Merdeka... Merdeka.. Merdeka...

30 Aug, Monday - Mum woke me up yesterday and we went to Taman Tasik Permaisuri for our morning exercise. But I didn't feel too good, and it was apparent, when I only ran 4 rounds around the lake, about 1.3 - 1.5km long. And after that I felt slightly exhausted. Maybe I should chill a little on the training. Feel a little tug on my left knee also.. shittee..

Anyway, went off to Subang Parade to do a soundcheck with Disagree. Saw Pete Teo (my drummer and pianist from my band are playing for him too), Singletrackmind, and also Jason Lo there doing their soundcheck. This is in preparation for Subang Parade Merdeka Eve Celebrations. Then off we went to Ikano Power Centre at Mutiara Damansara to do a soundcheck there!! We were doing two gigs in one day... nice.

Ikano Power Centre: Disagree played at the Merdeka Eve Street Party, alongside Reefa, Sharizan, Ferhad and a few more. Of course, when the saxophone line came on in "Crumbs", so did the screams. Man.. they sure dig the sax line (wonder if they dig the player? hmm..). Done that, we flew over to Subang Parade to play.

Me and Disagree at Ikano Power Centre - Merdeka Eve Street Party

Subang Parade: Yay, free makan at TGIF. The rest of the guys had food prepared for them. Since I'm vegetarian, I just ordered ala carte... Tomato Basil Soup, and Fried Mozzarella Cheese with Tomato Dip.. yummm!

The show started about 9:30pm with Pete Teo and his band (with Greg Lyons on sax, Wan on bass, Justin Lim on keyboards, and Charles Wong on drums). This band was more or less the same band for the Heineken Green Room Sessions featuring Pete Teo sometime last year.

Pete Teo and band (l-r): Wan (bass), Greg Lyons (sax), Pete Teo, Kim Loong (er-hu)

Next came Singletrackmind, and Mr. Pan Global Alex Wong played a real rockin' grungy set.

Disagree was next, and of course, with "Crumbs".. more screams.. woo hoo...! Same question in my head: They dig the line, but do they dig the playa...??

Me and Disagree at Subang Parade Merdeka Eve Celebrations

Finally, Jason Lo's band! Talk about old school rock.. nothing beats old school rock, man!! If you ask me, it puts some of your recent rock acts to shame!

And finally.. countdown.. 5, 4, 3, 2... 1... MERDEKA! MERDEKA! MERDEKA! Oh yeah, we also had the pretty Serena C as our Master (Mistress?) of Ceremonies! She't hot, right?? hehehe.

What a way to spend your 47th Independence Day. In a supermarket.. where most shops are closed, and there bands playing.. pretty cool. Hehehehe..

I think I'll spend my 31st August at home chilling and sleeping... ahhaha... Happy Merdeka y'all.

AVP review, bad (REALLY bad) ice-cream, and Men's Marathon!

Started out at 11am (so much for a long run), but just in time to get ready, drive to Subang Parade to play an hour of jazz with my band. It was a few Subang's pre-amble for their Merdeka Day celebrations. Stupid place didn't have their air-con on well, so it was stuffy like an oven, and halfway thru the second song I was already soaked to the bones. Sigh.. cheapskates. But it was fun though, the band was really kickin', although I think a lot of people probably wouldn't understand what we were doing! AHahaha...

Anyway, came back home, chilled for a while, then decided to go to Mines with my brother to catch a movie. Wanted to watch The Village, but fully booked (wouldn't expect anything more or less). Even Aliens vs. Predator (AVP) also sold out. So we were contemplating on either going for the later show at Mines, or go to Cheras Leisure Mall to try our luck. So just before we left, we went for ice-cream just two floors down from the cineplex. It was some New Zealand ice-cream or something like that. And my thoughts: DON'T take the ice-cream there.. it's absolute CRAP!! Dang.. I've never tasted ice-cream which was bad, but this one takes the cake, man! I couldn't taste anything at all! Even the 20cent ice-cream that you'd get from the ice-cream guy that goes around in a bike, tasted nicer.. SERIOUSLY!! So, whatever you all do... DON'T take the ice-cream there. Sucks big time...

ANYWAY, we decided to try our luck and go to Cheras Leisure Mall. Lucky for us, we managed to get two tickets for AVP just in time for the next show. Well, other than the nice visual, special effects, suits and aliens designs, the action, the show wasn't anything much. It's probably like what I'd call videogame movie. But it was still fun to watch. Interesting ending.. if you wanna call it that. AHaha...

Oh yeah, tried this new Thai vegetarian place at Pandan Indah. I sorta discovered it by accident a couple of weeks back when I did the MPAJ Run. It's quite nice, albeit on the slightly pricier side. And I think I ordered too much green curry dishes, quite a mouthful to finish between me and my brother alone. But it was really nice...although I'm disappointed with their Thai Cendol. It's a cross between cendol and red ruby. But less of everything.

And finally.. the Olympics Athletics' Mens' Marathon! Wow.. quite an exciting race. Here are the results in short: Stefano Baldini (ITA) 2:10:55, Mebrathom Keflezhigi (USA) 2:11:29, Vanderlei De Lima (BRA) 2:12:11. Some highlights, Vanderlei De Lima was the leader for over 10 - 15km of the race, and somewhere past the 30 - 35th km, he was intercepted by some 'gila' protestor who came from the opposite side of the street, and it cost him a lot of time. With that tight security, it wasn't supposed to happen, but it did. Wow.. who ever thought running events would be boring? One couldn't help but wonder, if that fella didn't intercept De Lima, would he have been able to get the gold? But from the look of it, Stefano Baldini, who took it easy although he was the chaser group, seemed to have conserved his energy until the last 10 - 15km of the race. So it was pretty possible that he could've overtaken De Lima anyhow. But De Lima was quite disraught and in tears for a while after that unfortunate incident. Wow.. amazing.. check out the results at http://www.athens2004.com.

That is quite an inspiration to run...

A good run, and a good gig...

Saturday, 28 Aug:
Hmmm.. couldn't wake up for nuts to go and run early, man. One of the pitfalls of a musician's life, is that a lot of the time we always end up home very late.. or "early" (in the morning), for that matter. That's fine if you're the typical musician... but apparently, I'm not. I'm the left wing guy.. the vegetarian.. the health freak.. the running freak.. the very anti-thesis of what a typical musician is like or perceived to be! Oh well.. such is life. I like it like that.. except that I still couldn't wake up early to go and run. So I just went about my day on a simple note, check mail, watch some tv, etc. You'd be surprised how time passes by really quickly when you're doing just that.

Come 6pm, I went out to run. It was either that or the couch. And I tell ya, both are very tempting, in its own way! Scary, but I suppose it's a good time in the evening to do that. It's probably a semi-long run, about 7km (yeah, I know... to some it's not THAT long a run). But it's partially flat, partially hills, so that made it a little more interesting. Tried to take a fairly comfortable pace, nothing too all out at all. Feels good to run..

Came back, got ready to go to Alexis Ampang. Got a gig with Suflan, a pianist. Suflan's actually a lawyer in the day (works in Shell), and musician by night.. BELIEVE IT OR NOT! But he's pretty good, for a part-timer. He loves playing swing jazz and standards. The rhythm section for the night was David "Ah Wah" Yee on bass, and the incorrigible and inimitable (lol!) Lewis Pragasam on drums. With a rhythm section like that, let's just say I had a jolly good time. I love playing swing, bebop, mainstream jazz, and with these guys, I felt comfortable playing it! And the guest singer for the night was Sharizan! We did standards like Come Fly With Me, Have You Met Miss Jones, I've Got You Under My Skin, and a whole lot of other standard tunes (a lot from the Sinatra songbook). It was pretty fun..

If y'all have the chance, do catch this guy play some time or the other. Oh well... now as I type this.. I'm wondering.. I don't think I can wake up early to do my really long run in the morning. Sigh...

PS: Can't wait for the Men's Marathon event at the Olympics, tomorrow evening! Woo hoo...

Happy People Quintet @ La Bodega, Bangsar - Wed, 25 Aug

I had a show with my band, the Happy People Quintet, and featuring Maria Angela on vocals, last night at La Bodega, Bangsar. A good, and partially off day for me, because I was having a bit of a flu, sort of. Running nose, stuffed up lungs, weak-bodied. Even my trumpet player, Eddie was feeling under the weather... or weather-ladened, maybe? Theory has it that we may have had too much fun, laughing and blowing in Kuching, and at the same time breathing in too much haze, which resulted in us being sickly the last couple of days. Go figure..

Anyway, we did our soundcheck in the afternoon around 4pm. I was contemplating on whether I should go and join the KLCC gang (Jamie, Newton, et. al) for a run. Perhaps by going for a run, I could run off the flu and at least make me feel better for the night's performance. Oh well, I couldn't pass up a good run, so I went ahead to KLCC after the soundcheck.

Met up with with runners Jamie Pang, Kenneth Teh, Newton, and one of Jamie's friend (whose name I have embarrassingly forgotten) from Switzerland. These guys ran leisurely but pretty fast, and they could keep up with each other. Me, on the other hand, started out on their tail-end, and after about 10 - 15 minutes, those guys disappeared way in front of me! Wah liao.. malu siutt... hahaha.. I run damn slow la. Well, this only means one thing, gotta train up more, lose weight, and train some more. But I'm so fat, man... slowly la, I guess. Did about 6 rounds around the KLCC Park (that's about 1.3km a round, so that means about 7.8km) at 56:39. Hmmm.. okay also la. At least I know I'm slowly increasing my mileage. And that should help a fair bit with 10k distances. And I definitely need to increase my mileage if I ever wanna do 21km for the Singapore StanChart Marathon on the 5th Dec. Oh yeah, even Ronnie was there too. Boy that guy is fast! Anyway, after our run, we took some pictures. According to Jamie, it's very seldom that he could get together with so many runners in one session, so it's worth taking some pics la. Cool... here's a pic we took:

from l-r: Ronnie (pm1), Newton (pm18), Kwok Foo, Jamie (pm5), me, and Kenneth (pm20)

Later, I managed to get to La Bodega on time to perform with the band. Went quite well too. Although lung power was definitely down due to the flu, but overall I definitely felt better than before the run. Hmmm.. quite true also. A run can sometimes "run" away the flus!!

But when I came back home... PLOPP!!.. I was konked out on the sofa, with the tv tuned to the Olympics. I don't think I even lasted 10 minutes. Ahahha...

Kuching - part 2: Sat 21/8 and Sun 22/8

Sat 21/8:
Set my alarm clock at about 6am. Looked outside to find out that the layer of haze was pretty bad. Decided not to run, bugger. I was so looking forward to a run around the city. Checked if their gym was open. They're only open from 7am - 10pm on weekdays, and 9am - 10pm on weekends, ARGH!!! Need to run. Contemplating of running even in the haze.

9:00am, woke up, went to the coffeehouse for breakfast. Buffet breakfast..biasa la, right? Not so, it wasn't anything much in terms of choice. Just one serving tray of mee goreng (which I can't take of course), toast, boiled eggs, some cereals and porridge. Disappointing, it was.

Left late from the hotel for soundcheck for David Gomes' band. The itinerary for the day for all the bands were running behind schedule. Anyway, the bus took us to the Kuching Amphitheatre. It was really nice, with al-fresco kind of setting, really nice outdoor venue for the show. People could sit on the grass, or with mats and all. Looks like one of those jazz fest in the US. Only problem was the weather was hot and humid. Add haze for extra spice! Finished our soundcheck and we were taken out for lunch. Had to go a second time for a soundcheck as I was playing for Alonso's Jazz Latino band as well. Doubly hot and humid! Finished that one, and we headed back to the hotel to rest.

Calltime: We all were called to convene at 7:15pm, had light snacks, and were scooted off to the amphitheatre for the show. There was already quite a crowd when we got there, made us even more excited. Went to our dressing rooms, engaged in some formalities with the VIP, as he launched the fest. And on with the show!

Showtime: "All The Best", meaning the cream of the crop from Sarawak, led by Shafie Obie, was the first to perform. They had Razak Rahman, sax player extraordinaire, Zahid Ahmad, one of KL's top session drummers, flown in to play as special guests.

Next up, David Gomes Quintet feat Junji Delfino-Gomes. Me, eddie, and charles played for this group. The band was swinging hard that night, playing a mix of jazz standards, latin and originals.

Farid Ali, guitarist extraordinaire, and good singer, performed next. He had a few friends flown from singapore to play as well. And he's the only musician you'll see play gambus (traditional indonesian string instrument) jazz!

Sabah's Double Take (Mia Palencia and another extraordinary guitarist, Roger Wang) played next.

Finally, Alonso's Jazz Latino (me and eddie played this too!) performed. We rocked the stage with dance-heavy latin and afro-cuban rhythms, with blistering solos from everyone in the group, from the horns to the percussion to the electric bass!

We ended with a jam session tune, where we invited all the artists that performed to jam! The kodak moment happened when, at the last strike of the last note of that song, it rained cats and dogs! Talk about taking a cue to stop! It made pretty much everyone take shelter under the covered stage. I found out shortly that it didn't rain in Kuching for more than two weeks! Wow, I began to think we brought the rain down with all our music! About almost an hour later, umbrellas were brought and all the artists were escorted to the bus to go back to the hotel.
After showering, changing clothes and refreshing ourselves, we had snacks at the coffeehouse. Wasn't enough though, we had a second round of supper a few blocks away from the hotel at Khatulistiwa Café 24 Hours, until almost 4:30am. Then we all walked back to the hotel to retire ourselves to bed. It was a real fun night.

Sun 22/8:

Set my alarm clock at 7am, thought I could go for a run. Didn't get up until 9:30am. It still looked hazy, although I thought the rain would've dissolved it. At that point, it didn't matter, I put on my new pair of yellow Asics running gear, heartrate monitor, my new Nike Hydration belt (very cool, nice design, it's a belt with a special water bottle holder), my New Balance 765s, and out I went. Ran around the city, park, until I reached the previous night's show venue, the Amphitheatre. At almost a half hour later, it got pretty hot and sunny, so I ran for about 45 minutes only. Didn't matter, I got to run and check out the scenery on foot! An afterthought: if they ever organize a race in Kuching I will surely take part! Feels good running. I didn't run since MPAJ, actually.

Around 12:30pm, came back in time for lunch. We were brought to the seafood place again. Lots of food was ordered again, and I think we pretty much ate until we bloated! After that, some of us took a walk to the Waterfront again to check out some souvenirs. And we saw the fried ice-cream stall again! Second round!

5pm: Came back to the hotel, chilled a bit, and then it was already time to pack and checkout. Wow, talk about time flying! We were then taken for a short city tour in our bus, then headed for the airport, and back to KLIA.

10:45pm: At the KLIA terminal, we actually met up with the KL guys who were touring with Wang Lee Hom, like Greg Lyons, Andy Petersen, Lewis Pragasam, Aji and Jamie Wilson. They had just returned from a show in Beijing and they came back around the same time we did! Talk about coincidence. This was really quite a trip!

Epilogue: We took the KLIA Express ERL train back to KL Sentral (my first time taking that train), and we parted our separate ways. It was quite a trip!

Kuching - part 1: Friday, 20 Aug 2004

Finished rehearsals pretty late... came back, slept, and woke up 6, 6:30am to pack.. picked up my drummer Charles, and headed to KLIA with my parents.

About 9 am, KLIA:
After checking in and having breakfast, we entered the terminal and met up with the rest of the musicians from the other bands. It was interesting, I seldom get to convene and hang out with other musicians in tours like this. And being with cats like these, there's always an infinite supply of laughter and exchange of conversation and ideas. Like running races, the dynamics shared between each other is just remarkable. To add to the spice, we're talking about really, REALLY, "gila" musicians, man. And suffice to say, a lot of good musicians I know, memang a bit gila wan... anyway, flight took off at 10:50am

Around 12:30pm, Kuching:
Arrived at Kuching Int'l Airport after an uneventful flight (thank god..esp under current world's circumstances). After checking out from the immigration checkpoint, we were greeted and welcomed by the promoters of the jazz fest, complete with a nice promo banner, proceeded with a photo shoot. Got on the bus and rode to our hotel, Somerset Gateway Apartments. Checked in, and the rooms were great, two rooms, one room with two single beds and the other room a double bed! Found out shortly that it's a service apartment, under Ascott group... not bad... no wonder.

Got used to the room pretty fast.. heheheh. I was bunking with Eddie (trumpeter) and Charles. Relaxed for about 1/2 hr, then went to their function room for a reception between the artistes, and DBKU. Normal meet-greet-briefing affairs. Went to the room to sleep...and man, did I sleep deep. This is recovering from two rehearsals the day before, the second one ending around 1 something in the morning!

Dinner:
Woke up around 6pm, the organizer GM took us for dinner. Seafood. Me, being vegetarian, obviously see myself having a tough time. So I took the liberty of telling the organizer GM, earlier, that I was a vegetarian. And he managed to arrange it for me. Talk about efficient... and a real cool cat, too! I'm having a ball of a time here. Dinnertime, nothing but food, more food, even more food, conversation about food, music, and of course, tremendous amount of laughter.

Me, Charles, and Eddie then went to walk around the Waterfront (and we couldn't resist it... FRIED ICE CREAM!!! RM2.20 each!), checked out the night scenery, including some canopy trees that you would seldom see around West M'sia. At the same time, I was already charting a possible running route to run in the morning. Haze seemed to get worse then receded, you could just smell it. Seems that the haze condition in East M'sia is far worse than West.

Went back to the hotel, watched the Olympics a bit, talked a bit, then slept.

footnote: Man... Chris Hoyt's victory over Arnaud Tournant from the Cycling 1km Time Trials event was awesome, man!! 1:00.711, over World Record holder Arnaud's 1:00.896. Woo hoo... sure didn't expect that one...

Next up: Kuching part 2! (stay tuned!)

Crap..

Wanted to wake up to run... and in the middle of the night, all of a sudden, got running nose and sh*t.. arrggh. Couldn't wake up after that. Wonder if I could squeeze in a run in between my rehearsals later.. hmm...

Off to rehearsals now...

Kuching Jazz fest.. Kuching Jazz Fest.. here I come...

Running itch..

Met up with my friend Jamie Pang today, to pass him the Pacesetters' Athletic Club form. Cool bloke, had a nice chat with him too. Hardly meet non-musicians who're into music so much like him. He and a bunch of other runners usually get together at KLCC Park to run together... and knowing that, I started itching to run already. I think I should be relaxed enough by now... already thinking and planning, while driving, about running early tomorrow morning. Aiyah.. did 10km only, not that far also, don't have to rest too long. If I did a Half Marathon or a full one, then I'd probably cut down on training la....

Got the September's copy of Runners' World... man.. how I look forward to each issue! For those who're into running, or wanna get started with running, this is a good site to check out. I learnt a lot reading stuff on the mag as well as online. Really cool..

Long day tomorrow... morning: run, afternoon to evening: rehearsals, at night: rehearsals.. Friday morning: KUCHING, Sarawak.. here I come! Woo hoo...

Shout box..

Managed to set up a small lil chat box on the right sidebar. Was trying out different tag-boards, and all. The cun ones like Azwar's site, but found out that fella is a IT fella.. so he knows how to do ASP programming and all that. Arghh.. so have to settle for something less, but still okay la. Finally found a good piece of programming... MyShoutBox... quite okay la.. so just use only.

Shit.. no life, man, me...

Ciao..

Disagree's "Crumbs" at Hoobastank concert

I was surfing around in Jamtank, an online bulletin board for (mostly) Malaysian (wanna-be) rockers (with some occasional jazz fans like myself), and I happened to find a thread that referred to a review of da Hoobastank concert the last two days. The site, called Loudmusik, did the review, and they also included a video of Disagree playing their last tune, Crumbs. Being da only sax player there, I just couldn't help it, but hear myself play, and my, my.. not bad la... sounded pretty good. I mean, US la.. not just me... hahahahaa..

Well, enough self-praise (is no praise), here's the video. Enjoy it..

Gonna take a short break from training la.. need to make sure that any small, possibly hidden injury heals itself and recover. Might start again either Thursday, or Friday, if I get the chance. I'm leaving for Kuching on Friday morning for the Kuching International Jazz Festival. Hopefully it'll be fun. Kuching being a very open place, not cramped like KL, hopefully can do some nice scenic runs at least. It's always fun to run in a new environment...although not necessarily safe, if you don't know the place well.

Later..

too much (non available) time...

bugga... can't believe I spent that much time on the Net and doing up this blog site... nuts.. just nuts...

Oh well.. don't care la.. just take a day off la...

Hoobastank concert - 15/08/04

No, this is NOT a review of Hoobastank..although I will comment a bit on the concert. For those who know me, they'd know I'm not a fan of Hoobastank. The reason I'm there is because I was playing for Disagree, who's the opening band for the Hoobstank concert.

I went there around 3:30pm, although I was supposed to be there at 3pm. I overslept la.. after the MPAJ 10km run as well as lack of sleep from Saturday night's gig (Alonso's Jazz Latino @ Alexis Bistro), I was a little flat out. Anyway, when I got there, Hoobastank was still soundchecking, I think they were doodling around or something. So basically me and the band, with another band, Vespertine (very good upcoming band, by the way), waited around backstage like FOREVER! Managed to chat up and get to know the Vespertine guys la, while waiting. So after like an eternity, we managed to get our soundcheck done. But because everything's so backtracked, the audience who were let in saw a preview of what Disagree was gonna perform that night. After that, lepak only la.. thought got room or place to lepak and makan, ended up just waiting backstage for an hour and a half with nothing but mineral water and Coke. Boring.

Vespertine started out.. really cool hard rock, psychedelic stuff (I think). Then Disagree played.. went well also. Interesting bit: They got a bunch of kids from a home (for broken family kids) to sing with them on stage like a choir. How endearing... (insert a big "Awwwww.." here).

Finished the show, then stuck around to watch Hoobastank play. They only played like for an hour I think (wouldn't expect anything more, they don't have that much songs to play). I think the bunch of kids that came, paid like rm100 over-something probably just to catch the band play their radio-hit tune "Reason", is it???? Maybe, maybe not. Generally, the band's okay la.. tight band, but not much of a big deal. What? So sue me.. I'm born in the late 70s, so I'm generally an 80s-90s baby boomer! The stuff I used to hear was so much more kick ass!

Later..

MPAJ Run race report - Sunday, 15/08/04

Ahh, another race done! I think people (like some of my musician friends) think I'm a little nuts, running for 10km and all that. But when I see and know ppl who finish half and full marathons, 10km like chicken feed, man. But anyway, to the MPAJ race:

6:15am: Reached Pandan Indah, but take another 15 minutes to find the actual venue... must be the lack of sleep from my gig the night before. I only had about 2 - 3 hours of sleep, man! But then the place also a bit bengong wan, I think. Found the place, but my bladder was aching like mad... drank a lot of water in the morning to keep hydrated. Rendevoused with my running buddies, Jeya, Kantha, and Devin, and we reported in. I was feeling slightly sore from a slightly over-done training run two days before, bad mistake, should've taken it easy before the race. But not that bad la...

Then, wanted to take a piss before warming up, but then, there were only TWO pairs of porta-johns, one for da gals and one for the boys. Problem was, only ONE of the boys' john worked (celaka!), so I did the next best thing, I went to one of them concrete half-crescent full-bodied benches that was slightly above waist height, and then let my body waste fertilise the ground.

7:15am: Warmed up a bit, stretched, chit chat with me buddies, still waiting for one more friend Pek Fui, who's late from over-sleeping, all while dissing the organisers' effort to get ppl to "bersenam" with them (among ourselves!). About 10 minutes, we were called to go to the main road where the flag-off was to take place. When the 4 of us (Pek Fui showed up about that time, lucky for her, if not we all would've left without her), we were so confused which direction that the flag-off was supposed to happen. If we were in the front pack, sure die wan, man.. cos have to run real fast at the start, if not, we'll be trampled! Doesn't help that the "P.A system" was the size of a basketball.. bodoh cheapskate MPAJ fellas, cannot even hear anything. When we got our bearings, we made haste and went into the pack at the back, with the B (women's open), C (Vet men's), D (vet women)categories. Flagged off approximately 7:40am. Off we went.. wooo hoooo...!!

Jeya and Kantha was like running past me for a couple of hundred metres, and then walked, until I caught up with them. They run/walked quite a bit, and I thought "wah liao.. these fellas can beat me.. not bad". But I was disappointed (and maybe a little glad) that halfway thru, I think they pancit.. kekekee.. I'm bad la.

Jeya and Kantha panting... pancit?

Around 8am: I reached the first (AND ONLY.. bloody organisers) water stop! But they only served 100Plus, which is okay (I prefer Gatorade or 100plus Power, cos no gas), but I needed more water than anything. Biasa la.. take sweet stuff, you'll sure get a little thirsty after that. Note to myself: Bring some cash to buy bottled water at petrol stations. Caught up with Pek Fui ran with her a bit, then she picked up her pace while I maintained mine. Then ran with a older guy who's not really a runner, but took part in the race for fun. Chat with him a bit, and we encouraged each other on, until I ran ahead.

30 minutes later: Something wrong lah... It's past one hour, but nowhere near the damn finish line. I have a feeling that it was more than 10km...

39 minutes later: Near the finish line, I sprinted my last final minute to the line. Recorded my time as 1:24:06. The cutoff time was 1hr 20min.. bugger. Never mind.. just have to train some more. But I still felt that it was more than 10km. My 10km training took about nearly that amount of time, and that also I was running slighly below 10km race pace. Regained my breath for a couple of minutes, with Pek Fui finishing about less than a minute behind me. We both went to the 100plus booth and grabbed many, many cups (cannot remember how much).

Ahh.. another race done.

Jeya and Kantha finally appeared about... 5 - 7 minutes later, walking. And I couldn't help but cheered them some more.

Oh, and I managed to meet up with some Pacesetters friends like Azwar, and Terence (or Penguin-6), Ronnie, and Li-Hung. Cool bunch of fellas.. and bloody fast runners, man! Towards the last 5 minutes to the end, I saw Ronnie running with his wife, I thought to myself, "Why is he still running?". Later on, I found out, he went back to look for his wife! *wah liao*. After meeting them, I found out that the actual running distance was about 10.8 - 10.95km!!! Celaka... bloody MPAJ fellas. If plus minus a hundred metres or two, never mind la. But that is too much man. I thought my running time gone down, cos my PJ Half Marathon 10km record was 1:23:26. But if like that, that means my 10km time became better la... woohoooo... must train some more.

l-r: Me, Azwar, Ronnie, and Terence (eh, penguin-6, where your hand showing ah? lol)

Epilogue: Me and my running buddies Devin, Jeya, Kantha, and Pek Fui, went for a nice Indian breakfast at Steven's Corner 24 hours.

Next up: Hoobastank concert!

My first blog

Hey y'all... it's my first blog, and it's my very first attempt to making a weblog (blogs, for short). I've no idea how fun this is, but just try la...