i ate mould

and so did melanie.

But we haven't had any forms of mushrooms growing out of our ears or nostrils yet which is, as i take it, a good sign. We only found out about it 9/10 into the cake that we were eating when i spotted a shiny turquoised coloured layer in the cake. Upon further inspection, we noticed it was mould and alerted the restaurant staff who in returned said that the cake was delivered that morning. Oh well. we spent the rest of the evening washing down the icky feeling with camomile tea which was on the house.. Speaking of camomile tea.

I was having dinner with mimei the other night when she said "camomile tea is very tricky. you get it right, it smells wonderful. If you get it wrong, it smells like wet socks!" ------------SHHEeeeeeSSSHhhhh. She has a point and i see it.

ATTENTION ALL MOTORISTS

especially if you are bastard HIT and RUN guy on the PIE this morning. WE will hunt you down and you will go to jail if anything else happens to Terence.

photo: bryan van der beek,

source: Abigael

so on my way to work this morning, i try calling terence and his phone was off. I figured he'd switch it off cause of the SUPER HEAVY downpour this morning. You see, he rides a bike. And some people believe ( the smarter ones) that it's not a good idea to have your mobile phone stuck in your helmet so you can have phone conversations while riding the bike. Almost immediately i receive a call from a strange mobile number ( belonging to a Straits Times reporter) and it was Terence. "Uh just to let you know, my phone is dead... i cracked my LCD" i couldn't help but wonder if it was because he fell off his bike. So anyway it turns out that Terence was riding on the PIE, heading towards Jurong Camp to execute an assignment that morning. He was filtering from one lane to another and then the car in front of him decided to brake. I guess the ground was slippery and terence (who i will profess is a dam careful rider and never speeds or tail gates or do anything hero-like and always checks his blind spot - besides he rides a scooter. you cant do many hero things with a scooter) So terence hits the car's bumper, and according to him, hears a lot of "fiberglass breaking" and before you know it, he was sliding on the ground, when another bike fell onto him.. think dominoes people.

anyway - so the driver stopped the car and got out, to ask them if they were OK. It was raining, it was messy, other motorcyclists had stopped their bikes to help terence and the other biker up. so all they wanted to do was to get off the road. as a reaction, terence just said to the driver " ya ya we're ok." The driver didn't even bother to help them up or make sure that they got to the side of the road ok. He conveniently drove off when the bikers were distracted while in the midst of packing up and getting to a safe side. Yes given he stopped the car to ask if they were ok. But i feel that he should have given them his contact information just in case. Its' common sense and just being responsible for the welfare of others. I'm sure some of you out there, if in the driver's position would just stay back a little while to check the riders condition, and make sure you're there to help if they needed an ambulance or some assistance.

Other motorcyclist, did stop to help them. They weren't even involved. I say that's just being DAM IRRESPONSIBLE. He'd better pray that our boys didn't suffer any internal injury (knock on wood) or it'll be a lawsuit waiting to happen.

nano-hungagain

running log : August 15, 2007 distance: 5.5km took a slow, easy run with vivek. to ensure i took it easy, we made sure we were able to hold a conversation while running. my nano hung on me while we were 3/4 way so we didn't get all the stats but it doesn't matter cause we were sweating heaps and feeling good. we're running again soon to keep our momentum. as for me, i'm heading out for another LSD run today.

Facebook

i'm sure i speak for some of you when i say that this facebook thing is starting to take up too much of our time. At first i was skeptical about it. I mean, how many of these flickr, friendster sites do we need.

But there's always something newer and better about the next one and the next one.

So i caved and now i find myself losing momentum at work, actually doing WORK because i'm busy adding white daisies or gnomes to my cyber garden or sending someone fatlip fish.

i think i need to ban myself from this very addictive site for awhile.

jedi-nate

doesn't nate look like a LEGO-man Jedi Knight here?

090807

we decided to call these SOTONG BALLS

(AP Photos/Wong Maye-E)

This year, i decided to cover the National Day Parade from a different view. The top view, which allows you to capture nice fireworks. Only cause i was down in the gallery during the NE show and i wasn't too impressed with the angles available.

So i was up on the roof of the Ritz Carlton Hotel with some of my buddies, Desmond Foo, and Yen Meng Jin and many other photographers. It was a little of an exciting expedition to get up to that roof. You'd think you'd have to climb up a couple of flight of stairs and open a door and presto!

A clean roof with a clean view??!! naaaahh

yen taking some stock images of singapore's financial skyline

We had to instead, take a lift up to the 32nd floor, climb up 2 flights of stairs, then do a slight obstacle course through aircondition vents and pipes and what nots. And then the highlight is the ladder mounted against a wall about a story up, the final obstacle you'd have to survive only to be rewarded with the fantastic view after. It's quite spectacular. No.. not the climb. The View. The climb was tiring while carrying full gear and a 300mm F2.8 lens, which is slightly lighter than Nate at the moment. Thank God for mommy weight training.

desmond foo (above) and me (below)

Lovely isn't it? THE VIEW. NOT US.

It was a field day for us on the roof. Arial view of everything! And of course there's always time for silly picutres of each other for memory sake. Only professionals will act this way! Of course our bones were shaking and our hands turned clamy while we changed our lenses and place our cameras on the tripods. Its all rational paranoia i guess _ worrying that we might just drop the lens over the edge and worse still kill someone.

running log 130807

Today i planned to take it easy and do a 5km run down from my home to SPH in Braddle to visit my hubby at work. I thought it was 5km but apparently it was 7km. I told myself i'd make an exception this time round (when it came to moving targets - thanks to Angela who reminded me about that bit of discipline) as my mind was set to reach the Braddle gate. And even though it was a longer distance, i told myself i'd go for it.

Weather: Sunny and light drizzle

Feeling: ok, slightly tired but no big runs the day before

Run: non-stop Tagore avenue - Braddle road

Distance: 6.98km

Time: 40 minutes

Run today seemed doable. yay.

Started off a little too fast, as i was a wee bit enthusiastic running this new route. Felt ok up to the 3.5km mark where it starts to get a little painful. However i passed that mark and managed to pull through to the next km.

The most painful today was between 4-5.5km. Partly because there were steep slopes going up Lornie Rd. Good variation for the feet though.

Slowed down a little towards 6km mark however picked it up a little again when i realised that there was no more struggle. It became muscle memory after that.

Now i wonder how far that muscle memory feeling will last. Because i like it.

Till next time.

As for my Nike+ ipod, i'm really loving it. After a week of running it in ( no punn intended) i declare it user friendly and very useful as a training log. Targets can be set and monitored. Only thing i wish it had was a note pad thingy which allows you to pen in a few more details of a completed run.

update and committments

so i'm proud to say that i've been pretty committed to this whole running thing. And i'm getting more hooked as the days go by. I've signed up for a 10k run in October and i hope i have enough time to train up for the run.

I'm mixing my runs with swims with Angela who works so closeby to me. We're planning to find available lunch hours to sneak in a swim or two. Good endurance training. Now we just need a bike. (: but only if we can find more time. Angela by the way, a sister in Christ, i admire for her fitness level and goal setting personality.

I feel such a high from sweating it out and warming down after a run. It just makes you feel so good to know that you're doing something good for the body before you hit an age where it becomes too late to try and pump in some healthy juices. Needless to say i love sports. I grew up doing nothing but sports and perhaps suffer from the michael jackson no childhood syndrome but i guess as the saying goes, " you won't really know what you're missing if you've never really experienced it." Ok it's not that bad and i (hopefully) didn't turn out wacko. Now i'm setting a pace for myself. A regime and training sked. It's all about trying to find a balance with taking care of Nate and working and trying to squeeze in a run in between. Also getting enough time for recovery. Now for the running bit. According to my sports trained father, one should do the LSD - no not the drugs- but there is a rule of thumb for running which is Long, Slow and Distance. You keep to that rule and you'll lose weight fast, build your arobic fitness/ endurance, and not kill yourself in the process.

I figure with fitness, one's distance would increase and timing improve. Let it happen naturally.

Discipline.

I need to ensure that i set targets. Not moving targets. Not up and definitely not Down. (thanks angela)

Have to stay focussed, and not go overboard.

I haven't set up a nick name yet and joined any forums because i hardly have time to do anything else other than to analyse and update my running log. So Ami, when i get it done, i'll let you know.

So goes the lack of blogs as well.

Pardon the lag of blanks as i spend most of the free time training.

Am still trying to fit in that blogging bit.

running date

despite looking like a tomato, i'm so happy the seng and i

today my hubby and i went on a running date at the botanics. It was nice and i must say i am impressed that i could keep up to his pace after almost 20 months of not exercising with the pregnancy and then the baby and all. Am even more impress with the seng for being able to run the way he did after not exercising for the same amount of time with the pregnancry and then the baby and all. ( no he wasn't pregnant but i was _ its the same thing. i suffer, he suffers more). thank you for the wonderful time seng, and indulging me.

I'm truly disappointed however, with my ipod nano today.

I clocked in my running time and speed and distance and was looking forward to uploading it into my running log. However, the ipod got corrupted! So all the information was gone.

So for the record, i'm gonna jot it down now.

Distance: 4.22km

Average time/kilometer: 5.55min

Total running time: 23 minutes

Calories: 250

After a wonderful time at the botanics, we headed out to meet the gang for steamboat. Time was well spent, conversations were varied but nontheless invigorating with lots of laughter. Will definitely do this again.

the gang

Have so much more to blog about but its late and i gotta go to church to pray that my ipod will work again tomorrow morning. So tune in again where i will share tales of how melanie and I found out that we ate MOULD unknowingly and prolly have mushrooms growing in our bellies right now, about the palembang trip and how i don't understand the mind set of japanese photographers and of course more on nate, and my nike+ ipod thingamabob and my rekindling my love for the outdoors.

itching for a run again but alas

work beckons. this is a reuters picture of the ap at the istana waiting for north korea's no. 2 leader - how funny is that?!

date with the nate

so i guess it IS possible to have some part of my own life back with the baby around.

I felt this very strong urge to go for a run today. Something which i have been putting off because i'm too tired from taking care of the baby, or from work. But i couldn't put it off any longer so i decided to park the car at the esplanade and take a short run over to nate's infant care center to pick him, giving us a chance to bond on the way back to the car later. He enjoyed staring at people in the face when on the train ride, making people feel a little self conscious and later, we sat by the esplanade waterfront to enjoy a little bit of scenary. I'm so glad i could go for my run, and still feel like i have a life, even though it was just for 25 minutes, before turning on the mother-mode once again. And of course life has a funny way of reminding you about certain things because as i'm romanticising about the evening, nate's just starting to cry right now.