I would often feel weak and faint after running for more than 1.5 hours. My lips would crack up and I would gag because of a very dry throat. I couldn't bring along my Camelpak. It would look fucking ridiculous and I don't really need 3 litres of water.

So I took a walk around Queensway Shopping Centre and found the perfect waist pack to bring along for long runs and skate sessions! Something which catered to my storage (car keys, MP3 player, handphone, wallet) and hydration needs.

Ultimate Direction (Access) Waist Pack.

The Ultimate Direction - Access waist pack is going for $39 at :

KOBE 2000
QUEENSWAY SHOPPING CENTRE
#02-37B
HP : 96700748 (Uncle Chan)

The shop owner, 67 year-old Uncle Chan is an avid marathoner and Ironman athlete, with lots of advice to share with everyone who walks into his shop.

It feels so good now to be able to skate long distances without worrying about water. I'll just stop at the public toilets and fill up the bottle with tap water.

Jessie and I just received an email, which made us so freaking happy, we ran round the whole bloody house screaming.

The university has advised that you would be getting the following credits based on the Adv Dip studies that you have obtained from PSB Academy.

IRHR 1001 (exempted for this semester)
ECON 1001 (exempted for this semester)
STAT 1060 (exempted for this semester)
LEGL 1001 (future semesters)
MKTG 2100 (future semesters)
EBUS 2000 (future semesters)
IRHR 2270 (future semesters)

Initially, we had to sit for 4 papers in December. Now, we have only 1 paper left, which is Accounting! Time to go all out for it, and no excuses for not doing well this time round.

With so much hype surrounding the Advanced Medical Directive now, I'm considering getting one done.

An Advance Medical Directive (AMD) is a legal document signed by a person in advance to indicate that he does not wish to have any extraordinary life-sustaining treatment to prolong his life in the event if he becomes terminally ill and unconscious.

Honestly speaking, I'll rather go in peace.

Medical fees alone will eventually wipe out all our savings. I don't want to be a burden to my family. The money can be better used by Jessie to finance my child's education and pay for all the necessities.

Sushi art.

Caleb got hooked!

Jessie and I went on a night fishing trip with Caleb, Kenny and Jhene. We rented bicycles and went down to some park connector stretch after Changi SAFRA to fish (some 10km away from the central part of East Coast). Kenny and Jhene were both seasoned fishermen! They helped us to set up our rods, taught us how to cast our lines and had superb detangling skills!

The final score :

Caleb - 2 (he got really lucky!)
Kenny - 1
Jhene - 1
Jessie and I - 0 (heh, I was enjoying my beer while watching Jessie fish)

Someone fished up a gunny sack as well, I forgot who! Anyways, a big thank you to Kenny and Jhene for teaching us how to fish! More fishing trips to come!

Jessie and I were at Bukit Merah Central when wheelchair-bound lottery-ticket seller asked if we could push him to McDonalds. We agreed of course. He was an elderly man who was partially paralyzed and had slurred speech. When we reach McDonalds, I asked if he needed us to get him something to drink or eat.

Old man : No need. Just leave me here. Thanks.
Me : You waiting for someone? Or selling lottery tickets here?
Old man : No. Just waiting for another passer by to push me back home.
Me : Where do you live?
Old man : Bukit Merah View. Further down, opposite the road.
Me : Let's go then. Just tell me where to go.

Jessie helped him to keep all his lottery tickets and we brought him back home. It was quite a distance away. Jessie diverted human traffic along the pavements, while I pushed the wheelchair. I could feel the fresh scabs on my right knee cracking up and a bit of pus oozing out as I maneuvered the wheelchair up and down the ramps.

Old man : Here, leave me outside this flat, next to the wall.
Me : You don't want to go in?
Old man : I'm waiting for someone. He's coming home to bring me in.
Me : You want me to get you something to eat or drink?
Old man : No, it's ok. Thanks for the help.

It is sad to know that he would normally have to ask for help TWICE to get home (first to McDonalds, then from McDonalds to his place). This is something I still don't understand.

Ah... the convenience and thrill of ordering something online. 8 days after I placed my order with Bont Store...

In perfect condition.

1. 8 X Bont G3 100mm 85A wheels.
2. 1 set of ABEC 7 race bearings.
3. 8 X frame axles.

SGD 194 in total (inclusive of shipment).

Time : 2230 H
Venue :

Accident map.

Activity being carried out

20km skate from Fort Road to Changi SAFRA. I missed my session in the morning due to the rain and thought it might be a better idea to go skate in the night when the rain has stopped.

Injuries caused by

Wet and slippery pedestrian crossing. It rained almost the entire day. Took the corner at about 16, skidded off the crossing, and in the process, left some flesh on the road.

Immediate action taken

Stunned as fuck! Normally, I would just fall and get up. Just some flesh wounds here and there. But this, oh fuck! I couldn't even get up because of the pain. A few cyclists and skaters, who were being really nice, stopped by and tried to help me on my feet. Some saw the bloody wound and asked if I needed an ambulance. Heheh! I managed to get up and skate back 5km to Fort Road, where my car was parked. The amount of pain during that skate back was worse.

I can't really bend my fucking right knee now, and a nice sharp pain when I put my weight on it. Hopefully nothing's broken!

I am lucky because : I fell at the first 5km. Can't imagine what would have happened if I had fallen at Changi SAFRA. That place is so dark, lonely, creepy and hell of a fucking skate back to the car. Thankfully only the front part of the boot has peeled off. Going to snip the PVC off and duct tape it up.
I am unlucky because : I'm not sure if I can still run tomorrow. I know for sure it's going to be a long week before I'm back to skating again.
Lesson learnt : I'll still skate on slippery roads. But i'll take the corners like a wimp, I swear. Please, if you do skate or cycle along that stretch of road, watch out for the fucking huge and slippery pedestrian crossing on rainy days!

Pictures

Thanks William, Caleb (who even added a doctor friend in a MSN conversation), Jessie and Michelle for all the concerns! I'll go see a doc tomorrow if I still have problems moving the leg!

(From left) Jessie, me, Alec and Lei Lei.

Dinner last night with Alec and his girlfriend, Lei Lei, at Ministry of Food @ Marina Square. Alec, my former neighbour, flew over from Texas to attend the Asian Youth Energy Summit.

According to Jessie, perfume is meant to be sprayed on the skin.

Ah, that explains all the yellow stains on my white shirts.

A father just got sentenced to jail for caning his boy 100 times in 2 hours. That's a rate of 50 strokes/hour. Moreover, two rattan canes were tied together. Divide the rate by two and it will only be 25 strokes/hour. Fucking newspapers just love to exaggerate everything.

The boy, still at a very young age, was caught lying, not handing in his homework and even played truant. There's no good reason why the father shouldn't hit his boy. It shouldn't even be regarded as child abuse. The dad wasn't drunk. He didn't come home to wreck havoc before passing out on the sofa. He hit his kid for a fucking good reason! The kid was spiraling out of control. He needed to re-tune his kid's mind to the right frequency.

What's 25 strokes/hour? When I was in primary school, I would often fail my Chinese spelling tests. So my mum would sit next to me and watch me memorize those Chinese characters. Every single fucking stroke I got wrong, I was caned a few times. On the arms, on the back, on the head... you name it. The pages of my exercise book were often stuck together because my tears would roll down my cheeks and onto the book.

I still appreciate the whackings I've received as a kid. They were for my own good I know, but what I needed more than just solely the do-or-die, were a few motivational speeches, explaining why I needed to study hard.

While some children are able to grow up without any intervention, sadly, most children need to be whacked. My parents got whacked as kids, and look, no problems now. Your parents probably got whacked too, and look at how fine they've turned out. Try it on your kid now, you go to jail, especially when you hit him more than 25 times/hour.

Take a look at some of the students I've given tuition to. Glue sniffing, alcohol and ciga-fucking-rettes, at such a young age. For one girl especially, every English session, she would tell me stories like..

"You know that day... my friends and I went up to HDB block. Then we sniff glue. Stone lei. Sniff and smoke. High sia. My friend just sit there and laugh to himself. Sometimes we go multi-storey carpark.. Then got police come to screen us, hahaha, I disappear. Quickly take taxi run off. And got one time, all of us sit there, stone and sniff glue because one of them the next day go in Boys Home already."

The girl goes to school whenever she feels like it, and her mum has written dozens of letters to the school explaining her absence. Mum never hits them. She loves them to bits, and she's always thinking... Maybe one day, my children will realize they're wrong. The girl even told her mum to fuck off, right in front of my face. Nothing happened to her, the mum even jokingly gave her a disapproving look. Fuck!

Hit her! Like once! Slap her right across the fucking face for once! What? You expect the tuition teacher to do that for you?

Will I hit my kids next time? Of course! When I notice that they're spiraling out of control, I will! I won't hit them too hard. Just sufficient to make them realize, regret, cower and cry. If my kids ever say fuck you to me, boy, they're in for a broken jaw.

Gosh, what is this world fucking coming to? Brace yourself for more bad guys and crimes in the future, as more and more parents get jailed for disciplining their kids.

Oh yes, my student passed her English exam, for the first time this year. I'm glad I've done my job. But she fucking failed the rest of the subjects, which she had received no tuition for. All the effort has gone down the drain. She will probably repeat her current academic year.

Running tights.

Mizuno - womens medium.
Nike - womens small.

Don't laugh... yet. You... er... honestly...can't tell the fucking difference between mens and womens right? All the shopkeepers assured me that no one would be able to tell the difference.

Gosh, why can't they make mens running tights in XS or even XXS sizes?

Japanese TV show, showing how to shut up a baby. Courtesy of William.

(From left) William, Wenjie, Jessie and I.

William brought us to Tonkichi @ Suntec. The tonkatsu curry (deep fried pork chop) was simply delicious! We figured out that the good food would provide us with more energy to laugh later on!

Rock Auditorium at Suntec.

We didn't manage to snap a shot of Russell Peters and his fat sidekick Angelo Tsarouchas as no cameras were allowed during the show and there was no autograph session at the end of the show. But we laughed until our throats went dry. It was a totally different feeling watching Russell on Youtube as compared to his live performance. Category C seat views weren't that restricted at all. We could still see the Russell from the back, and the big projection screens gave us an even better view of his facial expressions.

Throughout the performance, he picked a few unfortunate guys from the audience :

1) Tony - The guy with the serious look.
2) J.R - The guy who spent most of his years growing up in different Asian countries. Russell asked if his dad had an Asian fetish.
3) Some big-sized Chinese Indian guy Russell called a Chin-dian, and said he looked like Buddha without the pointy ears.
4) Some other people from Scotland and England.

Even the guy who stood up to go to the toilet wasn't spared!

Russell : Hey, where are you going?
Guy : *stunned and on big screen* Toilet.
Russell : Then go! Otherwise you'll piss yourself.

Russell delivered more jokes on the French people this time, while we were expecting to hear his Cantonese accent. Nevertheless it was still very funny.

His sidekick Angelo Tsarouchas was good. He set the mood right with funny jokes mocking fat people. And he looked huge on stage! Like almost twice Russell's size!

Even after the show ended at 10 pm, the crowd still continued cheering. Russell came out once again and delivered his famous "Ryan's Mum" story in his 30-minute long encore segment

Just in case you don't know who Russell Peters is, go watch one of his performances on Youtube. Here's "Outsourced" for you, all 8 parts of it:

Part 1 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZsLL-M_Dik
Part 2 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ViG_BItanY
Part 3 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Or8CJW3ed8
Part 4 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Iq3S4yAglk
Part 5 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3FiRmVAUfE
Part 6 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAErrHtec8c
Part 7 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5bl0bxXTy0
Part 8 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9KlA_Wxff4

I'm blushing!

You guys did it again! Thank you my dear Jessie and my dear friends for the wonderful 23rd birthday surprise. It popped up a week early this time, on 25th of October, totally throwing me off guard!

For years straight, you guys always had me fooled into thinking we're just having a normal dinner. Then one by one, all of you start popping up with birthday greetings and presents!

We had dinner at Absolute Haven @ 70 Princep Street, before heading down to Timbre @ Substation.

(From left) Caleb, me, Jessie, Kenneth, Elgene, Robert, Michelle and Pang.

Jhene, Kenny, Jessie and I

Me, Jessie and Kenneth.

Me, Wenjie and Sylwyn.

The three musketeers. Caleb, Elgene and Pang.

Receiving the present from William, with cake on my face!

Big thank you to those took time off their busy schedule to come to the party :
1) Pang
2) Elgene
4) Caleb
5) William
6) Wenjie & Sylwyn
7) Kenn & Jhene
8) Kenneth
9) Michelle (my sis) and Robert

Birthday cake!

Thank you my dear Jessie for the Canele Patisserie chocolate cake.

Thank you all for the presents!

Thank you all for the presents as well :
1) Jessie for the boxers and skates
2) Elgene, Pang, William, Michelle, Robert and Caleb for the pair of SEBA FR2 skates.
3) Kenny and Jhene for the bottle of Burberrys perfume
4) And Caleb, for the designated smoking area sign which I have proudly displayed in my room!

Birthday card from my schoolmates.

I want to thank my schoolmates as well! Nurul especially, for designing the card and filling it up with greetings from all the wonderful people in school. Not forgetting to mention the tons of SMS, Facebook, MSN messages and phonecalls I received over the week!

Thank you all for making me the happiest guy in the world!

A lot more photos available in the album...

Photo album : http://www.flickr.com/photos/sukianto/sets/72157608558814111/

Ahem! Thank you to my friends for shoving me up on stage with The Goodfellas at Timbre. I got owned big time!

Watch the video : Partying with the Goodfellas at Timbre

[ Update ]

Coffee Lounge @ Goodwood Park Hotel.

Slice of cake from Jessie.

Jessie surprised me with high tea buffet at the Coffee Lounge @ Goodwood Park Hotel. Thank you so much my girl!