and the deal was the SX120 or nothing else.

Indeed, I read from some articles there this con shops operates by showing you a degraded model of the item you want, only to offer you a gem. It seems they are out for the big bucks.

Having miss the shuttle, I was pissed off and left. A few days later I happened to be back there and went in to ask if they had the stock. Another staff approached me asking for the price the previous guy quoted. When I said 1800 HKD he kept it cool and said that the ZS3 is only available in Japanese. While the one I should get is the multi language T27. And that is 2700HKD.

I just walked off.

Up and Away

I would be away for the next couple of days.

Would be my first trip there and also my very first time on the European made A380.

If you know the history of this Airbus, its a little concerning how delay could a project this big be.

Anyhow dont miss me

Cameras

I am not into photography. The pictures I took doesnt have to compose of ideal lighting or depth in color or exposure or .....

They just have to tell a story and hopefully bring a smile to the person looking at it.

Lately, I caught a giant poster of the Olympus Pen. It looks like a compact DSLR and even has interchangeable lens. This gotten me pretty excited. I like the design of it and am considering to get this for myself.






This is until I chanced upon the Panasonic GF-1. Which has all the features and comes in dashing red.

Now I have no idea which to choose.

The Name game

My real name is...... never reveal online.

Strangely, I owns a couple of nicks that were used to keep my real life private.

DecoderX - A old nick I used when I was still designing Windowblind skins and webpages. No longer in use

!drn - well this came about from eenki whom suggest it. I added the ! because of Russel Peters.

BLM - this is my pen name. For my blogs and things I post online.

Aegis - My gaming nick. Use to struck fear in my opponent. And yes its not scary at all.

drn_blm - My tweet name. simply because all above are taken

The rat trap conclusion

On friday last week, I placed another dose of milo with baking soda into a Styrofoam cup. Just this morning, I saw that the cup has been topple with probably 20% of it eaten.

The rats are smart creatures. They are likely to taste the food and decide if they are poison before finishing it. Seeing that it still contains a hell lot, its likely they knew something was not right.

I pop by to one of the manager seat. His desk area is their supper place. Full of opened packages and messy items all around. I did told him abt this mess but it seems he is more incline for someone else to do the cleaning than himself. What I saw when I peep over today was that the half eaten food had been cleared and that packs of eyedrops have been chewed and suck dry.

I came to the conclusion that this rat pack somehow tasted the poison I had set and when to drink the eyedrop to wash it down.

In other news, the blood donation is making me doze off constantly.

Office fishy

This is my mini shrimp tank. It now has 5 neon tetras and >30 baby cherry shrimps.


The adults have been moved to my home tank and guess what these horny creatures are pregnant again.


Also this is another mini fish tank which I am helping to maintain.


On closer look they are messy with overgrown moss. Need to prune and get another plant.


Lastly, here is Jenny's tank whom I effectively psycho to go out and get one :)


Her rummy nose fishes cant help leaping out.

Letterman extortion

Still my favorite talk show host. Kinda glad he went public about it.

Memories of a fren

About a year ago, I was alerted by a sms that my fren from Poly days has passed away. He had died from complications from a bacteria infection.

In a sad way, he was the only fren I still kept in contact from 10 years back. Having lost him now, the passage to my poly days has effective closed.

Just today, I pop down the NUH blood bank to donate my blood once more. Upon lying down on the comfy chair, my mind suddenly drifted to him. I recalled a lecturer asking if we would like to donate and among seated at that table, only him and myself got up and went for it.

He was one avid blood donor and has been trying to do more for others. I am sadden to have lost this fren. I wish him all the best in the eternal peace.