I thought I was growing to my peak of life but then it seems I’m just plain getting old when you think about it. After 1 month of rest, abstinence from running (besides the occasional chasing of the bus or rushing around), my shin is still hurting after I run. The intensity increases and the pain lasts longer when I run fast or longer distance. The MO doesn’t know why and I’ll have to wait another 2 weeks before I get to see a specialist about it.

On reading, I seem to be less capable of keeping focus, getting easily distracted when I hear people talking. I’ve this problem of being generally interested in people and things (kaypoh in other words). I’m not sure if there is a sign of getting old but I sure am a little disturbed by this myself.

On conversations, I have gotten particularly naggy nowadays, nagging at people to watch their weights, maintain their discipline, to find a passion, to get going with work, to accept my values and such.

I’ve however, been getting really positive about things and people like Ming Ren have always exclaimed how he fails to understand how I can keep on staying happy about all the things around me. My secret is merely the understanding the fact that many things that happens are beyond our control but whether to be happy and see the good things or to be irritated by all that is negative is a matter of choice. Negative tendencies can be reversed and the pros of things can be better appreciated.

Sharks, I’m imposing my values on others again…

I’m finally doing something useful on ERPZ. I had to convert it to a blog for the thinker/critic self. I used to do those stuff on this blog but it seems that I’ve really started to talk more about my life and experiences here so I decided to write more academic and possibly useful stuff over on that side. It’s the main face of the ‘erpz.net’ domain and so I think it should at least look like something more formal and work-related. Please read stuff there and comment! I’m hoping people would discuss those serious stuff over there.

Just 35 hours or so after my previous entry I fell even more sick, with temperature rising to 39.2 degrees Celsius and ended up with more medical leave that allowed me to stay at home for the entire week. So the whole of last week was mostly spent sleeping at home, feeling feverish, perspiring, popping pills or drinking bitter syrup. It was a terrible experience, and this time it really reminded me of the time I got the mild Bronchitis although it is just a really nasty case of upper respiratory tract infection.

It was so bad I nearly fainted in the bathroom in the middle of the night when I got out of bed to visit the toilet. I was shouting for help when my vision suddenly became faint and then went white and my entire body was numbed. It took 10 minutes or so for me to recover completely and by then I was totally soaked in perspiration.

It took 2 more days for the fever to subside and for me to stop feeling tired although I had a week-long course of anti-biotics. It’s a good chance to refresh my immune system though, I haven’t fall sick for a long time. The only bad thing is that my Mum fell a little sick after an entire week of taking care of me and it feels really bad that I have got to return to camp just when I get better and I’ve no chance to repay my Mum by helping to take care of her while it was her turn to fall sick.

I’m done on my 494th day in the army, with 235 days more to go (thanks to the fact that my ORD date falls on a Sunday) and for the first time in my National Service life, I had to take a Medical Cert to rest at home. Apparently the sudden cease to my running training, infused with a night of cycling on the road coupled with a BBQ with the class to conclude a busy day on Saturday was too much for my body to take – I woke up yesterday afternoon from a nap with a severe sore throat and this morning the feverish feeling I was experiencing prompted me to report sick at the Polyclinic. At the registration they took my temperature and it turned out to be a 37.8 degree Celsius, rather startling for a time like this because hospitals and such are panicking over the H1N1 flu virus matters.

I entered the consultation room and soon the verdict was out: 2 days MC, fever resulting from the throat inflammation – I needed plenty of rest for the body to engage in the war with the infection and that’s what I did, sleeping almost the entire day and waking up only to take the prescribed pills and taking my temperature. I was suffering from the typical feverish feel, a hot feeling inside the body without the ability to perspire, even until now. The last time I felt almost so terrible was last September when I was suffering from the same sort of infection but I didn’t obtain an MC and eventually recovered from a night of sleep in camp. This time is definitely much more serious, almost bordering the time before enlistment when I had mild Bronchitis and was having fever on and off for 5 days.

I guess this illness signifies a pit stop from work for me; I’ve been slogging for quite a while now and lately the changes happening at the workplace is getting on everyone’s nerves. This is one of the rare times when I actually felt incredibly frustrated with the army. Usually I take things pretty well as they come but this time the changes were a little overwhelming. I had to console myself with the thought that when I leave the army for society, changes of greater magnitude and degree would have to take place inevitably and they can affect my life way more than army does (eg. loss of my paycheck, lack of time for my family, having to work in rather adverse conditions); then it doesn’t feel that bad after all.

I was supposed to be running with quite a bunch of guys today; when I discovered the PAssion Run and the details on it, I already started to ask people to register with me. People like Jing Ying, Zhong Hao and Darrell expressed interest for it. At that time I finished Suburban Run not long ago and was really interested in another challenge. Yi Da, who ran with me for the 10-km Suburban Run was unsure, saying that he might be busy with Operations stuff in the army. Zhong Hao decided against it pretty early, since he was going for the Sundown Relay which is going to be the week after PAssion Run. Since I still had friends joining me, I went to sign up because my idea was that I’d be running no matter what. In the end, Darrell suddenly decided to go for his Hernia surgery during that period and Jing Ying just didn’t want to run.

I didn’t exactly have 7 hours of sleep since I got a little too engross with chatting online and reading stuff in the night yesterday; I got up 5.30am, and I was lucky to get a lift from my uncle over to East Coast Park (after the run, I took 1 hour to walk from the starting point and the race carnival area to the bus stop where I could take my bus home). I stretched a bit and walk around, deposit my backpack and then visited the loo before the emcee started asking people to gather for warm-up. I thought it was good that they provided the fitness people to guide people for warm-up. Though I didn’t follow through everything, it reminded me to stretch certain muscles and really get myself warmed up – the SAF warm-up is seriously inadequate in this respect.

The starting of the run is a little confusing. I was informed through the website that my category (Men & Women 15-km Open) flags off the first wave at 7.30am but in the end they told people with the Orange Bib, which is what I’ve got to start off around 7.10am. I thought that it’ll be good to start off early then I can leave early as well so I just started running. I have never tried running in East Coast Park because it is too far away from my place and if I ever go there, it’ll be to cycle. It was great running beside the sea except that there’s too many people and the lane is too narrow at the starting point area. As the crowd start to distribute themselves along the path, it became much easier to run. The water points are quite well distributed for this run although I personally think that the trashing areas are too close to the water point – I usually grab a cup, drink a bit as a run and then toss the cup into the trash area. This means that if the trash area is too close to the water point, I only take 1 or 2 gulps and will throw away the rest of the water.

I maintained my pace pretty well until about 12km, when the turning point started feeling pretty far away, I slowed terribly and my mind seem to start focusing on the aches that my ankle, feet and shin is experiencing – before hitting that distance, these pains were virtually hidden from my mind, I was only focusing on overtaking and breathing properly. In any case, I have never ran more than 12km at one shot in my life so far so perhaps my body was trying to condition itself. I started slowing almost to walking pace to drink sufficient water at the water point; I didn’t feel thirsty but I was just plain worried that I would dehydrate since I was perspiring quite madly even during the warm-up and I daren’t take risks. After 13km, the distance of 1km, which used to be absolutely no kick for me start to seem like a super long distance. In the remaining 2km, I couldn’t maintain my pace at all, slowing and taking very small steps at times and then speeding up to pull ahead whenever I think there’s someone I could overtake. I looked at my watch and I knew I had to keep up with the pace I was running just a while ago because I wanted to finish the entire thing in 90 minutes, which technically speaking, should not be that tough a challenge.

Running alone, albeit in such an event with so many people, is a very different experience from having friends around you whom you’re trying to catch up or pacing. This time I did try to pick someone who seem to be running about the same pace as me to follow until I manage to overtake him/her. I overtook people very frequently in the beginning. In fact I was almost overtaking all the ordinary pace people in the first 9km or so – the only time when people overtake me was those who were speeding up to catch up with friends ahead or the crazy ones who are already running way faster than me but started a little later.

This run’s baggage deposit is way better than the Suburban Run I had 2 months ago. I really appreciate the fact they have shelves in place for the bags and the officials were not frantically fumbling through heaps of bags when you bring your tags to them. The start point is probably the only problem – it is not friendly to people taking public transport. That explains the above fact involving my walking.

After the experience I know I definitely have to condition my body for the longer distances before running them. I think those who go join 42km Sundown without any conditioning is really quite insane.

Update – My timing came out; it’s 1 hour and 27 minutes, within my target of 90 minutes!

” It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our necessities, but of their advantages” – Adam Smith

This couple of months I’ve been watching so many movies I can hardly keep track. I watched Passion of the Christ, The Shawshank Redemption, Letters from Iwo Jima, Flags of Our Fathers, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist, Home Alone, Red Cliff 2 and Seven Pounds. I’m not sure if there’s more but that’s all I can remember. The wonderful thing is that these are not watched in the Cinemas; most of them rented, some are DVDs borrowed from friends and the last 2 I watched on board flights for my trip – I guess the cost was included in the airfare since the budget airline offers no such thing.

There was a time when I thought I could do reviews for all the movies I watched but it’s too much information overwhelming me in a very short time and I lacked the time (and possibly attention) to sit down and devote myself to plainly writing movie reviews and not getting paid for it. But here I’m, trying to at least say something about stuff I watched. I watched Seven Pounds on board Cathay Pacific from Singapore to Hong Kong. It was a great movie at least to me although the ratings on Rotten Tomatoes turned out to be a rather pathetic 28%.

I guess the mainstream people thinks the movie is too much of a monologue but I really appreciate the aesthetic of it and the story-telling method. And I was positively touched by it. This is one of the movies in Will Smith’s series of serious movies and I think his performance in Seven Pounds deserves loads of credit.

On my flight back to Singapore from Hong Kong, I watched Red Cliff 2 since previously I already watched Red Cliff and this movie is a continuation of the story. Many people on board the same flight was also watching this particular movie as evident from the sudden coordinated sitting up of people in the cabin all around me almost at the same time as the movie ended.

The story adapted from one of the major story recorded in the history during the Three Kingdom was more or less accurately portrayed although not without dramatization. The problem is that stories revolving the Three Kingdom era are always woven with fiction nobody knows what really happened. Anyways the film was well shot, especially those typical Chinese war scenes where you see mass movements of people, it’s really different from the footage of modern warfare where you have people shooting, covering each other and then alternating between running and staying in prone position. You don’t see medics running around and saving lives while the war goes on and most of the time, people can get injured by arrows but continues fighting.

There are some illogical parts of the story here and there but generally the film is well shot, the things the character say are mostly meaningful and have lots of subtle messages hidden in them.

I would recommend anyone to watch both of these movies, for Red Cliff 2, even if you didn’t watch the first part, you would still enjoy this part because they try their best to fill you in on what has happened in part 1 before they start off with the movie and also because this part is already entertaining enough.