If the term ‘lousy’ comes from the idea of being like a ‘louse’, I wonder if the term ‘busy’ is derived from ‘beesy’ – a word I concocted which I reckon should mean being like a bee.
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Someone asked me: “How do you organize yourself when you’ve got a thousand things that need to be done/should be done?”
I answered, “You give yourself time to write them down and start prioritizing them. When u know that there’s deadlines u cant meet or people you’re gonna let down because of your thousand other stuff, take the initiative to contact the relevant people and inform them first then work on the most urgent (then important) stuff right from the top of your priorities”.
Remember that a good life is a series of good decisions that are well implemented, well executed and well managed.
Some stuff I observed recently;
1) I was looking at my site statistics for ERPZ and there appear to be increasing proportion of readers accessing my site from USA. In the past Singapore users took up more than 85% of the readers but not only has the readers of ERPZ grown more international, an increasing proportion of them are from USA, which I believe is a result of Wei Seng’s writing on green issues that perhaps many Americans are concerned about.
2) The Economist is devoting much more articles on the developing nations nowadays and for most writing about the developed world, it is almost loaded with stuff on politics. In many sense, I think of The Economist like London School of Economics – not only is the red background of their logos strangely similar, their academic inclinations feels somewhat close. For some reason, I love both of them.
3) There is a fine line between many many of our actions but these small differences almost always result in huge difference in outcomes. And perhaps because of that, we all should be careful when treading on this fine line, to think more seriously about the small decisions in life.
Reaching twenty one this year to me probably isn’t as important as the fact that I finally managed to run the first half marathon in my life. Adidas Sundown cost me $65, gave me a rather cheapskate goodies bag with little goodies if anything at all, but it fulfilled my wish of running a decent long distance race. Of course, my goal should be a full marathon – something I had wanted to do at Sundown 2010 if everything during National Service had gone according to my plan. Unfortunately I suffered a shin splint that almost bordered a stress fracture towards the Army Half Marathon and ended up having to rest for 6-8 months. During my rest period I continued running quite a bit despite doctor’s advice, which probably prolonged my recovery period.
The plan was to finish Army Half Marathon, do a Standard Chartered Half Marathon again before launching into a full Marathon during Sundown this year. The entire training and conditioning will take me more than a year, which was a pretty safe timing. In any case, I have probably exceeded my expectations by taking 2 Hours 26 Minutes and 58 Seconds for this time’s half marathon.
Running long distance is something important to me because it is probably the only physical activity to me that is substantially mind over body. Even the fittest people I know wouldn’t easily be able to endure running for long distances because they are not the ones with strong minds. It forces you to know yourself better, to push yourself while you can and learn about the limits of your potential.
The run started off great and I easily Around 16km cramps were creeping up my calves and I had to stop frequently to stretch. Each time, I stopped for less than 20 seconds, because stopping causes me to lose my momentum and I feel the burning sensation of my soles more strongly. I carried on, like this the next 3 km before realising I had to walk short distances between my ‘runs’. By the 19km my ‘runs’ were practically jogging and I had to walk even more often. I gulped down cups of water (or 100 PLUS, you probably won’t care by then) at the last 2 water point and I know the end point is near but the pace of my run was all messed up already. I couldn’t help but kept on stopping to walk.
Towards the last 100m or so I sprinted, and it felt really good to finish off the whole affair for the night. In general I didn’t like running at night because there has to be spot lights around and the street lighting makes me feel uncomfortable when I’m already very tired while running. I also think that the coolness of the night can be dangerous in that it gives us the illusion that we’re hydrated when we’re actually dehydrating rapidly. While I finished around 11.30pm, it was almost 12.30am after we finish resting and I ended up returning home at only 3am. Then, it was a good night sleep.
