Thanks For The Reminder

Do you use reminder in your emails? Putting a to-do list or marking the calendar for some events so that a little pop-up window will spring up with ring or buzz reminding you of your pre-arranged engagement. I don't use them because I find them annoying. Think of being woken up for work by the irritating ring of an alarm clock while you are deep in the slumber in the peaceful dawn.

I got quite a few this week. The first was ok, almost a pleasant surprise and I brushed it off as a mere coincident. A friend sent me an email of a survey that the insurance companies use for estimating life expectancy of their potential clients. It was a simple questionnaire asking for family medical history, personal life style, exercise and dietary habits etc. Based on the input, in the end it'll come up with the number of years you'd enjoy (hopefully). Mine came up to be 75, which I think is pretty good. Almost 32 down, 43 more to go. Nothing like reminder of your mortality on a Monday morning.

Came midweek I got this inflamed spot below my lips near my chin. It was a little tender, I thought it was a razor burn and left it at that. But wait, I didn't shave in the past few days. I went into the gents to check it out on the mirror. A HUGE zit below my lips near the chin was starring blankly back at me. OK, it wasn't HUGE huge but surely noticeable. A colleague actually pointed that out during a meeting. "Look at the zit on Boonsky's face, still not done his adolescence. Almost hitting 32 and I had this zit on my face, perhaps reminding me of my fleeting youth. Well, what fleeting, it's gone!

Then another email came. This one titled "Daddy How Was I Born?" Do I really need a the-birds-and-the-bees lesson now? Well it was actually a joke about how a father, presumably a computer geek getting hooked up with another computer chick geek, explaining to his son on how he was conceived. The whole sex thing was laden with computer geekery innuendoes, funny haha.

OK I get it! My birthday is coming up. I'm getting old.

Thanks for the reminder.

No, reminders!

Paying Tomorrow

I hurt my left wrist beginning of the year. So i cut off all upper body workout for sometime after getting a mild steroid jab from the doctor and then seeing a physiotherapist. As I was getting better I got back into lifting irons and yoga back in March. However, I was so conscious about my left wrist I placed more weight onto my right one, ending up hurting it during a yoga session awhile back. Again I stopped everything and switch to swimming for my upper body workout.

Going back for the follow-up last week, the doc jabbed me again, both wrists this time and ordered me more physio sessions. My wrists are certainly getting better but I'm not risking them again. Back to more laps in the pool. But as I was about to hit the pool this evening, the sky opened up and kept pouring buckets. I hit the gym and did my hamster run instead.

So I ran and ran. I ran for 1 hour and 8 minutes. I ran about 11.3k.

I opened up and kept pouring buckets too.

As a result I was freaking dehydrated. To re-hydrate myself, I've been drinking a bowl of soup (for dinner), 2 glasses of OJ, a glass of milk and a glass of water.

I'm still freaking dehydrated and I'm freaking beat now.

I'm hitting the sack. I'm going to sleep like a log.

I'm so going to pay tomorrow.

Damn the rain!

Overheard #2

Overheard while making coffee at the office pantry this morning:

"After today, it will be the beginning of the rest of our lives."

Get it?

Take it easy, eh.

Pretzl

In the quest of turning myself into a human pretzl (ahem), I joined a yoga workshop over the last weekend. Forking out the four hundred bucks, I was expecting a weekend of some serious stretching and then surrounded by hot sweaty ladies doing some seriously suggestive poses. (Oh, downward dog!) Two sessions a day, two and a half hours per a session, so that'd be ten hours of ogling and fantasizing and movies-in-my-head, no, I mean ten solid hours of yoga over the weekend. Boy I was so looking forward to it.

There was indeed an AMAZING weekend, just as I anticipated, and more...

My shoulders are so sore now that I can hardly lift my arm to wave goodbye or take the wheel. My tights and hamstrings are so painful now that I can hardly walk up a flight of stair, or simply just walk. My ass is in such constant spasm that I can hardly sit long at work. The worst part is my upper back, it's aching so bad, as if someone is following me behind my back 24/7, whacking and keep whacking on my upper back with a baseball bat, NONSTOP!

What a fantastic weekend it was.

But the day after?

Kill me. Kill me NOW!

Overheard #1

"Mac is not a computer, it's a life!"

Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant!

Counting Days

It’s the third day here in Labuan. Boredom is like the ocean view outside of my room, endless. Well I hear you. You are so saying: ”What the hell are you whining about of your OCEAN view hotel room, you little twad head?” You see, it’s really not much of a view.


You see, I had this unshakable funny feeling that this would be a long week as the plane landed on Sunday night. It was a little after 10 pm, all the shops at the airport were already closed (bad sign #1). After getting the taxi chit, I got out of the airport and waited for a good 15 minutes before a taxi showed up (bad sign #2). The taxi drove along the quiet street then into town center area. Shops were closed and the streets were deserted (bad sign #3). People had warned me about how boring this place could be when I told them I’d be here attending training for a week. But I was stubborn and shun them out completely, believing that being a duty free island, where booze and tobacco are tax free (read dirt cheap), this place, or at the very least the downtown area should be still hopping and bopping at 10 pm.

Dead wrong! I was dead wrong. It’s indeed going to be a long one.

This evening I went to town to pick up some chocolates and a couple of bottles of wine. The sky was dark and threatening, a storm was brewing. It was just a short walk from the hotel so I thought I’d walk there and take a taxi back should it rain. I set off around 5:30pm. It was just a leisurely 10-minute stroll. The sky was now thick with clouds and the wind was picking up. However, what was more alarming was the shops were closing down. “What the heck? Is it because of the storm coming in or you guys always close this early?” I found myself scrambling around the town center looking for chocolate and wine like an addict just about to go nuts not getting his sugar and booze fix. I walked into a duty free shop along the main drag, asking the shopkeeper: ”Hi what time do you normally close?”

“6 or 6:30pm the latest!” He replied.

“Oh my good God! This is the main drag of the town center!” I screamed and screamed, so very loud, in my heart. I paid for my chocolates and left, as they already had the gate down half way.

The training isn’t going very well either. It’s a 5-day classroom course with lecture after lecture of equipment design and functions and calculation formulas and equations. Yay, exciting! I had 2 cups of coffee for breakfast every morning and had sweets in class but still started yawning half an hour into the class. My eyes were so heavy that I could hardly keep them open even half way into the morning session! So I resorted to taking ciggy breaks, since they are cheap here. But that’s not really the best way isn’t it? Tell me how. Help me!

I’m counting the days. I can’t wait until Friday comes. I’ll be flying off.

After Brunei, I think this is the most boring place I’ve even been. No wait, I think it’s the other way around.

Watch This: Randy Pausch's Last Lecture

Watch this. NOW! And then share it with as many people as you can.


This is the full length Last Lecture at Carnegie Mellon University

1 Hour and 13 Minutes Marathon

I was on the treadmill doing a stamina test, part of the fitness test for the company dragon boat race team try out. A middle-aged lady instructor stood next to me fiddling with the setting every now and again and monitoring my performance.

Making small talk to the instructor, trying to be polite.

Boonsky:"So,is this place new?"

Instructor:"Oh no. We opened for almost a year already."

Boonsky:"Oh yeah?"

The instructor making small talk to me, trying to be polite.

Instructor:"Do you go to any gym?"

Boonsky:"I do. The gym at my office."

Instructor:"I can tell. You have the shape, and you are doing well on the treadmill."

Having my ego stoked, I had the proudest grin on my face and my chest was inflated with so much pride, it almost burst.

Trying to calm myself and be modest as I always do.

Boonsky:"Oh really? Thanks. Good to know. But I'm cutting down my gym time, because I hurt both my wrists."

Instructor:"How?"

Boonsky:"I think from yoga."

Instructor:"Yoga? How?"

Please bear with me, I'm going somewhere with this. Read on.

Acting dumb.

Boonsky:"I know! Probably I was doing the poses incorrectly. So now I swim and run."

Instructor:"Oh, I just did the Merdeka Marathon last year."

Boonsky:"Wow, that's amazing! So what is your time?"

Seriously I was in awe and had this utmost respect for this petite middle aged lady instructor for her gutsy determination completing a marathon.

Instructor:"I came in 13th in my age group. Well it was women veteran. I'm 47."

I'm not kidding here, to me, she was such a force, such an inspiration. She gave me hope that one day I can complete a marathon for real.

Boonsky:"Wow. I'm still trying to do one before I turn 32. But to anyone who finish a marathon, hats off! Such an achievement. So what was your time again?"

Be ready. Here came the bomb. (Or so I thought)

Instructor:"I finished in 1 hour and 13 minutes."

Trust me, it was almost impossible to maintain running on the treadmill, as everything inside me just crashed into a complete screeching halt. I was trying my damnedest to fight the force of inertia and momentum.

Boonsky:"Holy! That's really fast! World record time that is!"

Now here came the real bomb.

Instructor:"Actually it was only 9km."

Pin drop silence. Well, not exactly. Only the thumps of my strides on treadmill and the buzzing noise of treadmill belt rotating. I just didn't know what to say to that anymore. This time I was trying my damnedest not to burst out laughing. That'd be inappropriate, not to mention rude.

Just keep on running...

Then I remembered a recent conversation I had with my physio-therapist about the flourishing gym business in town. I asked her about the quality of the gym instructors and what kind of education or training they had gone through prior to becoming certified.

"Most of them are pretty bad." She said pointe blank. "They got their diplomas in colleges locally and then set out to kill their clients in the gym." She added, not jokingly, but matter-of-factly. She then told me of how horrified she was discovering the exercise program designed by the instructors for some of her patients with a heart condition. And how baffling and mad she got when some instructor friends of her nurse called her asking for consult, for free. I was sure she had got more stories to share but too bad, my therapy session was up.

I had my doubt when we had that conversation. They surely couldn't be all that bad!

But a fitness instructor proudly announced that she completed a 1 hour and 13 minutes 9 km marathon race, now I'm a believer.

Sold!

So Close

Do you have a song that tell your story so beautifully, evoke emotions so deep within you?

This one does it for me. The melody takes me away, wandering along the memory lanes of yesteryears, thinking of you. There you are, so close. So close that I can hear the joyousness in your laughter and your voice. So close that I can embrace you in my arms, feeling your warmth of your skin and smelling the scent of your hair. But the lyrics in the end reveal the tender longing and sadness of our story, so gracefully simple and brutally honest. More importantly, it is painfully true. The last line just nails it!

So Close - Jon McLaughlin

You’re in my arms

and all the world is calm

the music playing on for only two

so close together and when I’m with you

so close to feeling alive

a life goes by

romantic dreams will stop

so I bid mine goodbye and never knew

So close was waiting,

Waiting here with you

And now forever I know

All that I wanted to hold you so close

So close to reaching that famous happy end

almost believing

this was not pretend

and you’re beside me

and look how far we’ve come

so far we are

so close

how could I face this faceless days

If I should lose you now

We’re so close to reaching that famous happy end

and almost believing this was not pretend

Let’s go on dreaming for we know we are

So close

So close and still so far

I miss you.