跨年遊行

It was another eventful day today. After lunch, I went down to the Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall (孫中山紀念堂) to tour the place as I had never been there before. To my pleasant surprise, there was a big crowd there. It turned out that a Chingay-sort of parade was to be held that afternoon to farewell the old year and usher in the new year. There was a great carnival atmosphere, with huge balloons, loud music, huggable mascots, enthusiastic cheerleaders, and more. I had a whale of time taking pictures.

I later spent the evening at a friend's place, where a barbeque was being planned. The food was excellent because those who did the cooking controlled the fire well. :) I made a lot of new friends at the gathering, and also downed a number of shots of Kaoliang (高梁), which kept me warm and also made me a bit tipsy. :)

Nike "Tea Time" fartlek training

I had a rather eventful day today. I got up later than usual, did some newspaper reading and household chores, and then managed to grab some brunch (friend noodles with steamed fish) before heading down to the Gongguan (宮館) area for a brisk session of window-shopping. Gongguan is the area near the National Taiwan University (台灣國立大學), so the shops are generally catered to the younger folks with a smaller budget, just suitable for me :) I bought myself a hot cup of ginger tea, which was just perfect because the outside temperature was a cool 14 degrees Celcius.

After that, I went over to the sports track in the university for a Nike "Tea Time" fartlek training. The 20-minute session was led by Chen Tien-wen (陳天文), one of the elite hurdlers in Taiwan. It was short, but I found it rather intense and was left both breathless and far behind the other runners. I suppose that means I need to work on my stamina, my cadence and my footwork too. :)

When the training was over, I had dinner at a Japanese restaurant before heading over to Ximending (西門町) for even more window-shopping. Before I popped into the gym there, I also bought myself a Jay Chou CD, "On the Run!" (我很忙).

I rounded off the night with Will Smith's "I am Legend" movie. I wasn't very impressed by the film though. The CGI characters were not credible, the plot was structurally weak and character development, if there was any, was minimal. However, I was the only person in the entire theatre, so that felt like a VIP screening! Hehheh :D

Christmas Nike Run

I went for my 2nd NIKE "Happy Hour" Run yesterday evening. I was joined by Stazla who just returned to Taipei from her trip to Hualien. The run was an intense-pace 3 km event, and I found myself chasing after Stazla and she was a total speedster! She said that she was fast because of her fartlek training, so I guess I should start doing some fartlek training too...if I can find the time!

After we had completed the run, picked up our bananas and collected our bags, we had a short chat with the organisers and it turned out that they had spare Nike socks to give away, so we both received a pair each :) We also had our pictures taken with the Nike Banana gal.

After the run, we headed for Dingtaifeng for dinner but we arrived half an hour after operating hours, so that was a pity :P We settled our dinner at a humble noodle shop not too far away.

Today, our picture is published on the Taiwanese Nike website, http://www.nikerunning.com.tw/ :) And Yen Erl has also just sent me a photo that we took in 西門町 during the Malaysian Pacesetters' recent visit to Taiwan for the ING Marathon in Taipei.

我願變成童話裡你愛的那個天使

There was an office karaoke session held this evening after work to celebrate Christmas. Most of the tunes we crooned were Mandopop or Hokkien oldies. One of the last songs that we sang was 光良's "童話". The lyrics and the MTV were sad enough in themselves, but they also reminded of J and J because the elder J used to sing the two lines below whenever I saw him. Children, I miss you so much, and I wonder how you are doing. I wish I could become an angel, fly over to where you are, and take you both under my wings. But now that I am far away, I've just got to trust that the Lord, who loves you more than anyone else can, will take good care of you regardless of where I am.

我願變成童話裡　你愛的那個天使　張開雙手　變成翅膀守護你
你要相信　相信我們會像童話故事裡　幸福和快樂是結局

Got home quite late in the night, too late for any Christmas service. Turned on the TV, and it was showing "Pet Semetary", not quite the film I wanted to watch during this season to commemorate Christ's birth. Logged on to MSN, but most of my buddies were offline. I guess they were still out partying somewhere. I miss their company so much. It's such a lonely and un-Christmassy Christmas this year.

The Saturday before Christmas

Had a whirlwind sort of day yesterday. After rushing some work early in the morning, I headed to town to meet Stazla and her dragonboating friends, Cheryl and Andy, for lunch. They were here on holiday, would be travelling to the other parts of the island over the next few days, and they had spent their morning earlier doing a healthy jog, which is just the sort of thing you would expect any fit and young Singaporean dragonboater to do. :) We had a great conversation, and it was a pity I wasn't able to spend more time with them as a "host" and show them around. After lunch, I took a 40-minute solo cab ride to Banciao City (板橋市) in Taipei County (台北縣) and boy, it was such an unpleasant ride. The driver must have either smoked heavily himself or picked up a passenger that did, because the interior of the vehicle chokingly smelt like a well-used ash-tray. *cough*

When I returned from Banciao City, it was about 7 pm, and I was scheduled to join Ben, my friend from the California Fitness gym here, at his friend's Christmas party near Pacific Sogo. Unfortunately, Ben couldn't make it at the last minute, so I went ahead on my own. The party turned out to be a health company's Christmas fancy-dress ball for its employees and friends of its employees, and since I'm two degrees of association away, I did not know a single soul there and stood out like a sore thumb with my rather mundane apparel. After wall-flowering for a while, I decided to cut short my involvement, and headed to my office which was nearby to process some work. I didn't leave until about 1 am in the morning, which was a miserable way to spend the weekend before Christmas, but hey, I managed to get some of my intray cleared, so that is still cause for celebration.

I hope I have pleasant company on Christmas Day.

海嘯

I just realised that one of the pages in my Team Pembantuan blog has gone missing. I haven't been back to maintain that blog for quite some time, and now one entire page is completely blank. Maybe someone hacked into my site and deleted it, 'cos I definitely didn't remove the content. I'm terribly, terribly distressed. :(

And I wonder how the kids of Tibang Village are doing. I hope they have grown up bigger, healthier and happier, and with a roof over their heads. I hope the orphaned ones have found new parents to love them. It's going to be the 3rd anniversary of the tsunami in less than a week's time. It's always sobering to reflect upon the fragility of life. So many innocent were lost when the waves came striking. But at the same time, when you look upon the survivors, there is cause for celebration because they are living proof of the tenacity of life and the human spirit.

I wish to take this opportunity to blog a short prayer of love and blessing to those that I should care for more but have so often neglected, to my family, to the villagers of Tibang, and to my beloved children in Club Rainbow -- may you all find the strength to live on with hope and courage, and especially to my precious J and J, may the Lord grant you His peace and may you find yourselves one day delighted to be able to walk again -- and to my worthy missionary friends in Sakashita, Cambridge and Maroantsetra. May the Lord turn His face to you all and shower you with His everlasting grace.

Happy Hour

I went for my first Nike "Happy Hour" Training Run today. The short run was led by Cheng Chih-chien (鄭子健), the first Taiwanese male finisher of the full marathon in the ING Taipei International Marathon in 2006. Cheng had completed it in 2 hours 25 minutes and 25 seconds. (!) Our training run began outside the Nike shop at Songshou Road (松壽路), near Taipei 101. Intially, the run was rather slow and congested because a large number of runners had signed up for it, but after a few traffic lights to "filter" the runners by their speed, I found myself settling into a manageable but nevertheless "breath-taking" pace. The brochure said that we would be running 6 km, but I reckoned we did a lot less, maybe 3 km, because I completed the circuit in 18 min 40 seconds, inclusive of a few traffic stops. The run was SO not 6 km. :P But never mind. It felt good to run again.

After the post-race cool down, there was a free flow of bananas, tortilla chips, mineral water and tea, which was nice. I went into the Nike shop later on and bought myself a really cool athletic windbreaker. It's pricy, but it looks great. I'm treating it as a Christmas gift for myself :D

ING Taipei International Marathon

I arrived at the Taipei City Hall (台北市政府) at around 6.30 am this morning. By that time, there was already a sizeable crowd, many of whom doing their stretching and warm-up runs in the runner's pen. Since the 9-km, 21-km and 42.195-km runners were all to be flagged off at the same time, the organisers just herded us all towards the start line. At 6:57 am, the elite runners were flagged off, most of them Africans. The rest of us more ordinary runners were flagged off 3 minutes later. And because the rest of us (I reckon about 16,000 runners) began our race at about the same, the start of the race was expectedly congested. :P

The route for the 9-km race was a boring 4.5 km down Jen-ai Road (仁愛路) and then back along the same way. :P But those doing a longer distance had a better deal, I think, as their route would be more scenic and crosses the Keelung River (基隆河) twice. Furthermore, those running 21-km and above would not only receive the same sort of personalised certificate of achievement as the one which would be posted to me in a few days' time, but they would also get an additional towel and a precious medal at the finish line. *sobs, if only I registered for the 21-km*

Weather-wise, it was great. It was slightly chilly at the beginning of the race, with a temperature of around 17 degrees Celsius, but it warmed up quickly.

This is one race in which the road marshalls stopped runners at some of the major road intersections...at least for the 9-km category. As I entered my second half-hour of my race, I was stopped thrice and made to wait for traffic. :P Fortunately, I was treating this race as a leisure run, so this didn't bug me too much. But I can imagine that some other runners with a more competitive streak would feel absolutely irritated with the interference with their race.

There weren't as many colourful characters in this race as the marathon in Singapore. But there was one guy (or was it a gal?) dressed as a pink ninja and a pair of teenagers dressed as Spiderman and Superman. There were also a number of visually-handicapped marathoners, some of whom did extremely well, coming in sub-4 hours. Well done! But the highlight was this sub-3.30 marathoner who did three cartwheels as he finished his final 50m dash. That was quite a sight! :)

Despite the little problems here and there, it was a fairly well organised race, and the weather's great for running. If I can, I'll try the half-marathon next year.

But now, I've got a big blister on my left foot to nurse...

Oh, and I came in around 54-55 mins. Slow huh? :D

我跑馬拉松

I went to the ING Cafe today to pick up my running bib (01690), my ChampionChip, my event singlet and my programme booklet for the ING Taipei International Marathon. To my surprise, the programme booklet listed the names and bib numbers of all the participants in the 9-km, 21-km and 42.195-km categories, sorted by age group and gender. :) Nice!

While I was there, I also registered myself for the 2008 Run Taipei NIKE 9-km race, scheduled to take place on 13 Jan 2007. According to the event brochure, the event Dri-fit tee is (alarmingly) pink, but I'll find out exactly how pink it is when I get it closer to race day. Also on the event brochure, there are a few cool lines that read:

因為我有兩條腿、兩隻手臂
因為我的鼻子會吸氣、嘴巴會吐氣
因為我天生就會跑，還能跑完9公里！

Then after that, I went over to meet up with Yen Erl who was in town with some other Malaysian Pacesetters from Kuala Lumpur and Kuantan. They had come to Taiwan to take part in the same marathon tomorrow. The whole group of us went shopping, including at Pacific Sogo where I found a number of sports apparel that I liked, but none of those clothes were really my size :P Haha... In any case, I had a very good afternoon with my Malaysian friends. It is indeed good to be in the company of enthusiastic runners :)

I think I shall sleep early tonight, because the final countdown to the race tomorrow has already begun... :)

Middle of the road

I was involved in a mini traffic accident the other night. The taxi that I was travelling in had a side collision with another vehicle and came to an abrupt halt in the middle lane of the road. The other vehicle continued ahead for about fifty metres or so before the driver pulled over by the pavement and stepped out to inspect the damages to his automobile. My cab driver stormed out of his taxi to confront the other driver, leaving me inside his taxi, stranded in the middle of the road, with no hazard lights turned on and with traffic streaming by on both sides of the taxi. I asked myself: should I get out of the taxi first, in case some other vehicle rammed into it head-on; or should I sit inside the taxi until the taxi driver returned, and then pay him the cab fare and then get off? I chose the latter. On hindsight, I think I should have just gotten out of the vehicle as soon as I could, safety-permitting, and cross over to the pavement, instead of putting myself in such unnecessary danger.

*sniff*

I'm down with a rather bad bout of flu since Tuesday. That morning had started off okay, but as soon as I was making my way from my apartment to the bus-stop, my nose started to run and a dull headache began to set in. The onset of the illness was incredibly fast, and by afternoon, I could hardly concentrate on what I was doing, being overtaken by the constant sniffing and tearing, and the sore aching all over my body was intolerable. Two panadols later, I was home, but the symptoms did not let up. Another sachet of Lemsip, and I tucked myself into bed, but it was a long and sleepless night. Applied leave from work today, and spent the whole day in the house wrinkling my nose and drinking hot tea. I think the worst is over, and hopefully, I will be okay by tomorrow.

Oh, yes, and Mum and Dad will be visiting... They are due to arrive in Taipei in another few hours. I'm glad they can take the time to come over here to enjoy a holiday, but I'm sorry that I'm not in the best state of health to receive them.

Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon 2007

Congrats to all my dear friends who completed the 10-km, 21-km and 42.195 km races in the SCSM today! A pity I wasn't able to be there to witness you guys and gals coming in strongly and proudly and grinning from ear to ear at the finishing line. Can't wait to see the pictures! :D

I especially want to congratulate my friend Chris on his fantastic marathon results. An amazing showing and a great come-back following surgery to his knee. Way to go, buddy, and here's wishing you more PBs along the way!