New working environment

My working experience just did a major turn for the better (i hope). While literally almost crying when saying good-bye to my Ubuntu this morning, I must say i enjoy the slicker mac that Marian forced upon me. Goodbye extremely long uptimes, hello confusion and numerous restarts. But still, it works.

It's just so sad and pointless

It makes me want to scream!!!!!

Remember last year when I wrote how one romanian died after summiting Aconcagua because of appendicitis? Well, he was accompanied on that trip by his wife who stood by him in a tent at 5700m and watched him die. It turns out that she killed herself a couple of weeks ago.


Returning to our more mundane problems but still related to the title of this post, I am submitting my thesis proposal today yay.

Realization

It's when life grabs you by the shoulders and spits you right between the eyes.

Adidas Sundown Marathon is coming on the 30th of May. Last year I was harboring wishes about running the 84 km distance, but I gave up on those plans when I realized that I will be in Romania at that time. But plans have changed and apparently I will be back in singapore by the 27th. So I can run! Yay!

So last night I was still harboring dreams and butterflies about running the 84 km. Will it take me all night? Can I do it? etc ... Only when I got home did life's saliva hit me. I mean, COME ON!!!! After the standard chartered marathon I totally stopped running (ok, not totally but not that much either) and now I am barely running 5 km with all the huffs and puffs of accumulated fats and aches from scrubbing floors and typing too much (i.e. sitting down). I haven't checked it out but I think you're supposed to train humongous distances and such. When am I going to do all that? I mean with climbing and project Elephant and work (I kid you not, I am seriously working now) ... WHEN?

So I wiped the spit from my face with a big *SIGH* and I think I'll be running the marathon. Notice the "think". It's not the distance that scares me, but ... Downgrades, I hate.

Ha! [Updates from the front]

Nothing better than cycling in Pulau Ubin from 11am to 2:30 pm without any sunblock to roast your back! Top that with a one hour yoga class on Sunday where my oh-so-friendly instructor pushed my burnt back to the limits!!! But! Finally, ladies and gentlemen, I can reach my toes without bending my knees in a forward bend! I know that many many many people out there can do this, but really, they shouldn't take it for granted, because there are other puny inflexible, fat mortals like myself who can't!

Other than that, I postponed my decision of not spending moolah on stuffs till maybe next month. This is because the chinese new year sales are in town! So I will either not go out at all, or, ah well ... My plan so far is to stay out of any bookstores because I don't need anymore books. Actually, I need, but there's no more space!

Training starts today. I will say nothing more, except that we are doing weighted pullups, fingerboard, and projecting some routes which yours truly will be setting in about 2 hours time. Oh, and my elbow hurts again. Bad. Bearable. Big deal! See, the three B's of injury prevention :))

I still have my kamikaze spirit! We ventured on the mountain bike trails on Sunday. Yup. Considering that when I am riding a bike I can only turn left, have to get off the bike when I have to go over a kerb, cannot lift both hands, cannot stand up and such... I still managed to go through the Blue square trails without falling more than 5 times and pushing my bike uphill more than, what? Six-eight times? Looking forward to that time, maybe 10 years from now, when I will be good enough to justify investing in a bike of my own.

Endurance

Just finished reading "Endurance" by Alfred Lansing. It describes how Ernest Shackleton's and his team of 27 sailors and what have you attempted to cross the antarctic ocean. Their ship (the Endurance) was caught in ice for about 10 months until it finally sank because of the pressure of the ice. We are around 1916 and thus no helicopters and satellites to save their sorry asses. And what did they do? They saved themselves. And how?

From October till April they stayed on some ice floes. Then finally in April when their last floe (called Patience Camp) got torn in two, Shackleton ordered his men into boats. We are talking about normal boats. In the Antarctic Ocean. After five horrible days at sea (it was cold, wet, no proper equipment, they were drenched in salt water (apparently your skin turns white and mushy)) they finally landed on an island called Elephant Island.

Now they couldn't stay here forever so Shackleton and 5 other men boarded the sturdiest of the boats (pictured) and started sailing for South Georgia. They sailed through the Drake Passage which is the shortest path to the southern most point in the south american continent (Cape Horn). Now I didn't know then, but I know now, the Drake Passage is one of the most horrible places with respect to water on this planet. It happens right where the Atlantic crosses into the Pacific. At that particular latitude there is no other land for the entire circumference of the Earth, which means that the Antarctic Circumpolar Current can flow without any obstacle. It carries a huge volume of water (about 600 times the flow of the Amazon River) through the Passage and around Antarctica. Here is a video of a big russian ship facing a storm in the Drake Passage. It's a very big ship but notice how it gets trashed by the waves. They sailed for 15 days (the last 4 without water) until they reached South Georgia.

It wasn't over yet, because they still had to cross uncharted mountains and glaciers (which nobody had crossed before) to get to the other side where there was a whaling station. [Wiki] "The next successful crossing of South Georgia was in October 1955, by the British explorer Duncan Carse, who travelled much of the same route as Shackleton's party. In tribute to their achievement he wrote: "I do not know how they did it, except that they had to—three men of the heroic age of Antarctic exploration with 50 feet of rope between them—and a carpenter's adze"" Shackleton and two others did this in 36 hours non stop.


They say that the chief of the whaling station started crying when he saw the state Shackleton was in. The experienced whalers told Shackleton that they had lived their entire life in that station and had never ever even thought about crossing the Drake Passage in a small open boat like the one. Finally on August 30 the rest of the party on Elephant Island was saved. NOBODY died. For example, the entire Franklin expedition of 129 people had perished in 1845 in the Arctic, Scott's party to the south pole died in 1912 - uncomparable, but still. Nobody died.

The family motto of Ernest Shackleton was:
Fortitudine vincimus - By endurance we conquer

Google books has a limited preview of Shackleton's book.

The two places in the world

I would absolutely kill to live in, are ...

• France - for the cheese and the climbing and the bread and the alps! and for southern france, and for the je ne sais quoi ...


• Alaska - for the cold, the snow, the mountains, the absolute wilderness and silence.

New Year Resolution

I don't make new year's resolutions*, because I don't keep them. My resolutions are generally mid year or they happen when I get a kick in the ass. However, this year I've given it some thought and after a very long deliberation chose to settle on one. Yup. This year, I will run the standard chartered marathon in under 4 hours. Don't laugh, it was either this or run the North Face 100km run in October. Yup.

*My other new year's resolution was three years and 5 days ago when I decided to quit smoking (but it coincided with me moving to Singapore so the new year per se didn't really matter.

In which I draw the line and count!

Urgh. Just trying to get over the extreme tiredness that I am feeling right now. Baked some absolutely wonderful cinnamon rolls but forgot to take a picture of them. They were a major hit at the New Year party (pictures and post tomorrow). All nice and fattening (cause anyhow I don't eat them cause they are too sweet) for all the ladies, muhahahaha!!

I came to school today to climb with Sandra, Doris, Jiasheng and YJ. I think I will make it a lifetime tradition to climb on the first day of the year. It just feels so good. And believe it or not, I was very nervous when I climbed my first route of the day (and year), because I kept thinking that if I don't flash then my whole year will end up being crappy climb-wise.

Before I leave my desk I just wanted to have a moment to remember 2008.

• January - Chile, Aconcagua. I never knew I would be able to bear so much. Lost a friend.


• March - Boulderactive (not the last for open women) and! with the help of Vincent, I bought my new best friend, my Northface backpack.


• April - went Ipoh to climb. And. I. sucked. Wake up call and decision NEVER to take so much time off from climbing.
  
  Started training with Nita and Mei Fen for their trip to Kilimanjaro.
  
  Discovered running in Mac Ritchie Reservoir and Bukit Timah hill.
  
  Met Tracy.


• May - LAST for Rockmaster. A good kick in the ass is one step forward, I always say ...


• June - Climbing in Krabi with Marian. Happie couple times. Climbing in Krabi with the team. Short, but good!


• July - Alps, Matterhorn. Came very close to dying. Putting things in perspective.


• August - Army half. Almost quit but made it in the end. Marian decides to train for the marathon.


• September - Discovered cycling in Pulau Ubin. Cool!!!
  
  Decided I don't want to be an elephant no more (be more flexible) so I joined yoga.
  
  Reached the Nike Plus 1000 km mark. Which means I ran 1000km in about a year and three months. Not bad.


• November - Did night running in MacRitchie. AMAZING!!!


• December - Marian and I run the Standard Chartered Marathon. And finish decently in under 5 hrs, a good team building exercise.
  
  My friends leave for home for ever and I feel lost without my posse.
  
  Climbing in Perlis with the team. I give myself a pat on the back for some progress in lead climbing. And one good kick in the ass for being too blunt sometimes.
  
  I spend the last two days of 2008 scrubbing floors and moving furniture.

I Heart 2008!!

We interupt this special programme ...

to post a video that Vic found. Finally, Sting and Edin Karamazov with "In My Life" by the Beatles. Scrumptious. It sounds better in real life tho, trust me.

Climb Malaysia (II)

[Ah, nothing better to start your overcast Monday than Beethoven's 9th. Irony, I likes!]



After the disappointing experiment of Gua Kelam it's no wonder that the next days found us in Bukit Keteri. On the first day, what started out as a rainy, let's-get-back-to-the-hotel-and-sleep-the-whole-day thing ended up in very nice routes. And we climbed and we climbed ... The rock was nice and sharp and the routes much harder than the routes in Thailand with the same difficulty. From this point of view, I hate thailand, it made me think I can climb hard(er) routes, only to be thrashed by Malaysia...





In the afternoon, Doris and I went up into the caves of Bukit Keteri. The view from upstairs was magnificent. Other than that, nothing spectacular except I banged my head on one of the cave's ceilings. Stupid, I am.




We goofed around in the caves











Watched the guys get whacked by a 8c+ ...



The next day while the rest of the team went Thailand which was just across the border, Sandra was kind enough (Thanks, SAN!!!) to stay with me in the wonderful town of Padang Besar, where there was. N.O.T.H.I.N.G to do. Abso-fucking-lutely nothing to do. We went around some shops in the bazaar and then settled (with Cassandra who also stayed back) in a nice halal (did I mention perlis is a very strict muslim state) Thai coffee shop for about 2-3 hours. The food was very good, especially the Tom Yam, and I got to exercise my super power of ordering-by-pointing (where you point to the food on somebody else's table and say "Satu" (one) with the additional raising of your index finger, just in case). Next we found the bus driver and retreated to the air-con comfort of the bus, where we slept/read until the team came back.

Climb Malaysia (I)

So after a grueling 14 hour bus ride in which we sang and most of the team slept,




and after a very good night's sleep in Hotel Federal in Kangar, in which i switched off within 10 minutes of lying down, the first climbing day found us in Gua Kelam Park. Or whatever it is. The routes were un-eventful climb-wise. The climbs were easy, but!


My first climb of the trip found me on a route that was next to a route that Planet was climbing. And that route. had. a wasps'. nest. So I got stung twice. No biggie.


We switched to some other short and easy routes. My leading mental was good. Much better since I've realized that my inner talk was bad.


Lunch and a short rain found us eating inside a chinese temple. I was probably the first caucasian to visit those remote parts because people really never stopped staring at me. Ah well ...


The second part of the day found us going through this very very nice and big cave to some other crag. Yet again we found wasps (they were to disappear later), so we retreated to our morning climbing spot.





I started leading a 6b but by the second bolt it started to pour again so I had to downclimb. We spent the rest of the day just bumming around and watching our team mates play silly yet enjoyable card games.


All in all, the first day was disappointing. I wouldn't go back to gua kelam for anything, not even for the chili plants or for the fake waterfalls.

Backk!!

Safe and sound, only bitten by two wasps. Updates asap.

Dropping by for a quickie

Leaving for Malaysia for 1 week to climb in about 6 hours. It is now 01:01 am and I am not asleep which spells trouble for whomever will be close to me during the 16 hour bus ride (OMFG) from Singapore to Perlis. Thank goodness we are chartering a bus!! I am looking forward to 4 glorious days of climbing, even though I feel bad because I am leaving Marian to move the both of us (yes we are moving, but this is another post). On the other side, I will come back a saner me, and from this benefit he will. These days have been full of cleaning, saying goodbye to friends, buying new pairs of shoes (1 orange, 1 golden, and 1 black) and new blouses (3 green). The sales have hit town and so I am recycling my old shoes and buying new ones (happens every two years). I miss climbing and I hope to get enough of it in the next days.
Rope - check

Runners - check

Money - check

Shoes - check

Passport - check

In my life

Heard this song last night (duh, 28 years since John Lennon was shot) sung by Sting and accompanied by Edin Karamazov on the lute. It was amazing!! Spent the whole morning searching for it, but I wasn't able to find sting's version on youtube. It gives a very mellow tempo to my very slow and sore (from the marathon) day. Sting is [still] hott!

4:57

Amazingly, we finished. I had a stitch about the 17km mark, brought on by the fact that I drank to much. Note to self: MODERATION!! We got at 21 km after about 2 hrs. I gave Marian my knee guard at around 22 km. He hit the wall at around 27km. He says that he couldn't hear me when I was talking to him. At all. Brr, horrible. Anyhow, we had a power gel, we walked, we dragged our feet, had some more water, some more 100 plus, i told him what was happening, why he was hitting the wall (they say your body runs out of glycogen from carbs and has to switch to fats) He was running but more walking that running. Anyhow, I think what got him through the end of the wall and running again was one particular runspirator. He was a big caucasian with a bell. Yup. one of those bells that you see on cows in Switzerland (or so they say). This marathoner was walking and this guy was right behind him banging the bell in the marathoner's ear yelling "I'M NOT GONNA STOP TILL YOU START RUNNING!! I WILL NOT STOP TILL YOU STOP RUNNING!!" ... So the poor guy finally started running and the runspirator finally stopped but told him "YOU'D BETTER NOT STOP, I'M WATCHING YOU!!!!" After seeing this, Marian started running :)) Better run through the wall than have somebody bang your brains dead, I always say. Marian hit a second wall at around 37 km. I'm not sure if this was a wall or he only had breathing problems - from the 35km mark to 37 we run only on one side of the road, while the other was FULL of cars, buses and stuff. It was horrible. Exhaustion gases are not something you want to breathe in so far down in a run. I am very proud of us that we finished. Am very proud of Marian for enduring what he did and still finding the strength to run just a little bit more, and then a little bit more again.

I wore the romanian flag on my back. For the first 20 km or so, it also had a piece of paper on it saying "Romania", but because I kept putting water on my head, the paper finally tore. Nonetheless, 200 meters or so from the finish (and going a bit uphill on esplanade bridge) another runner (singaporean) told me "Good job, Romania!" : I was yet again encouraging people around me run - this is an achievement, I am very shy towards strangers, so sometimes I just say in a very little voice, "come on, come on" ...

I'll just make a list of people/things that I saw. I am too tired to write coherently (next year I will try to run under 4 hrs. Running for 5 hrs is gruelsome).

• Somebody's printed t-shirt saying "Running for presidency next"


• Somebody's piece of paper saying "I am running on the power of my own farts" - he ran out of fart-o-power around 30 km (if you are going to write something that stupid, at least make sure you are damn fast)


• Somebody limping wearing horribly worn out shoes; poor guy looked in PAIN. Good thing a friend was walking with him. A new pair of shoes would have gotten him a long way.


• Somebody carrying a backpack (not a water-camelback), but a big school bag. I'm pretty sure we overtook him, I would be very upset with me if we didn't.


• The bell guy moved just before the 41km mark. Thank you.


• The Kenyans or whatever, running in east coast park. The then first two guys were literally running shoulder to shoulder. FAST!!!! Whoa!!!


• The guy in the brown singlet. He would be walking and us running behind him. I would say come on, come on, seven/six/five to go! He would start running, then we would stop to walk, he would overtake us, then he would stop to walk, i would coax Marian into running some more, then we would overtake him again, I would say come on, come on ... and so on...


• Doris just before the finish line. THANKS for: being there, texting me at 3 plus am, taking the above pic, cheering for all the runners!!! I also cheered the kenyans with a big ALLEZ!!!! So sad to have missed Cherlyn, but at least we had a good excuse!!!


• One runner was bouncing a tennis ball from time to time. I guess it was a good distraction. I don't know about other people, but a marathon is definitely not boring.


• The very pro looking evacuation SUVs. Around 39 km people were dropping like flies. Must've been the Ferraris.


• The Ferrari expo at 39km. Oh why?

A nice odd number

Queued up for 2 hours to get the race entry pack for this year's Standard Chartered Marathon! The queue started from the MRT, and it had about 150m until entering the expo hall where you were in the queueing pens. No pasta this year unfortunately, I was looking forward to cooking it. Goodie bag is also a bit disappointing, you can see that we are going through recession. Ah, life is cruel. As always, the guys' running singlet is much nicer than the girls' one. It definitely has a material that I like more, and a nicer blue.

First nightmare

After my previous foray into almost missing out on important events for which i've trained and trained, it is no wonder what last night's nightmare was about: You see, it was marathon day you see, and, see, the marathon started at 05:30 am see, but um, we woke up at 1:30 pm. So I wailed and I screamed and I wailed some more, and I screamed some more. Not only that, but rushing to the marathon I had forgotten not only my watch and iPod but we didn't have any food! (looking back, this is a totally different scenario, isn't it?)

And I say to these nightmares: Bring them on, sista!!

Namez

[Took a break from blogging because my wisdom tooth is finally out and I have been enjoying the benefits of solid food. Good, solid food, mmmm.... Like breadsticks, rice, veggies, meat, mmmm ... Went to climb asia on Friday to buy myself a pair of green climbing pants, yupee!]

Why is it that inventors don't name the things they invent using such that the name reflects their own name? Is it modesty or they don't think that the products will survive? Or is it because they know they would sound bad? Like EdisonWire, Beller etc. Or is it because they invent so many things that their names will confuse people? Like DaVincier would it be an airplane or a submarine? Or are you considered an inventor iif you build and work your prototype, and it is accepted by the general public as it is? Why isn't the rabies vaccine called Pasteurite? (quite a good name, right??) Then like that everybody know who invented what, and CREDIT will be given (a good sign of a good future academia is their sensitivity to giving credit, i guess :D)

On an utterly unrelated thread, Doris named my left fat thigh John and my right fat thigh Tucker. I am now officially eating for three. I have tried to google John Tucker but all I can come up with is "John Tucker Must Die", and to that, I fully agree. May we have a very short life together.

Jitters

Last year, this was me:



Nita's sms about Singapore Standard Chartered Marathon on 8th december raised some nerve-wrecking questions. See, the problem with performing well the first time around you do something, is that you expect to do the same or even better the next time you try to do it. Well, that isn't the case for me, and I usually don't.

Although the focus of this year's race is for us (marian and i) to finish together (or should I say together finish, with an emphasis on together), I can't stop fretting about our performance. Will we be faster? (not really, haven't trained that much, i feel) Will we be slower? (i think so) By how much? Will we make it? AAAAAAAA!

JAWS

Had the most horrible weekend in the history of IR. The whole of my right lower wisdom tooth is coming out. It had emerged about six months ago but now the whole volcano is rising. My jaw is huge. I didn't sleep at all friday night. Barely slept on Saturday night, and last night I managed to go to sleep at 1:30am and woke up at 4 am again only to fall asleep fitfully until seven. I cannot function with sleep deprivation. I have been eating soup for the past three days, and even though I love soup, I am now officially sick of it.

In order to forget about the pain for a bit I went climbing on Saturday and managed to finish my 3x20 minutes endurance sets, even though I was distracted by Jia Wei and his routes. Saturday night Marian finally found out what's wrong with me, and he advised me to chew on something tough (his dentist had advised him to chew on a bread crust) on the wisdom tooth such that the gums will cut and the tooth will be free!! free! I tell ya!!. No bread crust chez Claudia, so I chewed on four almonds. And I remember every one of them. EVERY SINGLE ONE.

Sunday morning found me with a jaw the size of China thanks to the augmenting effect of the almonds. Went to yoga, had some soup (yay!), then crawled back home. Couldn't focus to read or write so I went running. Yesterday was the first day of my interval training. Did 5 minutes jog, 3 minutes sprint (and the sprint was proportional to my tooth ache). Did only four repeats (instead of six) because I ran out of track and I didn't want to turn back. So far so good, I love it.

Watched CSI Miami before going to bed at 10pm. I used to like Horatio about three years ago when I was watching CSI, but now I think he looks and acts like a very spooky Cheshire cat. And now starts my agony. I couldn't sleep, so I played with marian's iphone until it ran out of batteries, listened to music, heated a sock in the microwave oven (to make it hot to apply on the jaw of death - about 1,2 seconds are enough), chewed on a banana, walked around, changed my sleeping (ha!) position, moved on the floor, moved back on the bed, cried, then i finally fell asleep around 1:48 am.

Weekends, I hate.