Monday, March 14, 2011
Chapter 420 - What a Productive Day
It's the first day of the one-week March break, and thus far, it's been pretty productive for me! (well, for today anyway... ;p)
Woke up to a lazy start this morning by a phone call at the unearthly hour of.... 8.15am. Stumbled out of bed, and lazed around at home before setting off to the motorcycle workshop.
At the motorcycle workshop, got the engine oil changed ($20), spark plugs replaced ($5), and horn replaced ($45). Taxi drivers beware now - for my bike is hornier than ever! Cut into my lane without signalling and you shall face the wrath of my horn!
Thereafter, proceeded to Bendemeer road, where I got my bike seat patched up. It took slightly more than an hour for the guy to cut/sew/patch my seat, so in the meantime, I was being an "uncle" and sitting at the void deck listening to the radio. (But of course, before you envision this balding white-haired man, wearing a white singlet, pyjamas pants and singlet carrying a battery-operated radio, let me clarify that I was listening to Class95 from my trusty Nokia E71. ;p)
At the void deck, I also played hero to a little bird on the floor, who had seemingly fallen out of the nest, and a fat pussy (cat) was waiting to pounce on it, no doubt having all fat from eating bird brains. I chased the cat away a number of times, before I realised that I could just place the bird on a higher ledge, which was out of the way from the cat. It was funny how everytime the cat got near, the other mynahs (probably the mama mynah) started squealing/chirping/making noise. Apparently (according to the shop owner from the bike shop), the cat had eaten a few of the baby birds, so the mama bird is pretty angry with the cat (well, seriously, who wouldn't be... ;p) and had stood in front of the cat and scolded it/her a few times. [I'm not sure how, but I picture a tweetie bird kinda scenario in my head.. maybe angry birds? ;p]
(Oh, and in the mean time, I also called Diners Club to cancel my credit card, cos it was really useless. I've only used it ONCE in the entire year....)
Then after that I bought Beach Road scissors cut rice for lunch, which i da-paoed back to school to eat. In school, I sorted out my file check materials, and attended a meeting which ended at 5pm. Then I went to get the N level papers to be scanned, and went off to buy some chrome-coloured tape and a signal light-bulb for my bike in Ubi, before heading home.
If you thought that was the end of my day, it wasn't. I went down to the M33t-the-people session, where I wrote letters for residents, after my dinner, before coming home to finish the day with the scanning of the past-year N-level papers. *catches a breath*
So that was my day in summary. :)
Labels: Life
Wednesday, March 09, 2011
Chapter 419 - New Blogskin
I finally have a new blogskin for my blog. Not because I want to change it, but because I can't seem to find the images for the previous background. The image was hosted on my previous server, but I'd since change my host, and I forgot to back it up, which was why it has been an empty background for a while...
Hope you like the new layout! Might make some alterations to it... ;p
[EDIT: Just as I was writing this post, I thought of where I might have backed up the template, and I found it.. hehe.. I'm abit resistance to change as you might have noticed...]
Chapter 418 - New Year Resolutions 2011
ssWell, this is a very much delayed New Year Resolution post. I could come up with a list of excuses of why this wasn't done earlier, but I guess I should resolve not to do that! ;p (And you can tell that not procrastinating is obviously not on my new year resolution list for this year! keke)
I was disappointed when I tried to search for what my resolutions were last few years and I realised I haven't been very resolving! ;p I did find many amusing posts of mine in the past though - like this one.
Anyway, my resolution(s) for 2011 are fairly simple:
1. Eat Health and Stay Healthy
2. Spend less and Save more!
3. Always find time to spend with my loved ones. :)That's all. ;p
2010 has been a good year for me, career-wise, so I hope this positive trend will continue to keep up in 2011. *fingers-crossed*
Labels: Life
Chapter 417 - Reflections of A Fit-Once-Upon-A-Time Soldier
I just took my IPPT earlier this evening, and I've come home, had a hot shower, had the customary hokkien mee (which I always get after an exercise. Talk about negative calories... ;p) and am now slacking in front of the computer. It's been a while since I've had the luxury of "stoning" so I thought I'd make full use of this opportunity to do some reflections (the metaphorical one, and not the Physics one...)
Well, all my life (thus far anyway), I've never really worried about NAPFA when I was in school, nor about IPPT during my NS days. But today, when I arrived at Bedok FCC (Fitness & Conditioning Centre), I swear I could feel butterflies in my stomach, heart in my mouth, racing heartbeat, and the list goes on.
And having not taken my IPPT since 2005 (which was when I ORD-ed), I hadn't realised how high-tech the IPPT had become! Everything was electronic and we had this number tag which had a RFID chip which we placed at every station before we started. It made everything so straightforward and so much faster.
The only downside of this system is that, when I was at the sit-up station, the "machine" didn't count all of my sit-ups, especially towards the end! (I swear both my shoulder blades were already flat on the mat, and my elbows touched my knees...) But never mind lah, 4 points is good enough. I didn't manage to get a good enough distance for my standing broad jump either - 225cm, which was 6 cm short of the supposed "gold" standard.
Then came the 2.4km finale run. It was CAT 1 initially (short for saying that there's a high possibility of lightning strikes in the area, and if you're outdoors during this time, good luck to you), so we had to wait for the status to be cleared before we could proceed. Thankfully it cleared by about 6.05pm and we proceeded with the run.
After a short briefing, we were IMMEDIATELY set-off to run round the track, and at that time, I was thinking in my head, HEY I'M NOT MENTALLY AND PHYSICALLY PREPARED YET! But too late, I had to go with the flow, so I started running.
And this is the part where I feel my fitness has really dropped so much. I've never really had trouble running long distances, having done regular swimming when I was a kid, and a X-Country runner in secondary school. And I managed to build up a wee-bit of fitness last year when my colleagues and I did a weekly run on Mondays. But since the school term closed last year, we've sort of stopped this routine. The last time I ran the 2.4km run was sometime in Oct/Nov last year, and I managed to clock a 9:45 (exactly), but 4 to 5 months on, my time became 11:33. This was pathetic by Kenny's standard. I used to laugh at those idiots who ran 11:33, and now I've become one of those idiots. Haha. I guess what goes around comes around. ;p
Anyhow, I was glad I completed the 2.4km run, because at some pointSSSSSSS during the run (notice how MANY pointsssss there were...), I really felt like giving up (breathlessness, muscle fatigue, sleepiness, chest pains, onset of stitch, smell of cigarette smoke from across the fence choking up my airways, shoes that were coming apart, and 101 other excuses), but somehow I managed to convince my mind to keep running.
And I'm glad that I've cleared my IPPT this time round, and managed a silver (woohoo, $200!)
Looks like I really need to whip myself into shape. Anyone wants to be my personal trainer? ;p
