army half marathon 07!

Shagged.Shagged.Shagged.

Received a wonderful surprise on Friday night from the guys at camp with instructions to book in yesterday at 9pm when the actual plan was to report there directly.

Ladies and gentlemen, even though ensuring that you are adequately hydrated is of utmost importance before running a long distance, please do not drink too much just before you are going to sleep! I couldn't sleep for like 3 hours cause I had to go to the toilet to pee every 30 mins. Grrr.

So we woke up at 0430hours(!) and had our 'breakfast' of 2 nightsnacks of buns (lucky thing I expected lousy breakfast and brought my kitkat bar) and off we went. It was a really bad start to the day as my stomach was acting up and I rushed to the toilet the moment we reached the assembly area. It was extremely stressful while shitting cause the stupid lock didn't work and the toilet paper was becoming alarmingly scarce. Lucky thing I managed to finish up nicely with whatever was left of the toilet paper. The end product, a totally sweat-drenched me but overall, satisfied and good to go. Haha.

The run itself was great. This was especially since my shin splints didn't act up. It felt really liberating running through the CBD area and the Nicoll Highway in the morning with the old skool songs playing in my handphone (especially the lean on me song from last year's Stan Chart's marathon advert song).

and 100 plus is such a lifesaver during the course of the run!

Oh and congrats to my division, 2PDF for being the overall winners for the division level. We beat the mighty commandos by 40 mins! Haha.

Here are some pics taken just after I crossed the finish line.

I am the owner of a brand new Marshall stack amp!


Ok fine. Not THAT stack amp. Think much smaller



Cute huh? Its only like 15cm tall and it sounds much better than my Ibanez TB25r which I sold off. Now it fits snugly on my table and it doesn't collect dust.

Wanted to blog on Saturday but blogger was down. Anyway the significance of that day was that I finally bought my digital camera!

Ok so the image of the camera that I ripped it from is kindda blurry but I still think that its a beauty.

Anyway the camera was last week's news. Today was significant cause of two things.

1. My promotion request finally got sent out!
2. IPPT Silver!!

I bought the IPPT badge from Beach Road already. Oh plus I bought a new medic armband which was kindda cheapskate but hey its only $5 and I lost mine.

Right. I'm finally updating. Lots of things have happened and I know that I'll miss out on a few of them even though they were quite significant. Lets break it down to allow for an easier read.

1. Jazz Infatuation

I'm getting quite intrigued by the melodious allure of jazz. This was especially after hearing the jazz version of "I'm All Out Love". This allure was quite costly though as it led me to buy "Jazz in the City 1", "Jazz in the City 2", 2 of Buble's CDs and "Closer: When Pop Meets Jazz" just about an hour ago. Its really tranquil and wonderful to listen to at night when I'm curled up in a good read which brings me to my next paragraph.

2. Books Galore!

Book sales have been aplenty with me visiting the Popular/Harris book sale at Suntec City first and buying an encyclopedia on Greek mythology, some teenage self-help book by the writer of "the 7 Habbits of Highly Successful People" as well as a summarised version of Sun Tzi's "The Art of War". About a week later, I visited PageOne at Vivocity and bought the full version which was only retailing for about $5. Hah! Not all of my books cost money though with me recently finishing "Deception Point" by Dan Brown. Yes I know, its a shameless mass-touted best-seller but hey, it was quite a decent read. Right now, I'm reading a collection of Gothic short stories by Joyce Carol Oates. She was one of the authors whose works I enjoyed studying back in JC. Ohh plus Kassim lent me "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hossenni. His previous book, "The Kite Runner" was really good.


3. Death

A servicewoman from my unit died from my unit in a motorcycle accident. The tragic thing was that she was supppsed to get married 6 days later. My bunkmate showed me the wedding invitation card and it was just sad. My prayers goes out to her and her family

4. Others

I'm rather beat by training both in camp and that of my own. My body is aching and running a fever from being thrown on the ground so many times. My weekend run seems to be improving with me having quite an OK 10km++ run in under an hour. Its not close enough for me to reach my AHM goal but oh well. Theres always the 12km category as well as the Standard Chartered Marathon at the end of the year.