Éclectique

So, I did my first duathlon last weekend. It was the Powerman Duathlon Asian Championships & some big names came down hoping to secure points to qualify for the Duathlon World Championships in Switzerland. The duathlon I participated in was held in Putrajaya. Such a beautiful place to race. I hope they do it again next year. A duathlon is run-bike-run & sounds easier than triathlon -- which is swim-bike-run.  It's simpler, yes but it is in no way easier.  Most likely due to the slightly different distances.  That being said, I like the duathlon distances better.  Maybe I should start doing the long distance triathlons after this. Anywho... Compared to the Desaru triathlon, I was able to put a 5 minute gap between my brother & myself.  Best part of it; I started creating that gap in the first run & he never closed it.  In Desaru, Akid had a 1 minute advantage out of the water but I was able to close it & we arrived at T2 (bike-to...

So, it's Ramadan now. A month of fasting.  :)  It's fun, actually.  Aside from the spiritual gains, at the end of the day, the food looks very good & one does feel more grateful.  Also, at least I'm on my term break so I won't be running all over school going to my classes.  Now, I just need to find a way to stay in shape.  If not, it'll be a month wasted.  On top of that if I don't keep up, come September -- & the numerous events I'm planning to enter -- I'll be screwed. I'll most likely be doing night rides, night runs, and the TotalGym after breaking fast, just so that I'll have the energy to do so.  If I do it during the day, I'll have difficulty fasting the rest of the day.  Plus, I want to try and maintain my current BMI else I might fall too low.  Gaining BMI during Ramadan with my metabolism is pretty much out of the question. Hehe. Sheesh.  Everything sounds so bland, doesn't it?  Nothing exciting...  ...

I saw this status on Facebook once; "You're 10 & you have a laptop, iPod & Blackberry. Dude, when I was 10 all I had was a Tamaguchi". When those things came out I practically begged for a Tamaguchi. Didn't get one. Instead, I had already been given something better. I just didn't know it at the time. When I was 6 or 7, my parents enrolled me into swimming class. The coaches said I was like a fish in water. Kept going & I almost made it to the State team. By this time I was still young, 12 at most, and didn't want to continue. Kept swimming for fun, though. In between 6/7 and 12, I had gotten a bicycle and I loved to cycle around on it. It was basic & had to use training wheels at first. One day, I realized that I didn't need the training wheels and convinced my dad that I didn't need them. That feeling when I first rode without training wheels, I felt like I was going really fast! Then at around 14, I picked up golf. Wasn...

Today is the 4th of July!!! The American Independence Day. In conjunction with this, the Sunway ADTP Student Committee is orgainizing a summer pool party called "An American Summer" this evening, from 6-10. It's going to be a blast!! Hehe! Anyway, the weekend was busy for me. I went to my mom's Family Day in Taman Rimba Kiara, Taman Tun Dr. Ismail, KL. Quite a nice place. Apparently, there's also some trails there so definitely worth a look. I used my student ID to get a discount for the first time on Saturday!! Woohoo!! Hehe!! On Sunday, I went to Bukit Bandaraya, Shah Alam for the 3rd leg of the Token Bikezooka MTB Series. The turn up was a bit less this time around. The track was a blast!! Phew. At the beginning, they give us this massive climb. 80. Everybody was cursing on their way up. I was humming. Hehe! A trick I learned from my mom. After the climb, there's a quick descent then some tarmac where you can regain your breath. Then more cli...

Today was full of ups & downs. The morning started innocently enough; I woke up on time, by 8:15 I was seated in class, waiting for the Precalculus class to start at 8:30. Graphs of Sine & Cosine was quite fun! Hehe! Then, Ms. Tan gave us the results for our Mid-Terms; I got 15/15! Booyah! Then we helped her rearrange the tables for her Calculus I class. At Sunway Pyramid, Ajit & I browsed through the Focus Point promotion/exhibition thingy. Some nice glasses. It'll be cool to get some. Hehe! After some browsing, with Ajit enquiring about some of the prices, we headed for our cars. Before I climbed in, I took out my Season Parking Pass card. In the car, I noticed that it was gone! Huhu! I looked high & low for it before I spent the next 2 hours either running back & forth between Sunway Campus & Pyramid getting things sorted out or waiting around. -sigh-. Bummer. I ended up praying at the mosque in front of Sunway Pyramid, across NPE. Go...

Finally the weekend is over. Time for me to recover and recuperate. On Friday, I had my Bronze Medal examinations. I passed so now I'm a qualified life guard! Hehe! It was actually a lot of fun! There were only 2 timed events. The first was to swim 50m (any stroke), rescue the victim and tow him back 50m with the assistance of an aid (a short rope). The time to beat was 00:03:00 minutes. I clocked in 00:02:48. Hehe! The other timed event was the rope toss. You have to gather the rope, roll it so that you can toss it well to the victim who is about 10-20m out in 'open' water. Time to beat; 00:01:00. My time: 00:0043. Muahahaha! I also did very good for the other events. My 'victim' -- a fellow exam taker -- said that my chin tow was very comfortable. Muahahaha! Luckily for me, the guy was a floater, despite being on the heavier side. Me? I sink. Heh heh. Sorry. He had a bit of trouble with me. Hehe! Saturday was my SAT. Huh. Go figure, the ...

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...

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...

Over the months and years, I have made lists and lists of all kind of things. I like to do lists, for some reason. Places to visit, things to do, things I want, etc. Well, 3 things I can cross of the list of "Things I Want" is a road bike, a DSLR and a pair of Converse/Puma/whateverelselookslikethat. Last year, I got a road bike Well, 2 actually -- each at half price. So for the price of one full bike, I got 2. A miracle, really that one. Finding even one road bike with 50% discount is a rarity. Let alone, 2. In the same store. If that fact alone wasn't enough, let's go over some details, shall we? They were technically still the latest -- the 2011 versions were just about to roll out and they were 2010 models. They were brand new -- as in not second hand. And the cherry on the icing -- or rather, the final nail in the coffin -- is that they were both top end models. Even as we were making the payment, people were still ogling it. Hehe. I got them duri...

That's the name of the performance that I attended at the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra (MPO) yesterday. I know it's spelled Inpendencia and apparently, that's not a typo. It was a lot of fun. The entire performance was awesome. The whole reason behind it was because many South American countries had just celebrated their 200th year of independence. According to the maestro for the evening, those countries are Mexico, Argentina and Columbia. I think that's all. Although there were some music from Cuba and he apologized for that. I didn't mind. They were all very good. It was the first "happy hour" session meaning it wasn't too formal though you still had to dress smartly. Akid and I were very excited for several reasons. Firstly, it would be our first time attending any of the MPO's performances, it would also be the first time we would get to go to take the public transport by ourselves and as it turned out, the first time just the t...

I have been so busy!! I haven't had time to post anything for the new year. This has happened to me, what 2 years in a row? Huh. Go figure. Well, a lot has come and passed in 2010. Debates, public speaking, having fun with friends -- QM, Lina, Alliya, Sharanya, Divya, and Letticia who make up the debate team! --, lots of laughter, lots of heartache -- Add Math, I'm looking at you --, did my first downhill mountain biking run, did my SPM/O-Levels, just to name a few. Looking back, many of my friends were kinda sad on the last day(s) of SPM but somehow I wasn't too bothered. Yeah, I knew I was going to miss all of them but I didn't feel sad. Call me a heartless creep but yeah, kinda. Huh. Anyway, I certainly hope that everyone keeps in touch! Another year, another new year's resolution. Before that, however, I want to look back at this year's resolution and see what I've accomplished As I've said in the post Custom Order New Year's Resolutio...

Yesterday, we had cleaned the fishpond -- that was exhausting. Today, we planned to visit my grandfather -- or as my brother, my cousins and I call him, Atuk -- in Banting. Worrying that there wouldn't be any food, we swung by KFC at D'Pangkin to buy a bucket -- this is a rarity. We bought the one that can feed 5-6 people. Bloody expensive. RM75++. So we officially hit the road around 11:45 or so. An hour's journey coupled with bad drivers -- there seem to be a lot of those in Malaysia -- and we were at Atuk's doorstep around 1:50-ish. Amazingly, no one was home. His car wasn't in the driveway. We swung by my cousin's house which was in the area and they too weren't home. We figured there must've been some kenduri somewhere and Atuk sort of forgot about us. Huhu. Well, he doesn't get guests too often. So for the heck of it, we swung by Pantai Morib. My first time. Hehe! Before that, my dad said that if followed the sign to Pantai Kelana...

Right off the bat I'm sure you guys are wondering either; (A) What on Earth do those acronyms mean? (B) Aqil mentioned them before... But I can't remember... Either way, I'll let you know. SAT stands for Scholastic Assessment Test -- formerly Scholastic Aptitude Test. TOEFL stands for Test Of English as A Foreign Language. Right now, these two are my top priority. Preparing for and taking the tests. For the TOEFL, I'll be taking TOEFL iBT which means internet-based test. I recently bought a couple of books to help with preparations. The titles are; Cracking the SAT 2011 Edition and Cracking the TOEFL iBT 2011 Edition . Both are published by The Princeton Review. Cracking the SAT 2011 Edition by The Princeton Review Cracking the TOEFL iBT 2011 Edition by The Princeton Review Insyaallah I'll be able to do it. SAT so far seems quite doable. Hehe! That's all for now. Au revoir!

There's so many questions! What do I want to do? where do I want to go? how am I going to afford it? Let's start with the first question; what. What do I want to do? I feel like taking engineering but I'm not sure I can carry it -- thanks to poor grades in Add Math so far. I really REALLY hope I did way better this time. Insyaallah. If I do go for engineering, what type of engineering? Not civil. You're not supposed to take that right away, I think. Mechanical? I like to tinker with stuff but I'm not too sure about job opportunities. -Sigh-. Second question; where. This is very much depended on what course/field I'll be taking. But I really really want to go to the US. Maybe Canada. Ivy League colleges are too expensive. The US and Canada have a lot of good colleges. I'm looking for a QUALITY education. Any good college should provide that. I'll just have to keep scouring. Right now, I'm just looking at application deadlines, ent...

Just got back. We woke up early and after getting everything ready, headed to Putrajaya Challenge Park. However, mom didn't come with us. She had other plans. We missed the exit and had to sort of double back a bit after the toll. We arrived at PCP around 11 and unloaded the bikes, geared up, etc. When we got arrived, there were A LOT of people! We were both happy and cautious. It was nice to see the trails being used rather than falling into disarray but we were worried about the number of riders that would be on the trails. However, we realized pretty much everyone was leaving, at his/her own pace. Yes, there were a number of female riders too which was nice to see. Mountain biking is far too nice a sport not to be enjoyed by everyone. Anyway, we headed up to the trail and started. 1st leg; Starts with a rapid but short descent leading straight into a set up ascending switchbacks. Get ready to drop gears quickly and pedal to the top. Stop, and you won't be able t...

Tomorrow I'm going to Putrajaya Challenge Park!!! Woohoo!! It's been like 3 or months or so since I went there. There's a number of things I want to achieve/do there. But before day, an account of today's events. If you don't want to read through that, my fellow readers, scroll down until you start to see numberings. That should be the list of things I want to do at the Putrajaya Challenge Park. Everyone woke up earlier than usual -- considering that it IS a Saturday -- and got ready to go to Mid Valley. After a quick breakfast of cereals and bananas. Yummy. Hehe! Anyway, we left the house around 9:45 and arrived at the Gardens at around 10. We made a beeline to the dentist for our regular check up and scaling. We had to take turns since we were all assigned to the same dentist. After I had finished -- I was the first in -- I brought my VAIO to the Sony Store because I was having trouble uninstalling the trial version of Microsoft Office. Unfortunately, ...

I've finally finished the heaviest of 9 of the 10 subjects. Like I've written in my previous post(s), I'm taking 10 subjects totaling about 23 papers. O_O". So I've done 21/23 papers! YEAAH!! The heaviest are over! Today was Biology. Next week is English for Science and Technology (EST). I'm not panicking too much because all I need to do is read through my National Geographic magazines. I have around 2 years worth of them. Hehe! Great pictures AND great articles. I guess you could say that National Geographic is what got me into amateur photography and writing. To top it off, I've always loved animals and the environment and issues that matter so it was a really natural fit. When I mean issues that matter, politics doesn't fall under it. Unless it's something really major and/or will affect me. Speaking of which; in Malaysian newspapers and/or news networks there's too many of these things: 'Politics'. It's rarely abo...

Trials are over! Phew. At last. But unfortunately, those are only the trials. The real SPM is yet to come. -Sigh-. At least I'll get a break, I hope. Hehe. I'm going to enjoy not studying right now. Au revoir for now.

TRIALS -sigh- studystudystudy

The 1 week semester break has been extended to 2 weeks due to Eid il Fitri. So once school reopens, it's 3 days of school and then on Thursday, TRIALS! Huhu. So for those of us in Form 3 & Form 5, these 2 weeks is not so much a holiday as it is a study-a-thon. I feel our exam-oriented system is stressful on students and actually limiting our opportunities to be all-rounders. Too few are scoring A+'s AND excelling in the co-curricular activities. Our syllabus is heavy and I think getting heavier. History is about to be incorporated into the primary school syllabus. The Standard 1 kids are already learning Science. It is literally back-breaking work. Those little kids in Primary school can't lift all those books without damaging the back posture. And when we consider leaving the heavy textbooks in class. It's not allowed. What the? Anyway, I'm bored and having trouble sleeping. My birthday is in about 2 weeks and my family is asking me what I want for...