It just felt exhilarating, going off on a 14km run. Here at the top is the view near the Rod Laver arena.

The run was like running up a hill. The first 5 or so kilometres I felt dandy just running and while I was gulping down air, I felt alright just continuing. The next 4 or so kilometres, I just felt like an engine in the morning not quite being able to start. I’d run a couple of minutes and stop to walk for half a minute or so before going on again. Towards the 10km mark, I couldn’t really feel anything anymore and just kept going, stopping less frequently and just before the end I managed to make a sprint for the finishing line.

The final time was 1 hour 32 minutes and 1 second. Heh, It was sort of within my prediction that I’d run an hour and the half, factoring in fatigue into the equation. It was averaged out to be around 9.4km/h.

Unlike 2007, I didn’t feel like broken machinery after the run and felt that my feet were supported well throughout the run. It could be a more balanced way of running, a newer pair of shoes, who knows.

Heh, just keen to run now and I’d really like to improve on my time. I felt that the only part of my body not keeping up was my heart. I don’t have the stamina to maintain a decent stride. Will start running again after the Easter break.

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The weather has cooled down a bit, and a jacket is the more customary apparel for the outdoors these days. Feels very much like the April I remember.

Heading off to Mildura tomorrow. Heh, just to get away from the city a bit, and do some sight seeing. Should be different and interesting, looking forward to it.

After seeing lots of them in the bakeries and shops, Vyanne decided to make her own hot cross buns. Heh, they are pretty good fresh from the oven and it melts so well in your mouth with butter. Mmmm…

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Yes, the oyster is as yummy as it looks. Heh, my camera is relatively bulky compared to a simple point and shoot, but even with the extra weight, the pictures from it will satisfy me, so I don’t quite mind carrying it with me most of the time. My favourite lens of all time now is the 28mm f/2.8 AIS Nikon I bought second hand from B&H Photo in New York while I was there. The lens is almost as old as I am, has no autofocus, yet its characteristics endear itself to my kind of photography. I like to shoot closeups of items and this lens focuses as close as 20cm, giving you nice closeups of objects and with the 1.5x crop of my DSLR, makes composition even easier. It works well in low light and the sort of 50mm view from a 35mm film format point of view makes it good for generic snapshots outside. The best thing is that it’s light and compact, so it makes it good for when you just want to casually lug your camera along. Hence, I generally have this lens sitting on my camera most of the time.

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First weekend I don’t have many plans going on. Just want to chill and relax before the run tomorrow. Heh, not sure how I will fair but I’m thinking I should just be consistent. Will allocate a minute of time to taking photos on the Bolte bridge when I arrive on it, having missed out last time because I didn’t have a portable camera to bring along. Will also try not to ingest too much water and need to stop to the loo, which takes up another 2 or 3 minutes. Heh, it’s a fine balance to achieve that as you’d be sweating profusely just running down the track. Just raring to go now run now.

Busy month ahead. This weekend there is my 14km run. Next weekend is the Easter break and heading up to Mildura to visit cousin who has been posted at the local hospital there. What’s there to do in Mildura? Not quite sure yet but I’m pretty sure that we will come up with something. My mind can’t seem to think beyond the upcoming two weeks and the only other thing of note would be the Sydney trip at the end of the month to try out Tetsuya’s (apparently one of the top 10 restaurants in the world).

I have a new design done up. Do I like it? I think it’s adequate for the time being. I’m saying adequate because I’m not proficient in enough skill sets to do everything to the standard I’d like it to be. Ideally, I’d like to be an illustrator, typographer, html coder, php programmer, sql programmer and javascript programmer. The only thing I feel I’m really good at in that whole lot is writing html code. With the programming languages, I can modify snippets of code to fit my own needs but creating them from scratch requires endless amounts of time going back and forth Google trying to assemble Frankenstein like code. My weakest bit is in illustration and typography, which is basically what I wish I could do best as they are essentially how your website looks.

The next phase of the design is to code the static html page I’ve designed into the WordPress template. I also need to pull out the entries in the database and modify some of the content to fit into the new design. Don’t have a go live date yet, but I’d rather it be sooner than later. Easier to put it up and adjust it along the way than to endlessly tweak it, although I have run into the issue that once it goes live, I’ll just leave it as is! I will see how it goes.

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Semi dreaming again, wondering if I could put more effort into drawing or making music, and become better at it as I have become good at certain things I do. Unfortunately, some ideas come more easily to me than others, and creative art and rhythm aren’t really two things I’m inherently good at. Where talent falters, hard work will have to replace it. I’m really just thinking I should just grab a pencil/pen and pad, and expand on what I’ve been doodling on all these years. I’ve never really improved artistically since high school. Lots of ideas just set in stone as I pursued other interests. Heh, I guess that’s why we dream.