The Singapore Biathlon 2007

Took part in the recent Singapore Biathlon for the very first time and I was just aiming to complete and not to compete.

I haven't really trained for it much leading up to the event, just hitting the pool as much as I can to do about 20 to 30 laps or making a trip to the gym to clock some time on the threadmill during my lunch hour.

The thought of actually running 10km after a 1.5km swim in the open sea was very new to me, albeit a daunting and intimidating one.

As I predicted, I was hit by cramps in my right calf just after my swim and into the first few hundred metres of the run, and had to stop for a few minutes to stretch.

I was thinking to myself if I could complete the run at all.

Well, the stretch did wonders and after a few kilometres in the run, I found my rhythm and it was on the whole an enjoyable 10-kilometre jog till the finish. I was surprised that I didn't really feel that drained at the end of the race.

Perhaps I did not really go all out for if I really did, I might have collapsed halfway out of sheer exhaustion.

Anyway, the photographs for the Singapore Biathlon were out a few days after the end of the event, thanks to the photographers who stationed themselves at various points of the running course to snap pictures of almost every competitor, making sure that they have at least a memento in the form of a photograph of themselves in their sprinting(or panting glory) to take away from the race.

Unfortunately I could only find one picture taken of myself during the race, compared to the many taken of my friends who had also participated. =(
Ah well, one picture is better than nothing...

And here it is, wearing bib number 4292...

Missing...

I must really remember to buy 4D for yesterday's date.

I don't remember something like this ever happening to me before at all.

Being stopped by the local police in a foreign country once is probably nothing to talk about, but twice in the same day?

All because I resembled a missing person that they have been looking for. I was pretty amused at it the first time, with the policemen who stopped me commenting on how fluent my Japanese is, and how interesting it is that the Immigration Authorities in Singapore decided to print two photographs of the passport holder on the back page of our passports.

Until I was stopped the second time and I felt that it wasn't funny anymore.

Till the police manage to find that missing person, I am preparing myself for a possibility to be stopped at some train station again today.

Good thing I had my passport with me yesterday.

JAPAN!!!

Been aeons since I last posted something here to the point that this blog is almost forgotten territory. Well, call it procrastination, work and other personal committments or a combination of both, I have been pretty tied up lately that I have not had much opportunity to click to this website to even post a single confession, or just some plain crap.

Haha.

A lot of things have happened lately, both on the work and the personal front and it would be almost impossible to pen all of them down in a single entry.

But I will definitely do so in due time, albeit a little by little. It is a committment to myself that I have made.

In the meantime, I shall just let everyone who is reading this (thanks much for coming to this website, intentionally or otherwise) know that I am currently on holiday in Japan, and the weather here is great! Nothing like the humid madness that we have back in Singapore.

Been 4 years since I was here and a strong feeling of nostalgia hit me the moment my plane landed at Fukuoka.

Taking the train on the way to Hiroshima, passing by the building that used to be my place of abode during part of my 5-year stay in this country, leaving my footprints in places where I used to leave them a few years ago while I was still a wide-eyed university student, thinking of the things that happened while I was here, and the things that have happened in the four years since I left, gave me a weird feeling.

A feeling not just of nostalgia, but also that of loneliness, peace, happiness, sadness, and of longing, all rolled into a mish-mash of emotions that is not easily palatable, but something which I have to swallow, whether I like it or not.

In the meantime, while digesting this mumbo-jumbo of emotions, I shall enjoy my first long holiday for a long while, and the first one alone for such a long period, as much as I can.

Without thinking too much about the past, and also trying to put all that has happened behind me and to move on.