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