A fren sent me this email.

A message to share...

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to
visit their old university Professor.

Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life.
Offering his guests coffee, the Prof went to the kitchen and returned with
a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups: porcelain, plastic, glass,
some plain-looking and some expensive and exquisite, telling them to help
themselves to hot coffee.

When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the lecturer said "If
you noticed, all the nice-looking, expensive cups were taken up, leaving
behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is but normal for you to want
only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and
stress. What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you
consciously went for the better cups and are eyeing each other's cups."

"Now, if Life is coffee, then the jobs, money and position in society are
the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain life, but the quality of
Life doesn't change. Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail
to enjoy the coffee in it."

So friend, don't let the cups drive you... enjoy the coffee instead.

zoom zoom!!

Yippee!! had changi nasi lemak today, been yrs since i ate it.. haha.. my mum bought it, cos they sent me to the SACA road race and then went to changi village to wait for the race to be over. hmm the rice is very nice.. anyway, what an experience! i was probably the slowest, shall update when i get hold of the results. there were many good bikes around, but the attention-grabbers are some of the participants, with their flashy helmets and full body suit.. haha.. looks real pro, and some of them are really fast.. many zoomed past me, and since it's a timed interval thing, they are definitely minutes ahead of me.. and the rain! it started raining abt 5km after i started. first time i cycled in the rain with my road bike, and my first thought was "my cyclocomputer!!" then my second thought was "my $250 cycling shoes!!" haha.. i didn't think abt my bike.. anyway, don't think it will rust easily lar..

well well, like i said, it's a good experience. though it's expensive, and there's no goodie bag. oh, i just registered for standard chartered half marathon! nearly forgot to sign up, thankfully it's still the early bird promo period. those who intend to sign up better hurry. only a few days left for august.. see u at the starting line!!

i just cycled 52.2km!!

not a big deal actually.. i'm sure there's a lot of pple everyday who cover a greater distance than that.. but it's the most i have covered in a single trip so far. my first 50km mark!! took 2 short breaks. here was the route i covered: home --> hougang --> tampines road --> tampines ave 7 --> loyang ave --> took a break at changi break to take in the sea view (as if i don't get enough everyday at work.. haha..) --> telok paku rd --> nicoll drive --> changi coast rd (where this sun's race will be held) --> xilin ave (took another break here at a bus stop, waiting for someone whom i can beg water from, but no one walked past me.. sob sob..) --> back to tampines, went past temasek poly --> tampines ave 10 --> tampines road --> hougang --> home sweet home!!

seems like quite a distance now that i wrote it out.. it was quite tiring, i must admit, but it was entirely do-able. i did it in 2 hrs 7mins, excluding rest time.. at the 30km mark or so, my hands start to feel numb, due to the vibrations.. then my toes went missing. blood flow problem.. haha..

hee.. now i must hydrate.. hydrate.. hydrate....

"pain is just fear leaving the body."

New Balance REAL Run: 20th Aug 06 @Sentosa

while clearing out the documents in my hard disk, chanced upon the story that inspired my blog title..


A group of Geography students studied the Seven Wonders of the World. At the end of that section, the students were asked to list what they think were considered to be the present Seven Wonders of the World. Though there was some disagreement, the following got the most votes:

1. Egypt's Great Pyramids
2. Taj Mahal
3. Grand Canyon
4. Panama Canal
5. Empire State Building
6. St. Peter's Basilica
7. China's Great Wall

While gathering the votes, the teacher noted that one student, a quiet girl, hadn't turned in her paper yet. So she asked the girl if she was having trouble with her list. The quiet girl replied, "Yes, a little. I couldn't quite make up my mind because there were so many." The teacher said, "Well, tell us what you have, and maybe we can help."

The girl hesitated, then read, "I think the Seven Wonders of the World are:

1. to touch
2. to taste
3. to see
4. to hear

She hesitated a little more, and then
5. to feel
6. to laugh
7. and to love

Then there was the room so full of silence it was deafening! It is far too easy for us to look at the exploits of man and refer to them as "wonders" while we overlook all God has done for us, regarding them as merely "ordinary".

May you be reminded today of those things which are truly wondrous.


cool right?

the results are out!!

here it is...

i'm surprised there are so few teams.. and there are only 6 teams in the mixed relay for sprint distance. my team came in 8th out of 13 teams in the sprint distance open relay. could have been better, but i feel it's a really good effort by all 3 of us. considering that my swimmer swam extra, i cycled the wrong route and got into an accident, and my runner had stitches.. haha..

next up, new balance REAL run! and my faith challenge of the year, standard chartered 21km!!

"Whether you think you can or you can't, you are right." -- Henry Ford

at least i completed the race in one piece...

it was an "exciting" experience.. almost like tour de france, with pro riders forming columns to reduce drag and conserve energy, lots of shouting to get pple to give way.. and a lot a lot of accidents and crashes... real exciting. every km or so, there will be a group of cyclists at the pavement tending to their injuries or trying to fix their bike. near the last stretch, i saw one walking with his bike on his right shoulder and his rear wheel in his left hand. there was a funnier accident, as i was overtaking someone, i think he wasn't looking up. he was probably looking at his gears or pedals. when he looked up, he started to veer left slightly, only to end up very close to the kerb. i heard a very audible "oooh", then he lost balance due to the pebbles and flew forward over his bike! and pam saw a cyclist crash head-on into a barrier!! haiz.. so many accidents.. and on the return leg, i saw an ambulance using the closed lane, meaning someone doing the triathlon got injured so badly..

hmm i shouldn't complain that much.. it only masks my own poor performance. didn't reach my target of 50mins, think i hit only 53mins or so. (my initial target was 40mins, but that was when i still thought the bike leg will be 20km, b4 they changed it to 25km..) due to how the route was planned, we had to stop at traffic light junctions and wait for the traffic police to let us pass. (kinda funny, cos it gave us a chance to chit chat with other cyclists for a while. mainly complaining abt the route, or asking how many rounds must we make in total..) but i am not going to blame it on the road humps and traffic lights, cos i feel that i can push myself further. and i'm not going to comfort myself by saying "i'll do better next time", instead, i WILL do better next time!!it was also quite a humbling experience.. there were many beautiful bikes out there, with just as competent riders. there was a guy that zoomed past me at more than 40km/h.. my average speed was below 30km/h. well, i shall train harder then, and leave the rest to God. 100% man, 100% God! =)

global university indeed..

great.. the bike distance is changed from 20km to 25km.. and i only just found out.. the night b4 the race.. wonderful.. strange that the nus sports club don't understand how to harness this technology the rest of the world knows as "email".. seems like nothing much has changed since i graduated.. oh well..

The Sons of the Sea

to serve and surf..

yippee!! i got broadband at home now!! starhub maxonline 4000.. now i can surf the net conveniently at home, and at a sufficiently fast pace too.. and now i can blog and bitch abt my work and the pple there.. haha...

Happy Birthday Singapore!

41st birthday.. wasn't an easy journey thus far.. here are my best wishes for the country that i swore by oath to defend even at the cost of my life. may there always be peace and prosperity, wise and caring leaders, independent judiciary free from political interference, and (i hope) one day may there be fair and free elections.. hee..

had a mixture of emotions as i was watching the NDP on tv. the forming up of the guard-of-honour always reminds me of my commissioning parade, and the march past of the State Colours and various Ensigns is a proud moment. and the masculine display of raw military power when the F16s zoom pass the stadium in a presidential salute, the maiden appearances of the ultra-cool Apache choppers and the less noted SAR21 rifle in an NDP, the grand precision of the "fire-of-joy"..

nice to see the MPs walk in too. singapore has a unique system, where even though one-third of the voters voted for the opposition, there are only 2 out of 84 MPs from the opposition.. hmm.. anyway, as i was watching them, i realised that the new Parliament has not convened yet, cos apparently they want to wait till the major renovations are done, so that they can start on a good note. which is real convenient, cos there won't be any troublesome debates abt transport fare hikes, ERP fee hikes, blah blah blah...

we will rule!!

i started working already!! and what a week it had been.. not what i expected at all.. in fact, i didn't even get to sail this week. well, gives me the chance to get my coc in-dated soon, so that i can start doing duties..

haven't met most of the crew yet, cos my ship is in yard. met two other AOs, meeting one more on mon (going off for studies, so he is clearing leave now). all of them are from junior batches, so they behave, well, rather "juniorly".. i'm trying to tell them it's the wrong mentality they are having, that as officers they should behave as one. one of them keep insisting that there are nothing more than 4-bar midshipmen, but they will only be treated this way if they think of themselves this way.. ytd i asked if we are going to changi at noon directly, cos there's simulation training there. i was shocked when they told me that there's no freedom of choice, that as AOs we must report to ship at 7.30am.. and also that i have to understudy all duties our ship has, including today.. i was shocked.. i thought that by telling NO i got the children's club thing, i should be ok. and since the simulation training ends at 10pm, we should be able to report later than usual.. well, so i talked to my XO in the afternoon, and got it settled.. i'll be going for YA later, and we will go to changi direct at noon.. sometimes all it takes is to ask, but in this situation there is more.. i need to drill into them the proper mentality of an officer.. and it's a good thing they got me as a fellow AO.. hee...

well, enough bitching abt that.. life now is slightly easier than when i was an AO right after commissioning.. the multi-crew concept is kinda confusing. oh, i went simcen on thurs, the junior AO said its an eye-opener.. as for me, well, i was on a MGB b4.. haha.. no kick for me this time.. =p