Happy Deepavali and Selamat Hari Raya!

Yesterday was a fairly relaxed day for me. Woke up at about 11.30am, nicely rested after my 60k Putrajaya ride. I drove over to KLCC to meet a friend (and wife) for lunch. they're both from Indonesia, and they came over for the weekend.

I got to know Pudjo Djuliarso by chance, really. He somehow managed to find my number and he SMS-ed me to try to hook up his piano player son, Nial, with some local jazz cats to do a gig here in KL. Nial's a Berklee graduate, an awesome player by the way, and now doing his Masters training in Julliard (with those Lincoln Center cats!! Wooo hooo.. shows you where he's at!). Then, I only met Pudjo in person early September when I was in Singapore to watch Joshua Redman. Pudjo is a bass player, and he used to gig when he was younger in Germany and a few places, before he finally became a fulltime lawyer. He's such a nice cat!

Anyway, we had lunch and coffee, and later on parted ways. After doing a few stops in some of the shops in KLCC, I proceeded to Lake Gardens and go for a run (always bring running gear just in case!). I felt good enough to do one, so I did. I planned to do a long run, well.. sort of a long run.

Here was my running route in LG:

Bukit Aman car park --> past Lake Club --> children's playground --> up into Carcosa road --> down back into Lake (facing KL Hilton Sentral) --> up on to Jalan Perdana slope --> Bird park --> back to Bkt Aman car park.

I estimated the distance to be around 4.25km. Managed to do two rounds of it.

Here are some stats:

Date: 30 Oct 2005
Location: Lake Gardens
Time started: 6pm

Total time - 1 hr 13 mins
Distance - approx 8.5km
Pace - 8:36 min/km

Average HR - 155 (80% of max)
Max HR - 170 (88% of max)

Main goal for this month and part of next month is to build some endurance running base, before I can start training for 21k for KL Int'l Marathon next year. Planned heart rate range is between 70% - 80% of max, i.e. the aerobic training range. This is to help build endurance by using more slow twitch muscles so that I can run longer distances, and also it's the weight loss range. Running at that range trains the body to use up energy from from other sources (ie. fat) and not directly from glycogen sources in the muscles.

After a nice shower, I met up with my parents for a nice dinner at The Curve.

* * * * *

I saw this at Ikano Power Center last night.

It's called a kolam, an indian color art. I'm not too sure at the moment if it's colored rice, or powder. Fellow Indians, please enlighten me and my readers by posting a comment and telling me what you guys use to do the kolam. It's an amazing piece of art, usually done in festive celebrations, like Deepavali.

Now I'm sure you all must have seen the banners: HAPPY DEEPARAYA or something to that effect. Talk about media blitz.. such a Malaysian thing. DEEPARAYA?? That's like a combination of Deepavali and Hari Raya, which has been close to each other for the past 2 years, I think. If you ask me, it's just a lazy man term. Instead of printing out Selamat Hari Raya dan Selamat Deepavali, they come out with this term. HAhaha...

So, to not subscribe to that kind of laziness,

I would like to wish all my Muslim friends and Hindu friends a..

SELAMAT HARI RAYA AND HAPPY DEEPAVALI!!!!

So I can't wait to down your ketupat and kuah kacang, as well as your thosai and dhal and kurma!!!! Which means I will have to work double-y hard at my running!!