Isn’t this 84 year old man amazing? He has participated in 44 marathons after the age of 55! Well I’m quite proud of myself too.. hehe.  My regular running distance stretches to 10.40km now. It takes about 1 hour 10 mins to complete the entire run. My aim is to keep it within an hour. After running for about 1 month, my breathing has improved tremendously and I do not find myself desperately gasping for oxygen anymore . During the run on Monday, I sprinted at the last kilometer and amazingly my lungs could carry all the oxygen I needed. It felt great.

On the weekend, I would run on the 7km forest trail along MacRitchie Reservoir in the early morning with Gary, my buddy. Running on the treacherous stony trail is much tougher but it’s a great workout to strengthen the leg muscles. It is also a great opportunity for a family outing. Mom loves the morning walk at the reservoir, while my princess Charmaine hopes she could shed some weight with her walk-and-jog exercises. At the end of the workout, we would make our way to the hawker centre at Shunfu for a scrumptious breakfast – fried beehoon, chee cheong fun, prawn mee, coffee, ice milo, wanton noodles, you name it. I guess breakfast is the highlight of the morning. haha.

Finally I get the chance to take a snapshot of the coffee from the regular stall which I patronize every morning. On a few occasions, I brought the camera along but didn’t get the chance to take a photo. I highly recommend this coffee stall if anyone is looking for a cuppa at Bukit Timah in the morning. Opening hours is 6.30am-2.00pm. There are only 2 coffee stalls which are open in the morning, so it is pretty easy to find it. Just look out for the one with the longest queue and you won’t go wrong. Oh I forgot to mention the price – this tiny small cup cost $0.80. It’s 10 cents more expensive than most regular stalls but it is definitely worth it!

This book has been keeping me busy for the past 2 weeks. Man, I’m not done digesting it yet. The crazy ‘e-business’ module simply overwhelms me with readings - articles, project briefs, journals, textbooks, course notes etc. On top of that, a group project is due in 2 weeks and a couple of mandatory online discussions too. The professor must be mad.

I just can’t wait to get over the six compulsory business modules before getting on to the tourism ones. Gosh, I’m only on the third module at present!

Just last month, the marathon-like finance formulas triggered me to withdraw from the Finance module. Unfortunately, it is a compulsory module, which means I would have to re-visit my nightmare in time to come.

Occassionally when I get all frustrated with studies, I would question myself if I’ve made the right decision in taking up the Masters programme. It is much harder than what I’ve imagined. Working and studying at the same time? Bad idea.  After slogging the whole day at work, it takes lots of self discipline to open up a book and crack your head to understand the contents.  In spite of this, I’ve learnt to become more positive and imagine studying as running, testing my endurance and stamina when the going gets tough.

And since I’ve pockets of free time in between my work now, it’s time to get back to ‘Place to Space’!

My breakfast companion is the daily newspaper – The Strait Times.  Over the years, I’ve developed a morning ritual of reading the daily newspaper while enjoying a cup of ’kopi’ from the regular coffee joint at the hawker centre. Wait a minute, isn’t it also the routine of a retiree who spends the morning sipping his regular cup of kopi, while the world passes him by?? Although holding the newspapers by the armpits isn’t the coolest thing to do while waiting in the coffee queue, I certainly enjoy the idyllic settings of the hawker centre in the morning.

So, the news which are worthy to me during today’s breakfast routine includes :

1. Decline casino’s gaming revenue in Macau due to intense competition. (The outlook was so  promising during my trip to Macau with STB and MOM last year)

2. Lake Toya at Hokkaido: Venue of the upcoming G8 summit (stunning!!).

3. The NS fellow who illegally smuggled SAR21 out of the camp received a sentence of 9 years imprisonment and 18 strokes of canning.

Yes, the weekend is finally here.  It’s been eons since I needed weekends to get away from work. And it’s neither the workload nor the work pressure which makes me yearn for the weekend. On the contrary, work has been miminal, I’m way ahead of schedules and I’ve been knocking off at 4pm. But for the past few days, I feel detached from work and everything else. 

The ’feel good’ index is at all time low, free falling like SGX, DOW JONES and FTSE. In a bear market, a day’s gain of a few index points will be quickly wiped out by the free falling on the next day. My mood seems to resemble the rythmn of a bear market - Hard to feel happy, easy to become unhappy.

Occassionally, I wonder if these are symptoms of a depression. Depression usually creeps in silently, without the person realizing that he is already in a state of depression.  What’s more frightening is that there is a high correlationship between sucides and depressions.  They are the silent killers.

The current bear market of my mood is probably due to the struggle to fit into the system.  It’s like an odd piece of a jigsaw puzzle that couldn’t find its place in a picture. Perhaps this odd piece did not belong to that jigsaw puzzle in the first place, but it still forces itself to find the ‘right’ fit. It squeezed its way to fit in with the neighbouring pieces, although the corners just couldn’t fit nicely. So the more it wants to be in harmony with the rest of the jigsaw pieces, the more uncomfortable it becomes. Eventually, fustrations and unhappiness grew over the years. Well, it is pretty much like wearing a pair of shoes which is one size smaller than your feet.

I managed to secure a medical excuse, so that I could perform light duties, and I  bunked in with 4 other ‘thirty something’ guys during the in-camp. Except for Gary my buddy, I vaguely knew the rest but I’ve seen their faces during the previous reservists. Eventually we got to know each other better over the next few days. Here are the characters:

Mr. Chong – Owner of 3 cellphone stores. Father of 2.

Mr. Quan – Sales engineer of a heat exchange company. Married, father of none. 

Eric – SIA Pilot. Single  

Gary – My best friend and father of a new born

And this is our routine each day in a chronological order:

8am – Breakfast at canteen,

9am – Siesta

10am -Guys talk

12pm – Lunch at cookhouse

1pm – Siesta

3pm – Guys talk Part 2

4pm – Coffee break

5pm- Dinner

5.30pm- Bookout to go home.

What do guys in their 30s talk about? Hot chicks? Oh well…I’m afraid not. We talked about more interesting stuff. So here’s the male version (singaporean men) of Sex and The City:

1. Which telco has the the best value and service telcos – SingTel, Starhub or M1?

2. Does SingTel really has superior network coverage over Starhub?

3. The exorbitant IDD charges of M1

4. The jaw dropping Mio package which SingTel is currently offering 

That lasted an hour before moving onto the next topic on cars:

1. Which Japanese carmaker is the best? Toyota versus Honda. Mr Quan thinks Honda is the best. (Hey what about Subaru??)

2. The ‘effectiveness’ of Singapore’s infamous ERP system.  

3. Does Beemer really sucks? Well, Mr. Quan thinks Volvo is the best. I rest my case.

4. Is Subaru WRX the worst turbo engine car? Mr Quan thinks so. And of course I retaliated!

Well like it or not, my friends have moved on to their next phase of life. Don’t get me wrong, I’m truly happy for them. It’s just that our ‘get together’ sessions in the last 2 years aren’t the same like it used to be. Our gatherings used to be in pubs and clubs and it was about alcohol and getting wasted.  We still drink now but it’s different, it’s more tamed with more family orientated activities. Or perhaps the impetuous energy within us have diminished? After all we aren’t as young as we used to be.

Ever watched The Bucket List? It was the best performance I’ve seen of Jack Nicholson among many movies he acted. I thought Morgan Freeman was a perfect compliment in his role as a dying cancer patient, like Nicholson. In the movie, Freeman told Nicholson that a survey once asked people if they could know in advance the exact date of their death, would they want to know?  95% of them said ‘No’. Surprised?  

In the recent years, I’ve been talking to friends about dying and how I really want to live my dreams before dying. And somehow during the conversations, I noticed 3 interesting notions about death:

1. Death can be a motivating factor 

2. Death is so frightening that people don’t even wanna talk about it

3. Death? They haven’t thought about it yet.

Naturally I belong to the first notion. I thought of the moments before dying. And I consistently wonder what will be on my mind during the final moments. I think my thoughts will be – What have I done for myself? What have I done for others? Did I live my live to the fullest? If I’ve tried what I wanted to do in my lifetime – successful or not, I’ll die with my eyes closed and my heart open.

What about you?

21st June, Saturday. (the weather was sunny, thank god)

6am -Moved out from camp to armored vehicles live firing range  

7am – Told to setup admin point for living firing

8am – Told to help out at ammunition (ammo) point

9am – Commencement of Live Firing. It is also the commencement of the Waiting Game for 12 of us. 

10am – We did nothing. Some started to doze off

11am – Told to count of expanded ammo 

12pm – Lunch

1pm – We did nothing. A few started to doze off

2pm – Did nothing. Half of us doze off

3pm – Still nothing. All of us doze off

4pm – Still nothing. Some woken by the noise of firing

5pm – Counted expanded ammunition

6pm – Told to reset target board for night, followed by dinner

7pm – Did nothing

8pm – Night firing commenced. 12 of us happily watched ‘fireworks’ of the illuminated rounds

9pm – Did nothing. Some doze off.

10pm – Did nothing

11pm – End of Live Firing. Told to help out ammo point and returned expanded rounds.

12am – Waiting to bring expanded rounds to ammo dump

1am – Arrived at ammo dump and off loaded

2am – Ammo IC hand over the ammo, while 12 of us knocked out in the truck.

3am – Finally returned to camp

4am – Got home

My consolation was watching the beautiful sunset at Area D for the last time. The firing platform arches over an empty land which stretches 1 km ahead. Standing on the platform, you see a beautiful view of the open sky and canopy of treetops. Since there was nothing to do, I stood still on the platform with my eyes closed, listening to the songs on my ipod and feeling the evening breeze sweeping gently on my face. As the sky grew darker, the stars and moon began glistening brightly at night. There are no city lights competing with mother nature in this restricted military area. I savored the moments until the firing disrupted the tranquility.  The sunset, evening breeze and stars of Area D is what I hope to remember my last in-camp. There are 5 more days to go!

p/s: Unfortunately photography of military compound is a violation of military laws, othewise I would have taken a photograph of the scenary. So here’s a snapshot of my helmet with camo net. 

Experimented a Loewe handbag with 2 lights on a gold gloss paper today. No photoshop is done on the image.