Singapore Marathon (Not)

For the first time since I took up running last year, I am going to miss a race I have registered for, and it was down to my own foolishness.

I injured my right foot at the end of August, and instead of immediately resting and letting it recover, I kept trying to run again every time I got slightly better. In the end I prolonged the injury to three months, and even as I write this I am still only 80% recovered.

Desperate at one stage, I even went to a sports clinic, where I found out I had something called posterior tibial tendonitis, which in layman's terms meant I have strained one of the tendons on my foot. After some treatments and custom orthotics (thanks, Dr Aston), I got slightly better, but foolishly, I kept trying to get back to my training, even trying to supplement it with some cross-training on a stationery bike.

Finally, I saw the light, and to date I have stopped running cold turkey for three weeks. Not being able to run is quite depressing, but I realized if I don't rest until it is 100%, I will just keep prolonging the issue.

Hopefully, there will be more discipline in managing my injuries in the future :)

Whitney Revisited

With the return of Whitney Houston to the music scene with her latest album, some music commentators took the occasion to revisit her finest hour - the 1992 soundtrack to the movie The Bodyguard, which even today remained the best selling soundtrack of all time.

The movie itself was so-so, but the theme song I'll Always Love You struck a chord with a lot of listeners, and lent the movie an extra level of poignancy which was lacking in both the script and the acting (Kevin Costner tried very hard to go for the stoic look but ended up looking wooden instead).

I remember the song well, for I had fallen hard for someone around the time it was released. The song had been playing for a few weeks on the local FM station at Belfast before the film's opening, so most people were already familiar with the song when they went to see the film.

As Whitney walked away after saying her goodbyes to Kevin at the end of the movie and the acapella first verse started, suddenly, the girls in the cinema started singing along! The guys in the cinema squirmed, but the girls grew bolder and louder. Of course, not everyone made it to the iconic chorus, but the whole incident was oddly moving. The song was about loving someone but not being able to be with him/her for some reason, and the girls were pouring out their own set of circumstances into their impromptu karaoke.

Even today, the opening verse still gives me the goosebumps, as I remember the voices of those girls in that dark cinema many years ago.

Eight Years On

Like the baby boomers who remembered where they were when they first heard about John Kennedy's assasination, I guess most of us Gen-X'ers remember where exactly we were when we heard about what happened eight years ago today.

I was having supper with some friends in Section 1, PJ Old Town. The whole group of us were just hanging out and gossiping about other friends. One of us got a call from her sister that CNN had reported that New York was "being attacked". A bit bewildered and somewhat worried, we quickly paid up and headed home. On our way to our cars, we passed by another mamak stall that had CNN on, but couldn't really make out what was going on.

When I got home, my cousin was watching her usual Cantonese serials on Astro. I asked her to switch over to CNN, and we watched silently in horror for about 20 minutes to what unfolded before our eyes.

I went to bed that night thinking that the world will never be the same again.

Fours year later I had a chance to experience it first hand as I was in London one week after the underground bombings, and there was a bomb scare.

A lot has happened as a result of that fateful day.

Libraries

I went to the Royal Lake Club, located within Lake Gardens, for a seminar last week. Just as I came up from the underground carpark, I caught sight of something which quickened my pulse and brought back a flood of memories.

Lake Club Library

Located on the ground of the club was a library. Not the modern type with metal shelves and bright lighting, but one with nice wooden shelves and a cosy atmosphere.

My love affair with libraries began when my dad first took me to the Sarikei public library when I was eight years old. Abridged Ladybird books were then the staple of my reading.

When we moved to Sibu, the SMC library became my regular haunt, and I read Tolkien's The Two Towers long before I realized it was a classic.

Sarawak was luckier than the other Peninsular states in Malaysia, because up till the 90's, the British Council was a significant donor of books to the public libraries there. Thus, I learnt BASIC programming without even touching a real computer, and had access to a wonderful collection of British magazines.

Sibu Library

When I came to KL to study in 1989, the National Library was at Jalan Raja Laut, and together with the British Council library at Bukit Aman, became my favourite weekend haunts.

Things got better when I got to Queen's in Belfast, for they had a 10 storey main library and a 3 storey science one, not to mention Linen Hall library at the centre of the city. I felt like a man trying to gulp down an ocean of water, borrowing books like crazy.

Back to KL in 1996, the British Council library became my regular again, together with the KL Memorial library at Dataran Merdeka, which I felt was the only decent government funded library in West Malaysia apart from the National Library.

It was also at the British Council library that I found the perfect excuse to "bump into" my future wife, as she was studying for her MAICSA then :)

Sadly, after shifting to Wisma Selangor Dredging, the British Council library is now closed down for good.

After witnessing the terrible collection at the MBPJ library in 2000, I gave up visiting local libraries, and nowadays prefer to haunt Kinokuniya and MPH instead.

However, I was glad to find out that Puchong is finally going to have its own library at Bandar Puteri, which I think will be open sometime this year. Here's hoping it will have a decent collection.

With the pervasiveness of the Internet, Wikipedia, etc nowadays, do libraries still have a place in our lives and our kids' lives? If we want to go beyond consuming snippets of info, plentiful though they may be, I believe physical books will still continue to have a future. Let's put it this way - consuming info from the Internet is akin to eating a McDonald's Chicken McNuggets, convenient, fast, but insubstantial. Reading a book, on the other hand, is akin to tucking in into a nice steak, something to be enjoyed slowly.

My little Cynthia has been observing her daddy always having a book in hand in the evenings, and my wife would sometime catch her intently studying a copy of the Reader's Digest, even though she can't really read yet. When she does, I look forward to share with her the wonderful world of libraries.

RIP, Yasmin

Tonight, as I sat starring at my monitor, I thought of Yasmin Ahmad's untimely demise, and decided to gorge myself on her works on Youtube.

Like Lat, she was one of a very few persons who really understood the essence of who we are, in this beloved country of ours, whatever our race may be.

My heart aches for the fact that we will never find out what else she had in store for us. But I guess we should also celebrate the fact that she also left us a lot - a legacy of reminders to us on what means to be, well, who we really are. I share some of my favorites below.

The Last of An Era

The retirement of Brother Paul Ho recently as principal of XXI in Penang marked the end of an era. For he was the last of the La Salle Brothers working as headmasters or principals in Malaysia, private schools aside.

I attended these Christian schools from the time I entered kindergarten till the day I left for college. I started at St. Clement's Kindergarten in Sarikei, which is still standing today! There's a fantastic write up about it here.



Half of my primary school years were then spent just a stone's throw away from St Clement's, and that's St Anne's primary school.

When my family moved to Sibu, SHS (Sacred Heart School) was my alma mater until Form 5.

Throughout all these schools, the same tenets remained - discipline, respect, strong work ethic, pride, love. All the Christian Brothers and Sisters that were there poured out their heart and soul to educate the children the best that they can.

And today, I dare to say many who have passed through the gates of those schools have continued to rely on those principles to make their lives a success.

As I write this, the songs that the Sisters at St Anne's used to make us sing during morning assembly echoes through my mind. Even after 30 years, they still remain vivid:

We Stand For God

We stand for God and for His glory
The Lord Supreme and God of all.
Against his foes, we raise His standard,
Around His cross, we hear His call.

Strengthen our faith, Redeemer,
Guard us when danger is neigh
To Thee we pledge our lives and service,
Strong in a trust that ne'er shall die.
To Thee we pledge our lives and service
Strong in a trust that ne'er shall die.


It's A Long Walk to Freedom
R- It's a long road to freedom,
A winding steep and high,
But when you walk in love
With the wind on your wing
And cover the earth with the songs you sing
The miles fly by.

1- I walked, one morning by the sea
And all the waves reached out to me
I took their tears, then let them be…

2- I walked, one morning at the dawn
When bits of night still lingered on
I sought my star, but it was gone…

3- I walked, one morning with a friend
And prayed the day would never end
The years have flown, so why pretend…

4- I walked, one morning with my King
And all my winters turned to spring
Yet every moment, held it's sting…

KL Marathon 2009

When 2009 came, I wasn't too sure I will continue running anymore, after all the pain and injuries I went through.

But after some googling around, I decided that my shoes could be the culprit. So, shortly after Chinese New Year I got myself another pair of spanking new Nike shoes. Nike Air Structure Triax 11 maybe quite a mouthful, but it brought the joy back to my running again. According to the sales guy, you are supposed to buy one size bigger than your actual size, as your feet will expand as you run.

Thanks to a good friend who also took up running recently, I slowly got back into training again.

When the Standard Chartered KL Marathon was announced, I quickly registered for the full marathon, which I immediately regretted! But since commitment is made, I decided to try my best to train for it.

The hardest part of the training was waking up early on weekends to do the long runs - if you don't start by 5 am or 6 am, the sun will make the runs unbearable.

By the time the marathon came around, I had logged almost 300 km in 3 months, including 4 races.

Before the race, the question constantly eating on my mind was - will I be able to finish the race? The furthest I had ever done in training is 25 km, but according to marathon training theory, anything between 25 km to 32 km in training should be enough to guarantee that one can finish the full 42 km.

Then there's also the weather - the race starts at 5 am, meaning amateurs like me will finish in the hot sun between 10 am to 11 am. And last but not least, there's the feared "hitting the wall" phenomenon, the moment when your leg muscles finally run out of fuel.

The race started in drizzling rain, which I was very thankful to God for, as it meant that the first 30 km was very pleasant - the rain was later replaced with an overcast sky and a gentle breeze.

After running through Petaling Street (km 32) and up Jalan Istana (km 34), I finally found the fabled wall. I had imagined it was going to be fatigue, but it was not - it was sheer pain! Both my legs felt like they were going to fall apart. I managed to alleviate some of the pain by doing squats and rubbing Counterpain. From km 34 to km 40, I was alternating between running 1 km and walking 1 km. Km 40 to 42 was mostly walking, with short runs of 300 m in between. It was agony, but I also knew the finishing line was near!

My good friend who was running the half had stayed back to cheer me on in the last 200 m. Thanks, Liu! I owe you one :)

I finished in 5 hours 6 minutes, above my target time but I was just glad that I finished :)

I ran 42 km and all I got was this finisher medal :) (plus a finisher t-shirt)