Feeling quite happy today... having found a way to measure the density of my ceramic coating quite accurately, through a quick and easy process called the electronic densimeter. Then, the roads were rather empty even during after-work hours, and I could speed my bike all the way home, till I was dizzy and shaky and limp when I reached home. I was feeling cheeky enough to even race a motorcycle at the traffic lights and up a slope hahaha! Until I ran out of gears (my bike has no gears remember...) and lost out to the motorbike halfway up the slope... surely the people at the bus stop must be damn entertained =p

There're 2 types of drinkers in this world; One type drinks to drown his sorrows, to punish himself, to hide himself. The other type drinks to reward himself, to regenerate, recover and motivate himself for more challenges. I guess most of us are often hovering between these two extremes at different times of our lives. Restless me, restless mind, cheers~

This Storck Fascenario full bike weighs only 4.8kg! My Giant weighs something like 2.5 times of it! Madness! The cost? £10469! That's S$31702.54! More madness! I can get a Harley Davidson for that money! And I really can't imagine how safe it would be to ride a bicycle this light at high speeds... Just my shoes, helmet, bag and gear would weigh about as much as the whole bike! Crazy~!
Bike Radar

My white Adidas watch has a broken strap, and I was quoted $20 for a strap replacement, which is crazy bonkers! So, after 2 weeks of running and cycling without a watch on my wrist, I've gotten a new sports watch... it's my first Timex watch! Got it at offer price, which made it quite comparable to those cheap but ugly schoolboy-looking Casio watches... I've always wanted a Timex watch, after seeing all those feature-packed adverts in my bike magazines, along with placements in marathon and triathlon adverts... almost makes me feel damn sporty wearing it hahaha~! Hope it stays healthy longer than my white Adidas~~

This Sunday morning's weather was again perfect, and I geared up for another day's worth of epic trail biking. But I didn't make it any further than 500m from home; my crank fell off while riding on the road. Luckily I managed to control the bike and roll to the side of the road. It had poked a black greasy bloody hole into my right calf, and I didn't bring my big allen key out with me so I had to push my Giant home to fix it. Which I couldn't, somehow, the crank just couldn't fit in and the crank bolt couldn't screw in properly either, for whatever reasons. Hammering the crank didn't help it into position either. Now I couldn't guarantee any safety if I did fit it in too, after the experience of the crank falling off while cranking on the road... Years and years and years (7 years) of wear and tear from hammering on the trails has really taken its toll; my bike's literally falling apart, my riding clothes have holes in them, my gloves have holes in them... Guess there's no more trail riding for me in a while... I want to quickly graduate and go out to work! I want to make money! I want a new trail bike! I need new riding gear! Guess I have to make do with my GT roadie bike and riding on roads only for now~

Lower Pierce Reservoir, at my secret secluded relax spot! The weather was perfect today, and it hasn't poured for the past few days, so the trails were in great riding conditions! BT trail was pretty roughened up by the heavy downpours, with rain gullies, strewn rocks, branches, brake stutter bumps and deep dried mud pools everywhere, and it was quite dangerous. I hasn't ridden here since more than a month ago, and while my trail confidence was badly affected; I had to push up and down many parts of the trail purely due to lack of confidence. And my body is totally flat, my lungs were dead, my legs were dead, my back and ass muscles were dead, now back at home, ouch~~!




The grass was covered in more spiderwebs than my dusty storeroom! Can guess how long since any people, or any type of large creature, has been through here~


Like zombie arms coming out of the ground, these are young fern fronds regrowing after being cut down by grass cutters~

Am I sick? I'm like feeling tired all of the time, even after full 10 hours of sleep and drinking coffee... I don't feel any thing wrong with my body, just that constant lingering fatigue. So bad, it's even affecting my enthusiasm for running and biking nowadays... Is this a symptom of age? But I'm not old at all mah! Must try to find out why am I feeling like this, can't go on like this...~


I put my two plasma coatings made on Wednesday through flex testing on Thursday, and found that one of them is a possible success as my armour material; it withstood 2 tons of loading before breaking, incredible for a coating just 2.5mm thick! But now, I'm stuck at how to relate those values to bullet stopping, and conduct tests to justify my reasonings... But it is really a big relief to see that one of my samples have proven to be good so Yay~!! =D

Chit-chatting with Karen Koh and Wm about marathoning has brought back memories of how much I've enjoyed the lead-up to my first marathon last year during Sundown Marathon 2008. I've enjoyed the days of living to train for the marathon, seeing myself getting better as the days go by, taking into account everything from nutrition, training and rest. I love the planning and preparation. I love the self-instilled discipline as I control my food, rest times and training. All with the one goal in mind; marathon day.

But somehow, I seem to be lacking this one goal in my life. Instead of a disciplined approach to daily life, I'm living everyday as it comes. There's no clear "marathon day", the "goal", in my life. There's no direction in which I can clearly plan my life towards, no clear future for me, in fact, I can't really imagine the state of meself anytime in the future. And this really is causing some deep distress, headaches, confusion, in me. How? What to do? How to define this goal? Who can help me with this? God? My mum? Friends? Myself? For now, I can only just keep throdding on forwards, till when it starts to become clear to me~

Tried wearing my sunglasses when I operated my DC plasma coating machine today... Apart from being the most stylish person in the whole lab, there was a marked improvement in my physiological condition at the end of the day. I didn't suffer from any sore, itchy, red eyes, although I still feel freaky hungry and tired after all. And my 2 coatings today were both successes! Yay! They both didn't delaminate at all, and I managed to build both to 2.5mm thickness. Cheers to my new macro-roughening technique! Now I can finally finetune my parameters and then hope for the best =D

Oh dear... I'm so affected by the serial... I'm starting to draw rainbows as well... oh dear...~

Was taking pictures on my balcony today. Because my Nephenthes x. Hookeriana has just grown a new pitcher! And it's huge haha! She's been through some tough times during the hot and dry last couple of months, which had also coincided with my exams, leaving me with inadequate time to really baby it through those tough times... But it's all over! =D






Doesn't her pitcher's rim resemble Sir Raffles's collar? =p


This is my Nephenthes Amplullaria; she's really happy nowadays, with many many little pitchers and growing so quickly that my mum is starting to think of her as a weed hahaha!


My little but fast growing papaya tree!


My Asplenum Nidus (Bird's Nest Fern); 10 years ago, I plucked her home from the roadside while she was still barely the size of my thumbnail... Now, she's the queen and main focal point of my balcony garden =D


This messy tangle of hairy green stems are actually my red Dragon Fruit babies =D

Yay~! I've finished watching <<翻滾吧！蛋炒飯>>! I don't really know why, but I really do seem to be especially attracted to this one serial, and get really touched by it, going by my usual dismissal of similar Taiwanese idol serials... But one thing I noticed about this serial is that it is not as idealistic and dreamy as other idol serials; the cars in the show are 'only' a Mini convertible, a VW Beetle convertible, and Mi Chi Lin's rusty old 1970s Honda CB750, no tire screeching sounds whenever a car is moving off, no dreamy palace for the lead actors... Maybe this is one of the reasons? Hahas... Leng Lie was rich, handsome, talented, cultured, did everything he could for the girl plus more than that, but was too serious, too boring and too quiet, and he ended up lonely in the end... Fate, Life, and the Heavens can be and are so cruel, haiz Ces't la Vie...~

Every time I operate my DC plasma spray, I seem to get irritated eyes, especially on my right eye... I use a welder's face shield whenever I look into the flame, plus I am wearing a full-face, controlled-atmosphere head mask, so any chances of powder getting into my eyes is ruled out. Maybe my contact lenses might be causing something that I am unaware of, maybe it amplifies some frequency of light that is causing my eye irritation? But why only on my right eye? And I always seem to require a few days of good, heavy sleeping to kill off the fatigue from one day of DC plasma operation? Why is that? Man, my 42km overnight marathon recovery time was only 2 days lor! Strange, I'm wondering if the machine has some unknown, unstated effects on the human body...~

Oh dear... I'm suddenly in the mood for love, after watching episode after episode of <<翻滾吧！蛋炒飯>>, after immersing myself into the show and suffering repeated and alternating scenes of heartbreak and sweet joyous lovey-durvey... Haiz.... Anyway, I'm up to Episode 5 le yay~!

Watching <<翻滾吧！蛋炒飯>> on Crunchyroll starting today. Caught a few isolated episodes on tv in the past, however I was feeling curious about the ending, so I got on to Crunchyroll to start watching all from the start. I don't usually like Taiwanese idol serials, finding them too OTT and noisy and too cutesy, but this one is still quite comfortable to watch. Maybe it's because I actually do see glimpses of myself in one of the characters; Leng Lie. He, like me, isn't really good with his talking, and can often be boring to be with, especially with girls. Just that he's much much more handsome and stylish and talented than me bloke hahas... Although I feel that the main female lead Xiao Shu should be with the other male lead Mi Chi Lin because she's always so happy whenever she's with him, there's a big part of the me inside which wants to see her with Leng Lie... which probably explains why I'm quite particularly curious about the ending... Another reason might be the glutton in me being attracted to all the cooking and eating featured in the show haha~! =p

Went back to school, on a Sunday, eve of a public holiday, because opportunities for me to use my DC plasma spray coating machine is seriously lacking, due to the heavy usage of another similarly power-thirsty machine in the same room... my coating didn't go well today, after I tried using a new macro-roughening surface preparation method... it peeled off after about getting 1mm thick... need to spend a bit of time to re-think new strategies haiz...

Spent a bit of time cleaning up my bike after my coating failed... haha ethanol cleans up bike grease really well~! =p

I bathed my bike, cleaned the drivetrain till it's sparkling, waiting for Saturday for my first trail ride at BT or Kent Ridge in a month, and then the heavens opened and poured out all it's worth... haiz... maybe next week then...~


Can smell Fish's new album coming so so soon... Mmmm Mmmm~

Relax session at Wala Wala, good pizza, as usual, my beer mug is still the biggest/tallest one on the table haha! My German-forgot-the-name wheat beer was ok only, still prefer draft Hoegarden... not bad ah, my handphone camera~ =p





The National Flag, minus stars and crescent... Until Yy finished his first bottle of cider, and then joined Kw in being in the red haha~!

I know I can be quiet sometimes. It's not like I'm not happy or angry or sad, heck, sometimes I'm not even thinking about anything. It's just that I really can't find anything that I want to talk about. I can be totally happy when I'm quiet even. So take no offense in my silent moments~ =)

My chocolate cookie craving days are back!

Dang, I just got to experience the strangeness and embarrassment of boarding the bus with one foot devoid of footwear today; As usual, I was running for the 179 bus at Boon Lay Interchange in the morning, and then suddenly some guy clipped my foot and then stepped on my shoe from behind... if it was soccer it would be a straight yellow and a warning dude! Not to keep the bus and the people behind me waiting, I tried to put on my coolest look, picked up my shoe and boarded the bus, and then in the coolest fashion sat down and put on my shoe, and then give the offending guy the fiercest of my stares despite his constant apologies... I wasn't much angry at all, but I just wanted to show that guy my displeasure on my part hahas~ ;)

I'm totally proud of this; my self-made bicycle luggage strap system, recycled from old bag straps! And what's more, it's totally secure, holding my stuff nice and tight throughout my daily school commutes, especially with my penchant for crazy overtaking moves and F1-style cornering haha! What's more, it's so easy to remove my luggage, just by undoing the buckle! And the whole system is so easy to install, just by velcro and clip-ons! And on the rainy wet ride today, it totally shielded me, my back and my backpack from tire spray from the rear! And it's cheap, totally environmentally friendly; being recycled, and powered by a 2 hp skinny monkey running on coffee and miscellaneous monkey chow! And it's not for sale wahaha~! =p

My clock's battery died out, showing 11.30am, when it's really 1.10pm, and I have my school subject online registration at 1.30pm! So lucky I felt like surfing the Net and switched on my laptop, and saw the actual time on my Windows taskbar... Shit things really do excel in choosing their time to wreck havoc~ =p

Yay~! =D
From Fish's blog


Now Mas cannot say I'm a 'thief'... hahaha~! =p

Maybe I'm really gotten too heaty nowadays; yesterday my Adam's Apple was swollen and my back hurt, especially so after my bike ride to Labrador... even the 5pm sun was a little too close to being unbearable for my unfit body, right after 3 weeks of sitting in an air-con room with no exposure to the sun... Luckily I followed xr's advice and took some honey water before going to bed, and woke up much much better... I even managed to do a 6km run at a good pace today! But my mum was still worried, and got me a coconut to drink to cool meself down~ =)

Freedom again!

My first time in so many visits that I get low tide at Labrador Park and can go down to the beach! Actually found fiddler crabs living here! Last saw them on St. John's island during secondary school... Wanted to pick seashells, but everything that I picked had something living in it, be it the snail owner, or some hermit crab, can only admire here =)


Sailing into the sunset...~


Big waves~

The sunrise before my exam, last paper wheee~!!


Went to Beavers with Yy and Kw... I love the free flow salted freshly-made popcorn - We finished a record 7 baskets today! And I love the draft Hoegarden~! Still I find it intriguing that my one pint of Hoegarden seems like so much bigger than their one pint of Stella~! The bartop-dancing wasn't bad too~ =p

Running through the fridge looking for my afternoon snack, and came out with a cup of close-to-expiry plain yoghurt from my little sis's baking experiment, some strawberries, and some longans... and made up my own fresh fruits yoghurt! Wanted to add in bananas as well, but my yoghurt cup isn't quite so big enough... But it's surely picture-beautiful as it is~!

"Kope" this picture from Mas =p
I will get to pass by an advertising board like this at a bus stop when I walk home from the MRT station; it is almost like a family member welcoming home after a day of battle with the books and exam papers! Apples are sweet and sour, like my life these days... sour because of the unconvincing victories over the exams, and sweet because I can taste the end of the exam period coming ever so soon...~

Mini mandarin oranges, peeled by my mum and left in the fridge so that they'll be nice and cool and easy for us to eat... I find them a little too cute and beautiful to eat, life's so cruel =)


I'm totally smitten by this song by 許茹芸 & 阿穆隆 - 男人女人... it's not a new song; it came out like last year, but I only first heard it yesterday on tv when a pair of contestants on One Million Superstar sang it... I was singing and humming this song like the whole of today, probably irritating Yy who was studying with me and us the whole of today... =p


Another song that I've heard on tv a few days ago was this... 蕭賀碩's 我愛你... this song also kept me humming the tune over the past few days, especially the "salanheo~" chorus part... =)

I just noticed that the playcount of Fish's 三吋日光 on my mp3 player is 156 times, which means that I have already spent 702 minutes total listening to just this one song! That's 11.7 hours! That's so amazing, the total number of hours of my time spent listening to her songs, not that I'm complaining =D ~!

Haiz, Violet had just pointed out that I have bad breath while we were on the bus... she tried to put it nicely and said I was too heaty and so have bad breath, but bad breath is still stinky bad and putting it nicely doesn't help any one bit... so... it's probably good time now to set aside a part of my expenses for breath mints and stuff... amidst expenses for the ever growing list of all the various other stuff~


Kah-cheowing the cat that's always lying outside Canteen 2 during dinnertime... I want to be like him, or her, so carefree, doesn't care a heck whenever and whoever goes past and touches it/tickles it/pulls its tail, just ignoring all the nuisances, just getting on and being happy with life~

Now I have a reason to why my morning coffee don't usually taste that good... New Scientist reports that bacteria in the mouth plays a big part in our sense of taste, especially when it comes to aromatic compounds. Brushing my teeth in the mornings may be spoiling the taste of my morning coffee!

Always find it so hard to get my studying engine going at home, even more so during weekends. I wonder why... 9 more days to my first paper, then it's almost non-stop mind-bursting action for the next 10 days, having serious self-motivational problems the last 2-3 days, any study progress was dead-slow, the adrenalin definitely not yet pumping in my bloodstream... I know why, because I'm not exactly excited about graduating, I'm not excited about working as an engineer, I've not yet found any job that is making me excited and I'm not feeling excited enough about school to stay any longer than needed... that pretty much explains the disappearance of the verve that I've enjoyed as a boy, which has evaporated to what's left the drive of a cow, munching and munching, giving milk, waiting to die and becoming steak and burger patty... But still, I'm wishing for any divine intervention and seeing what's good as the sun sets and the stars begin to appear and shine brightly, as this one cow continues to try and do its best at munching away at green green grass~

Whooops again~!

Guess who's on my handphone wallpaper? Lol~! =D

Childish? Yes maybe a little... but I sure damn need some motivation amongst the loneliness and mundane-ness of studying in an empty silent home over the weekend, with the constant tinnitus ringing in my ears, arghhh... ~

Now? It's bright and sunny outside! Carpe Diem! Itching for a bike ride hehehe =p

ERP

"the Republic is moving towards a satellite-based (ERP) system that can track cars and charge them for the distance they travel." - Straits Times Online

Imagine seeing the Cashcard value on your own car's IU unit dropping by the minute, machiam like the fare jumping up on a taxi meter! What's next? Charging the amount of air each and every one of us is breathing in~? =p

Kurel Quote

Saving money is of no use, earning money is most important - Kurel

SNEF says there are jobs for fresh graduates in Singapore... "The SNEF chief said there are still job opportunities out there for new graduates, but they will probably have to moderate their salary expectations. In most cases, starting salaries are expected to remain the same. Fresh grads are advised to take up job offers even if the salaries offered are slightly lower than what they are expecting."
Link to Yahoo News Article

M & Ms

Eating M & Ms... I like all the colours, except the brown ones, because they often are speckled with white spots making them less pretty than the rest of the colours... which are so bright and cheerful~

Some days I like to slowly melt them in my mouth and then get to the chocolate inside, some days, like today, I just pop them one by one into my mouth and then crush them up for the crunchy feeling...~

M & Ms are in fact a product of war! The inventor of the M & Ms had seen soldiers in Spain munching on chocolates which they had coated with a layer of sugar to prevent them from melting while outfield, so this guy went back to America and made M & Ms~!

My Whooops~!

Playing a lot with my online pet recently, so cute, and so often it is my best and only companion during my battles with my study stuff and the sleep monster... till the point I had a dream about myself playing with my Whooops in my dreams~!

Sunday glove hunt~

Cycled to school on this hot, sunny Sunday afternoon. Felt it was too hot to wear my gloves, so I left them hanging on my brake cables on the handlebars... feeling good until I noticed one of them missing about halfway on the journey! Had to retrace my route backwards almost all the way close to my home, all the while praying that I would be able to recover it! Not a good way to kick off a lazy Sunday afternoon of studying in school haiz...~

Midnight boredom...

So beautiful~


YY Lim say drinking this cup of avocado juice plus dunno what fruit will make him more beautiful... let this photo be the "before", we'll wait for the "after" haha~!

Need to sweat it out

I haven't got a chance to really sweat it out lately... the most I got is the immensely irritating stickiness on the skin on the incredibly humid and warm still days and nights lately. Maybe that's why I've feeling feeling more than a little weak and cold nowadays... I'm hugging my pillow as I'm typing this! Need to go running or biking soon~!

I've seemed to have grown older, because I now have a problem about going out to cycle at night! I would worry about the traffic, dangerous cars and buses and trucks, I worry about being robbed, I worry about the 2nd case of a dead body being found this year in the park that I frequent... I worry about being unable to wake up on time the next morning... I worry about being knocked down by a car... I worry about being hit by a falling durian... I worry about my mum worrying about me... it's no longer the "Me" who wouldn't think twice about going to Mount Faber at 2am when the 'feeling' comes, the "Me" just a year ago...~

Luckily, I can still feel comfortable about running at night, probably because it's much safer away from cars and traffic, and I bring nothing apart from a towel and my keys and yellowing watch along for the run, not much to be robbed of... Otherwise I would have not much to do in the nights at all, outside of all the boring studying~

Pagani Zonda R

Pagani Zonda R, the closest that we can get to a real-life Batmobile... so crazy, so beautiful~

Running on empty

Man, I actually forgot to have lunch today! I only realized this when I was thinking of going for an evening run while day-dreaming in school, and then I realized my tank was empty... only did it all start to come to me... my limbs went cold and my eyes started to seem like looking out through a fogged-up car windscreen... then a McDonalds Double Cheeseburger did the honour of bringing life back into me~

Dartboard~

Missing the mark. Lost amongst the fog~