East Side Run

Had a good East Side Run this morning with jamessoh, dragonchua and ripley. The weather was nice and cool and cloudy. We started off from the carpark outside Kembangan Community Centre, then cut across the Siglap Park Connector until we reached East Coast Park itself. From there, we turned eastwards towards the Swim Start point of the OSIM triathlon, and then did our u-turn. Only pity was that it was too cloudy for me to get a tan... :P

I didn't see anyone I recognised there at the Swim Start point, but i saw Ironmandreamer and SportsVenturer on my return leg to Kembangan. It was a good run, although my stamina is still not yet quite back yet.

Total distance: 9.5 km
Time taken: 1 hr 15 min

After the run, jamessoh drove us to the food centre at Old Airport Road where we feasted on the famous wanton noodles :) Yummy!

Then I had to go back to the office for a while, the second time this weekend. q(-;)p Ah well... Hope I won't have to forfeit my leave the next weekend as I have already made all my arrangements to depart Singapore for KL for the Adidas King of the Road race.

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Update as of 2320 hrs

Had dinner at Margarita's at Dempsey Hill with kops21, charlotte, kickjazz, angelica_wonders, teelee, roentgen, taz and junie. The area brings back memories. I recall coming here over a decade ago for my secondary school attachment with a defence technology organisation. How the place has changed! It's now a posh-looking area, frequented by guests with huge and expensive-looking cars. I ordered the Enchilada Verde de Pollo which was rather filling :) We finished off the evening with a combined birthday celebration, and then headed off for home.

When I got back, I finished a book which I had borrowed from the library yesterday which was entitled "Zacarias, my brother" by Abd Samad Moussaoui, the elder brother of Zacarias Moussaoui who was convicted of conspiring in the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. Both men were first-generation French citizens of Moroccan descent. The author sets out to explain how his brother, hardened and disillusioned by racism on the one hand and lacking any other accessible source of Islamic teaching on the other, turned to Wahhabism and became indoctrinated with extremist ideologies.

"...I use the term 'Blacks' even though we are Arabs, because that's the way most born-and-bred French people saw us. It was hard to label us at a glance. The only thing that was clear was that we come from somewhere else. From Africa, or from the Caribbean? I've lived with this ambiguity my whole life, and so has Zacarias. Now that I'm an adult and settled, it no longer bothers me - I've gotten used to it. But as children, Zacarias and I found it extremely unpleasant to be forced so often to explain our origins. There was something humiliating and unsettling about it - it was as if we didn't have any formal identity...We were born here, on this Earth, in this country. We had grown up here. So what did our 'integration' mean? How were we to become 'integrated' in French society when we were French? Making the shift from childhood to adolescence, and then from adolescence to adulthood, is very upsetting for people who have trouble finding a place for themselves." ~ pages 28 and 62