A drop in the ocean

" I am a flower quickly fading
Here today and gone tomorrow..."

Herein lies Bell. I buried Bell in my garden today. Until his/her death I was still not able to ascertain his/her gender. S(he) died this morning and s(he) has been with me for 3 years.

Goodbye Bell.

* Bell is my dwarf hamster.

Mid life crisis

Sob!! Bawl!!! My Dermalogica products are not working. I recently spent a bomb on skincare products..to my dismay my skin hasn't improved significantly. Today a customer came to my shop and asked me if 1 of my staff was my daughter. YIKES. I guess you can't run away from ageing skin.

Sigh.

Ageing skin.

Bills, bills, bills.

And more bills, bills, bills.

Expanding waist line.

Loss of stamina.

I've reached mid life crisis.

Happenings

OK here's what's been happening in my life...

1. Missed the 15km New Balance run on Sunday as my nose and throat were still congested. Ran 4km outdoor yesterday, but it felt like completing 42km as I've lost some stamina...

2. Signed up for PJ Half...I am so unfit though, wonder if I will be able to make it...

3. Need to lose weight (again). This seems to be my everlasting purpose in life! Must start oatmeal diet again...

4. Watched "GREASE" last week. It was so awful, so I won't give a full review. All I can say is:

• Wasted my money
• It was so bad that I won't even watch it again even if I had free tickets.
• Lead actors were lacklustre
• Irresponsible crew as they didn't perform soundcheck
• I've seen better Actor's Studio plays
• Nobody will be able to live up to Travolta and ONJ.
• HATED IT!

5. Finally my fridge has been delivered. Now I can start storing food in my new house!

6. Finally fixed the complicated TV cabinet. I am not a dumb broad after all!

7. Clau is back. Welcome back!

8. Have not been bloggin much as I have been trying to be disciplined in doing my daily devotion. Have embarked on DA Carson's "For the Love of God".

Nose on legs

Oh woe is me! The only part of me that is running is my nose.My whole world is caving in!

Failure to Blog

Ok...I haven't been blogging for nearly 2 weeks due to the following reasons:

1. Been dead tired, I just DIVE into bed the minute I get home. Fell asleep infront of TV last night at 8.45pm while watching "From Russia With Love"...

2. Been trying to continue "Da Vinci Code". So much for it being a page turner, I can fall asleep after reading 2 pages.... no it's not that boring really but I really have been VERY tired.

3. My left foot hurts. Haven't been able to run properly for a week and there's no "ummph" in blogging about your exercise when you're not in tip top condition. May not be able to run the 15km this weekend. Let's see how it goes....

4. Busy busy at work.

5. Haven't been online much.

6. Been trying to watch all the 007 movies which my dad taped for me from Astro.

Today I bought 7 books from Evangel. Yes, buying books is my biggest vice. I have a bad habit of buying books and then not reading them. If I'm good about it, I eventually get to read them 3 years after I've purchased it.

How old am I?

Found the birthday calculator from Weefishy's blog. Here's what I discovered of myself after using the birthday calculator:

As of 5/4/2006 11:25:42 AM EDT, I am 1,066,303,542 seconds old.
My age is the equivalent of a dog that is 4.83013698630137 years old.

Gunung Nuang

Waterfall (from above)

Serenity

I'm still experiencing the high which I got from the Kk trip. Therefore I decided to join Jenny for a stroll in Gunung Nuang on Monday. Also, I wanted to put my Hitec shoes into good use. Trust me, it was well used. (Overused perhaps!) Got up at 5.30am to prepare some sandwiches for the trip. I can't believe it, I've been exercising everyday and not sleeping in, what more on the long weekend. Jenny and Adnan came to pick me up at 6.15am, then we headed off to Old Klang Road to pick Uncle Hooi up. There were 6 of us in the trip, and we met Mr and Mrs Goon later at the mamak. Uncle Hooi was the oldest amongst us, and I brought the average age down to 51.66. (Uncle Hooi is nearly 70). Jenny promised a workout equivalent to 2 days worth of calories! The entire trek would take about 4 hours up to the summit, and 4 down, total of 8 hours.

We were set to meet the Goons at the mamak somewhere in Ulu Langat. Just as Jenny parked her car and got down, she noticed there was a puncture in the back tyre on the right. That was about 7.30am. We were supposed to hit the trail at 8am. By the time we changed the tyre and had breakfast, it was already 8.20am. By the time we hit the base of the trail, it was about 8.40am. We had to drive through this really narrow path which wasn't even a proper road to get to the entry point of the trail. Believe it or not, even before we started the trail, I already had a couple of leech bites. EEEW!!

Jenny and Adnan took us on an overgrown trail, and I was trying hard to keep my mind away from thinking of how many leeches would have crept under my pants. We had to backtrack several times before realising that it was futile to go further, as this path was abandoned and it was difficult to find any clear trail. Just as we made our way back to the car, Jenny discovered that her shoes have started falling apart! The entire sole came off, and there was nothing left but a HUGE hole. Good thing she left a pair of Saucony in the boot. We drove back down, where we found another trail. This is actually the longer path, which takes about 40 minutes longer than the original path (ie the overgrown trail).

The fate of Jenny's shoes

What's left of the shoes

By then we knew that we were immensely delayed and not able to make it to the summit, as we did not want to come down when it was dark (being rainy season lately as well). Oh well, burning 1 day's worth of calories is better than not at all. It was quite a nice climb up, as the path was wide. Only thing I didn't like was the mud which coated my Hitec beyond recognition. It was mostly uphill all the way, and reminiscent of my KK climb, except that it was a HOT day. We had 3 streams to cross before reaching the Lolo campsite. It was quite a sorry state, the campsite, as it looked like a dumping ground with all the garbage left by the campers. Honestly, the campers should be more civic minded and clear after themselves as NOBODY, NOBODY is going to clear the place. I would not want to put up the night there.

On the brighter and more beautiful side, Camp Lolo was filled with butterflies of different colours and sizes. You'd see a group of them (how do you refer to a group of butterflies? not school, not herd....what is it?) flying around and it makes you feel like you're in Dreamland or some unreal world (don't look or think of the garbage). There was even a jungle dog there. He must be surviving on the scraps which campers feed him with. He doesn't look undernourished though.

We had our lunch by the waterfall - I had the sandwich while some of them had roti canai or nasi lemak. We left Lolo at about 1.30pm and headed down. Uncle Hooi was always ahead of the pack..he never showed any signs of fatigue or tiredness. He is the epitome of fitness for senior citizens, and I'd be lucky if I can be as active as him in say, another 20 years' time.

It was a good trip, even though we did not hit the summit. Well this is only the warmup...

Last Sunday

Ok, I've got some inspiration to blog, now that I've restored all my archive! :) The problem was was, I usually only republished index whenever I made changes to my blog without realising that I actually needed to republish the entire blog instead, so that the changes would show on previous posts.

It was an eventful weekend, it was good to have a long weekend after a long time. I really cherish such times because I hardly get long weekends off due to the nature of my work. Rested from running on Saturday, but feet were itchy so I still went to the gym. On Sunday, I joined Jenny for a double hill run. I was surprised I was able to complete the entire route as my thighs were still aching from the squats which I did on Friday. Met another runner who shares the same name with me. I started out really slow as my thighs were feeling heavy, but managed to catch up. And to think I was even ambitious enough to think of doing 15km! Collected all the New Balance shirts for the 15km run for my friends. It's blue black in colour, that's quite nice for a change; but not very safe especially when we run early in the morning. I have to go to the "My Running Shop" in Mid Valley to get those flashlights which blink in the dark to warn drivers of runners...

Later in the afternoon, my girlfriends and I had a girls' day out - went to watch "Failure to Launch". We all enjoyed it, it's one of those feelgood movies. I think the star of the show was the iguana or cave lizard or whatever the reptile may be called.

Decided to utilise my 40% discount on New Balance products before the 15km run. Got myself a pair of 901, and I was pretty pleased it came in pink! I've never owned a pair of pink sportshoes before, I guess I missed out on that in my childhood. ( I hated pink as a child). I had intended to get a pair of 1060, which I currently own and is top of the range. Unfortunately they did not have my size, so I settled for the 901 which was the next best.

New Balance 901

Disillusioned

Ok, admittedly I've lost steam to blog. Partly it's because I'm disillusioned. I've lost ALL my archive, everything I've blogged about for nearly a year. There's no way I can restore it back. Even part of my stories on KK have been wiped out. What's the point of blogging your entire lifestory? Just a silly mistake in changing the template can be disastrous.