The Truth about Running.

After endless weekends of slacking, snacking and suppering, I've come to realise that something needs to be done before my bad habits spin out of control. After many failed attempts at swimming on weekends (it always rains when we were poised for a dip), Dear has been complaining that I have a fat neck, 2 year old Javier boy (her nephew) screams FAT BOTAK KORKOR when I step into their flat, and I am starting to snore so much that while I am sleeping, the girlfriend wakes up in the dead of the night to record my snoring in sheer amusement.

Unable to take the critisms anymore, I heeded Alex Kor's advice and chased procrastination out of the door and welcomed 印尼小弟 (initiative) last Thursday, planning my 2 months Slash and Burn diet regime. In reverse to the rapid deforestation in Indonesia where the 印尼小弟s (the children of Indonesia) were held responsible for, I did what most fatsos do: Discount my red meat intake and burn fats by.. exercising!

Now, the thought of commanding your body to move involuntarily after a hard day's work might sound like a bad idea. Often, this familiar sentence will ring in our mind.

哇啦唔， 死爸累咯 !

Frankly speaking, this is a very powerful verse, more powerful than the Allelujah or homochaneh. It totally disables your limbs, render you useless and not only that, prompts you to find some form of leisure to waste your evening away and build those tummy fats like Lego. We are all guilty of that, aren't we? To overcome this, I just did some HTML editing to the above sentence:

哇啦唔， 死爸累咯 !

Tada! The positive vibes then kicked in: Running shoes, singlet, and the 8-pack abs I had when I was in Secondary School. No joke, we Maris Stella Scouts always have hardcore end-of-the-year camps where your daily activities consists of push-ups, running, sit-ups and the list goes on and on. During these 7 days, we face the ground doing push-ups more often then we walk!

So began my daily running sessions! Dear was also motivated to run together and she got herself a neat pair of Adidas running shoes from Hong Kong. The Adidas there is cheeaaap! Well, can see her putting in effort but she always get 'punctured' after 100 or 200 metres at Bishan Park last Sunday. Maybe that's why they say we have 'spare tyres'. Hmm.

This particular advice from Sergeant Ong, an instructor, was etched into my mind after I left SISPEC:

'It's up to you whether you want to run or not.'

And that's very true! As simple as it sounds, it is actually up to you whether you want to think that you want to run, or just relak one corner. This logic also applies to many faculties in life; Being optimistic, stay happy at work, or trying to be interested during a boring sex episode with your wife of 20 years.

I've always remembered his advice because he resembles those chubby Hong Kong actors, and he can still run 9 minutes flat for his 2.4km! Thus, it actually makes no difference whether you are fat or thin. Even the great Tom Whittaker, a handicapped, could conquer Mount Everest, so why can't you push yourself to complete a mere 2.4km?

It also helps that you keep reciting these words in your mind while running:

1. I am a fat botak.
2. I want to overtake that slowcoach in front of me.
3. I want to shed 7 kg!

You'll find that your pace will pick up, the distance covered will be further, and an increasing number of times that you spit! Yes I am slightly overweight at a height of 174.5cm and 77kg. My BMI is 25.4 now. The healthy BMI range is 18.5 - 24.9, so the goal is to hit 70kg after 2 months and I'm not going to slack anytime. Super determined!

I am so determined that after 20 mins of running and sit-ups, my underwear had to bear the brunt of an intense workout, via my porous fat ass.

Front

Back

Eh.. seems like my 印尼小弟 (aka This Little Brother?) is literally humming-

No Sweat!
Chicken Feed!
HAHA!
All the Way!

Damn. Not convinced he doesn't sweat. Let's flip it inside-out and see

Reversed front

Tarmarde. He's nonchalant. Oops I forgot it's not his job to sweat. But to drool instead!

Reversed back

Phew! Underwear also wet! Maybe I'll borrow Javier's Pampers for the next run.

Hope I get your full support too so I'm selling my wet undies to you. $5 lelong and it's free size somemore! For the perverts out there, please PM me for discount or any special requests like white/yellow stains, blood etc. Strictly PM only and no leaving of tagboard messages hor tolong.

OMG

1st H1N1 case found in Tan Tock Seng!!!

All to avoid going to Novena area!

Wait wait wait

Before I publish my HK part 2 post, I wanna say something here.

I hate IPOOT and ITOON!

Why can't one simply sync and NOT erase? I cannot understand why Apple don't want to introduce Drag and Drop functionality?

Can someone teach me an easier way out, please?

Ganbatte ! You can do it, Xingyi !

You see Xingyi, the problem with having a poor command in English will result in people having to clarify things with you over and over again.

Let's take the minutes that I have edited for that colleague, L, as an example to prove my point. L spent one whole week trying to compile some minutes for a long meeting. After that, L passed to me to help her do some vocab check. When I first got it, I was like totally stunned by what L wrote.

For example:
CEO wants Jim to liaise of WebAsia handling the reports to go through.

Like this kind one lor ! I had to ask L to explain to me in Chinese and in the end it means:

CEO expects Jim to liaise with WebAsia on the Report Creation module, and then go through it before launching.

It's like L never elaborated on the tasks so it altogether doesn't sound logical to me.
Not only that, L likes to act smart and change a word into a synonym that none of us commoners understand.

For example, do you know what elucidate means? Peter elucidates to CEO that there will be a need to purchase more servers to support the software.

L can just go highlighting any word L wants and change into another synonym of choice, and at times the synonym just wouldn't fit into the whole paragraph; Either the nature of the word is too strong or too weak for its purpose in the sentence. So it became an interview session with L to clarify what L really wants. It's freaking pekchek lor.

But L really made an effort to improve during the past 3 months. Nowadays when L asked me to check the vocab, I see it is almost near perfect! Being one who do not usually compliment others (you can ask Kalene, she'll vouch for that), I found myself complimenting L nowadays because the improvement is really significant. At least I really understand what L wants to express.

I guess commenting that your English sucks is not a very encouraging statement. For that, I apologise here to you in front of everyone.

Sorry Xingyi !

To correct my former statement, it is the way you express your sentences that I feel is wrong. Sometimes it feels like the sentence structure is directly translated from Chinese. All languages have their sentence structure one mah, you'll really have to catch the drift, the flow of the sentences, to be able to write proper English. One humble advice which I normally do is to read novels or any short stories.

Nuff said, hope I don't let you have the impression that I look down on people who are lousy in English. I myself have to overcome a huge deficiency in my Chinese vocab too. Just that in the society nowadays, where English is the mainstream language used in corporate communications, we cannot afford to make silly mistakes. You haven't heard about my Indonesian Project Manager hor. That one lagi 吐血. After so many meetings she still don't get what our requirements for certain things are. In the end, my colleagues from the other departments do not feel like meeting up with her when we need to have meetings.

So well, I hope you are able to stomach what I say lor. Not trying to change or judge you but I feel that it's for your own good. =)

Shuang Shuang abit 不爽, can ??

As what the title suggests, I'll have to risk showing the guniang side of me by ranting.

1. I am 不爽 of my colleague..

.. being calculative when ___ feels that the workload is getting too heavy for ___ , and at the same time accusing me of using the internet TOO OFTEN.

My say is that I had my busy moments too, and when I am not busy, it means I have been efficient. All because I know how to compose my emails well and not ___ with a half-F'ed English. That's the part I hate most about them not putting in effort to brush up their English, and you also feel paiseh to correct them. But if you don't correct them, work processes will be delayed so in the end I lanlan have to correct.

And me using the internet? Oh I dare to admit I don't really use much. Not like some people surf this and that, and when I glance at their screen, the 'Cozycot' immediately switches to Outlook. Wow. How many emails do you need to reply?? If you really have done your work I don't think there's a need for you to minimize this and that lah.

I don't minimize my internet windows when someone comes to my desk, there's nothing to hide what. To this particular person, you may comment what you like but I hope you don't practise double standards and later when we talk about it, you deny it altogether.

Sickening.

2. My tenant is eating up my bandwidth at home!

To spare you the IT crap, in a wireless environment, you can configure which PC/laptop to be able to open its ports to all access. That is, minimum firewall protection will interfere with your downloading activities if you set you PC to be DMZ enabled, enabling a faster internet experience.

And at any one time, only one PC in that home network can be set to DMZ enabled mode.

My tenant, who actually had 'no problems at all' when I suggested an internet bandwidth downgrade, actually could not stand it further and openly set his PC to be DMZ enabled. Thus, my internet performance has been trickling to a halt one too many times.

Now how do I voice out my grievances to him in the most tactful manner? He's actually quite a nice guy who bothers to show my mum concern when she fractured her arm the other day (Not forgetting to treat us to his mum's speciality: Belachan Chilli that's made in Malaysia). Most prob, I guess I'll just get over with it lah. Just 不爽 so rant abit.

The only thing I 爽 is ...

My Botak Head!!

And by the way, abit lazy to do up a 2nd post for the HK trip. Want to share with our my experiences in the best way possible, so please bear with me and give me a few more days!

In the meantime, there are some refreshments in the kitchen so please help yourself.

Your kitchen lah. You want to come to my place meh.

Time for a change

Ditched my mane for something cooler, like Prison Break.

How's it?

But then again, the hairdresser decided that I should trim even further as the hair will grow faster than I think. Well, I let her decide then.




Tada! Dear loves it! Don't you love it too?