Éclectique

I've said it before; once I'm bored, I start doing lists. So for today, I decided to make a list of cool things I found that would be neat to own. Hehe! GoPro HD Hero. It's a camera for action sports. With an assortment of mounts, you can mount it anywhere to get that awesome footage. The HD Hero model shoots in 1080p videos and 5mp pictures. Impressive considering it's just this small little thing. P/S; the camera is mounted on the helmet. You don't get a free helmet (nor goggles) with the purchase of the camera. Hehe! A cyclocross bike. Cyclocross is sometimes written/typed as CX. They look identical to road bikes with the drops bars and all but they're actually built to go off-road. Pretty neat concept. Hehe. If you notice the bike in the picture below has drop bars and rather thin tires, reminiscent of a road bike. Some ring I found on this website called Novica and it looks like a Jaguar. The animal, not the car. It's a really nifty loo...

Looking back, mountain biking, particularly XC, is sadism at it's finest. During the race you feel your spirit breaking, you want to cry and give up yet you keep motivating yourself, "I want to finish this, I want to finish this," and you do. You don't win, but you did finish where many others pulled out. You're body is aching, and you feel like collapsing. At the same time, once you cross that finish line, you're like, "I actually did it," and you look at the expressions of those who didn't finish it and you feel a mix of joy and pain. Days after that, after you've recovered and gotten back in the saddle, you think, "I can't wait for the next race." It's borderline stupid but it's addictive. That feeling when you're atop the hill and you know you pedalled and struggled your way up. You didn't take some big 4x4 and wreck the environment to get the view. You broke a sweat, you swore, you struggled, and whe...

Some of you may have read on Facebook that I participated in a race this past Sunday on February 20th, 2011. It was an all-day event consisting of one mountain bike event -- called the Jamboree --, and 3 road bike events -- called Criterium races. The Jamboree was the first event of the day and was scheduled to start and 10. Riders were to be at the starting grid by 9:45 a.m. Alright, before you go on, I'm going to rant about the flaws of the event before the good part. So if you want to skip the bad, go to paragraph 7 (not counting this paragraph & the one above). By 9:30, there were still around 30 people who hadn't received their race number and transponders. No, it's not that so many people showed up, overwhelming the organizers. It was the sheer inefficiency of the organizer's themselves. In short, the registration was an absolute mess. The counters weren't properly labelled, the chain of command was all over the place, there was hardly anyone in cha...

I would have done this one my 250th post but I didn't notice that it was the 250th. Heh heh. My bad. Anyway, I recently bought a book. Finally, a book. Hehe. I'm an avid reader & as I was browsing through MPH Subang Parade last weekend, I realized it's been a while since I read a book that I wanted to. The latter part of last year many of us had our noses buried in reference books, text books, notes we took down during class, etc, gearing up for SPM. Now it was time I got something I wanted to read. I've always been intrigued by mystery novels; the Hardy Boys, Famous Five, etc. So I got one. Want to guess what book I got? I'll give you a hint. Look familiar? I'm sure it pretty is. Yep, I got myself a copy of 'The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Somehow, despite being a fan of mystery books, I had never read any of Sherlock Holmes' Adventures. Sure, I've heard of some of his stories but never actually re...

Today is Jules Verne's birthday! Well, he was born on February 8th 1828 which means that if he was alive, he would be 183 years old. Whew. Who is Jules Verne? Probably, his most renowned work would be 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. A good book. Considering that at the time, submarines didn't exist, quite visionary. He is one of 3 people to be dubbed 'The Father of Science Fiction'. The other two authors are H.G. Wells and Hugo Gernsback. But, why am I writing about this? Well, it's because Google came up with a really neat header for their search engine. They often do this in conjunction with important events & dates. I snipped it & here is the header; Pretty nifty, no? Hehe. Anyway, yesterday, my brother & I shot a video at the abandoned quarry near our house. The last time we did was a very short one, and it was only one clip. This time around, we took several videos & pictures & I made a short clip out of it. It's my first video, and I'...

Flawless!! Random? Not quite. Bear with me here for a while. Today, we went to Alamanda, Putrajaya and got a Lowepro camera bag for Akid. It was a Flipside200. Awesome bag. Compact and sturdy. Not to mention perfect for cycling because it's a backpack. After buying a few supplies at Cold Storage, including chips, pita bread, canned tuna, and mayonnaise -- among others -- we had lunch at Taman Warisan nearby. Awesome local food. They have a Satay Kajang Haji Samuri outlet there so we ate there. We had some daging (beef), ayam (chicken), arnab (rabbit), perut (stomach, which only my parents ate), and rusa (venison). Hehe! The venison was a bit tougher than beef and I couldn't really tell the rabbit apart from the chicken. Heh. I'm a horrible food critic. Putrajaya Challenge Park was next on the agenda after lunch. 8D. At PCP, we changed into our shorts and jerseys, unloaded the bikes, put on our helmets and sunglasses, and started the warm up climb to the trail ...