hari raya

Hari Raya is tomorrow!

Yet, I am so freakin' nervous with my first and probably last half marathon everrrr NEXT WEEK... Blame it on borneotrekker who psyched my mind to join. Hahahaha.... Anyway, this week will be mostly tapering off my (nonexistant) training and hopefully my mind would be prepared for the unexpected. I mean 1 month of puasa (with few trainings in between) must count for something right.

Despite my (lack of) training, of course I must prepare the other stuff. eg, buy power gel and organize song list, decide what to bring on that day. And yea, I forgot the most important thing... deciding what to WEAR! hehehe.. trust me i think it is important, at least if I (hopefully not) fall, I'll be in my best attire ever. Heheheheh...

2 weeks of training left:
This week: wed: off**, thurs:off**, friday(7km), saturday(4km), sun(10km)
Next week:mon(off-because of makan2 at office),tues(6km), wed(5km),thurs(3km), fri(off),sat(off),sunday(Half Marathon)
**I'm from a family where girls are expected to serve coffee/tea, and probably I will be in charge of filling the cookies jar.

Anyway,

Selamat Hari Raya Everyone!
Maaf Zahir Batin

crazy over list

i am a list person... i have memo pads & pen in my car, so in the midst of crazeee traffic i can make my list. It can be list of things to buy, list of things to pay, list of things i have to do, list of shows i want to download, and the list goes on forever....

well... so what does a list person do if she/he has to run for more than an hour. make a list in my head! the longest i've ran is 1 hour and 30 minutes, and even by the end of it, i ran out of things to think. okay... okaay... i know running is supposedly to-be-something relaxing where you keep your heads clear, let the wind blow your hair, and enjoy the scenery (n also men in super-short pant with buff body). but i can't do that! when i don't think about stuff, all i could think about is the cramping of my stomach, pain in my leg, my super-oily face, dripping sweats all over my body(yikes)...

So i guess i have to make my list again today... places i wanna go visit... food i want to eat... things i hate about people... things i love about people... funny things i've heard over the years... friends that i'd love to see again... relationship drama... goals in life.. financial goals.. places i want to be in 5 years time...

and you know what, by the end of my 1.5 hour run, i am exhausted physically and emotionally! help!!!

cravings

I have craving for this....

Honeywheat bagel with strawberry cream cheese... I cannot find bagels anywhere in kk, except for maybe special order from whimsy's friend Janet who can make her own bagel! So, maybe next time I would have to learn to make my own cream cheeseMy favorite butter pecan ice-cream.

Lindor Truffles, creamy and absolutely heaven...

OK. Enough about food, I've got to jog 7km today... yikes... I think when I'm done, I gotta treat myself for some butter pecan ice-cream from tong hing ;)

info: running on empty stomach

Countdown: 17 more days....

Last week, I started running again in the evening because of fear that I can't cope with hours of running next month... So far, I sucessfully get to drag myself to go around the lake. Good thing is I never missed sahur in the morning around 4am. Bad thing is by 4pm, my stomach would grumble... I wonder if running on empty stomach is good or bad? Then, I found this article...

Quote:
"Exercising on an empty stomach does not force the body to burn more fat. In some cases, it actually forces it to break down more muscle to get at amino acids, which is converted into glucose and then helps supply the body with energy. Small amounts of glucose are needed to burn fat. (Supplying muscle to help move the body)."

"Exercising for more than 30 minutes on an empty stomach or at the end of the day is unhealthy and unadvisable since, without the necessary energy to fuel your workout, your body will start using your muscles as an energy source. This is not an efficient form of energy, and you may overexert yourself and experience dizziness or dehydration."

Habislah my muscles will be burned out... I wonder if I should continue with my training... Maybe just walking perhaps to get more endurance?

preparation

I can't wait for my off days! Three more working days until my super-long off days! Hooray.... Not that I'm excited for raya or anything. Celebrating raya when grown up is hmmmm let's just say can be energy consuming. Because if I could, I want to spend my last puasa (off) days by laying down on the couch while watching my long-list of tv shows rather than cleaning the house.

Speaking of tv, most fall tv is here even Heroes! Almost all shows are going to be back next week e.g. Dirty Sexy Money, Chuck, Pushing Daisies, Grey's and others. I think the oldest show I watch now is OTH... I sometimes think that the script writer must've been living in some sort of wrecked life and never had a truly fulfilling relationship. Somehow she/he came up with all the cheesy lines that if they're being said in real world, I think I would turn green. I watched the last episode where Nathan and Haley just got back from the doctor since Nathan's back has been hurting him. So, here what Nathan said to Haley:

Nathan: I played that game for you, Haley and you know what? I’d give it up for you too. Because as much as I love playing the game and the person that I am when I play it, I love being a husband and a father more.

I mean who would say that in real life??? The script writer's significant other might actually say this in real life.

Mr X: I do this because of me and you know what? I will never give it up just for you because you don't like it. Because as much as I enjoy this, I want you to be supportive with what I do. It's part of me, so if you don't like it, screw you.

Heheheheh.. Okay, maybe that's a tad passive-aggresive and quite cynical. I mean as much as I melt over cheesy lines, I still believe actions speak louder than words. Don't pay attention to what they say, because all matters are their actions. Practical and make sense?Anyway, I still enjoy OTH despite the melodramatic twenties years-old life and cheesy scripts. I mean, everyone is entitled to at least one guilty pleasure right?

On training, I did run(sometimes walk) yesterday for 5kms (including 2 km of warm up/cool down). My feet was (still) killing me, my head was throbbing, and no amount of "eye of the tiger" can move my feet any faster. So, I stopped early, and glad to be home then fell asleep at 9pm. This fasting month, normally on work days, I don't really go back to sleep after sahur. I think it would definitely help on my race day where I had to run at 6am (and i'm not even a morning person!!!).

Alamak, race day is coming close... I get anxious just thinking about it.

randomness

omg! my feet is killing me! Good news, I just got back from 1 round of warm up+7 rounds of walk/run+1 round of cool down. The bad news is I finished my 7 rounds in 65 minutes..... By the end of it, I saw many many many stars on the sky. And how am I supposed to run 3 times of that, I have no idea...

I received this email sent by borneotrekker who the last time I saw look pretty fit ;)

"

Hi Runners,

If you want to know how to mentally push through the later stages of your race, then this could be the most important message you will ever read:

As your body becomes tired and possibly fatigued towards the later stages of your race, then you may find that your mind becomes negative.

You will find that these negative thoughts leave you feeling even more tired and overwhelmed and your physical state will drop to even lower levels.

To over come this, allow your mind to dwell on positive events in your life. Times when you felt strong and unstoppable. Remember how you felt. The way you were breathing and how that felt in your body.

Allow these feelings to take over your way of being, until you are feeling these powerful feelings throughout your body.

The more you dwell on these positive and powerful events from your past, the quicker you will regain your composure and strength... particularly in the later stages of your race.

Warmly,
David Styles "

I'm gonna need plenty of extra positive ion in my mindset to overcome this.... I welcome anybody who wants to belanja me buka puasa, or gifts... Remember, you do want me to have positive events before my run right?

until next time...

fitness journal (including warm up/cool down)
*17/9 - 4km
*18/9 - 6km
*20/9 -2km
*22/9 -9km

two one

Nope.. I am not turning 21 years old- that ship had sailed a long time ago...

Anyway, I was reminded by a friend that BIM is going to be here in over 3 weeks. That's like 21 days... TWO-ONE days for 21 kilometres. And supposedly to finish up in 3 hours and 30 minutes... I am no where near ready(nor fit), and to hope that my luck is gonna just change that.. Mmmmm, probably never gonna happen.

So, after more than half a month fasting (and not jogging obviously), I force myself to jog after work as I finish work at 4.15pm every day. Rather than aiming certain kilometres (normally i can only do 4-5kms), I just aim to be active and moving as I can. I hope I won't fall and faint during the run. And if I do, I will make sure I will fall around cute hunks so they can carry me (hahahaha)...

"Luck is when preparation meets opportunity"

crimes etc...

I read rina's entry on how she (her car) was robbed when she was getting her buka puasa food at bazaar ramadhan. I found it funny reading other people response; other people were mostly blaming her because of her kononnya carelessness of leaving laptop in the car rather than blaming the pencuri who was carefree-ly smashing cars and stealing stuff out of people car. Pencuri nowadays mmg not scared of anything anymore. I think we are more scared of them stealing our stuff than them scared of getting caught by us (eh, does this make sense?).

I think that's why I don't jog at tasik likas anymore because there had been cases where wallets/handbags/others were stolen. Some say the pencuri in tasik likas dressed up like joggers then smash car and steal stuff (even before dark). The few times I left them in the boot and went for a run, I was anxious of somebody's gonna steal stuff from my car (not that I was a worry freak). Because if I do lose stuff, I would still be blamed for being careless and "live-in-my-fantasy-world" where all people still don't take others' belonging.

On the same topic of safety, I am still getting many many many many many phonecalls everytime I am (driving) out at night (including when I'm working late). Not to mention if I want to stay alone in the house, that's like a big No-No. Because the excuse is... there's gonna be some penjahat/pencuri or other evil out there gonna come and get me. Why of why? The 3 years since I'm back, it's like I'm being brain washed that everywhere in KK is not safe (especially for girls), and somehow my brain is programmed that way. Does this only happen to me or maybe I'm just surrounded by over-protective people (whom I'm sure doing it because they love me).....

“…there is only one sin ,only one. And that is theft…When you kill a man, you steal a life, Baba said. You steal his wife’s right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness”

The Kite Runner (17-18)

Well......good thing that puasa month I get to leave work early....

and we here in sabah get to enjoy off day tomorrow ;)

Until next time, have a safe week everybody!

happy birthday

My niece ayu turns FOUR today... owh, how fast time flies...

Happy Birthday!

ohhh yummmm

After awhile of using personal laptop for work. I've finally gotten my work laptop last week. It's Dell XPS M1330 in midnight blue. I'm not so fond of the blue color- blue was never my favourite color. Initially I wanted Red (super-hot) or pink (super-cute and sweet), but they don't have it in stock unfortunately. Okay, I'm not supposed to get excited over it ( since it's for work anyway, and when does work=fun?), but it does kinda cool since it has 2mp camera (for webcam-ing) and DVD writer
( i think im gonna test-try this)...

So, maybe I can take the opportunity to do ehemmmm *not* do backup files on DVDs while I still got the chance. So, first thing first, I've got to burn that 17Gb of picture files. Sayang lah these pictures, memories fade but.. pictures stay clear ( i hope!). Years ago, me and friends were soooo rajin to print out our pictures, not one copy but TWO copies of each roll of film. Printing pictures costs about $3.99 per roll, and to print double copy we only had to add $1, so apa lagi everybody printed two copies. So, what to do with the extra extra copies of pictures? In the end, we toss 'em out by the time we had to move out in May . hehehhe...

Soooo... I was doing some photo organizing (it's by year, btw)... Then I saw my travel pictures... (gazillion years ago) and at that time I was still using 2mp digital camera (hey, at that time 2mp is considered very cangggihhh one and other people were still using manual ones).

***for my travel buddies...

It's me, con and mel's trip in dec 2003 (5 yrs ago!)... This trip is surely a memorable one... To save cost, we had booked 1 occupancy room in hoping to squeeze the 3 (small) of us in the room. Unfortunately, we couldn't do that... Even though we tried to use the excuse "ooh, we're just gonna chit chatting, or come up for a bit", but the guy still said "no, you can't come up to the room" in his accent. Hehehehe... Only I could stay, while mel and con had to find another hotel room. It was a day before new year's eve, and most of the hotels were fully booked. Gettting around was hard enough in the city, and we had to find hotels? Good thing we found a hotelroom just nice for 2..

having breakfast in mel and con's room while con was getting ready... (this was us saving cost by bringing bekal to travel)


new year's eve and we did stay until midnight to welcome 2004... we left the place early to avoid cramped Vaporetti, but... we mistakenly rode one which went to the opposite way, in the end that vaporetti went back to the same place we came from and the crowd came in and filled the ferry anyway...


filling film on a manual SLR camera...that time bawa film sampai 7-8 rolls... hehehhe... after develop, took hoursss to sort out pictures...me and con... in that big bag was a big(quite heavy) tripod so that we could take picture like below =)

we took out tripod even in the middle of places.. hehehe... until other person realized and said "look at them, they have a tripod and everything"

okaaay.. enough with the travel pictures... i must say it's kinda therapeutic to look at old pictures... nowwww, i'm itching for a getaway....

until next update....