makumaro.net

The Run

Took a trip to the local Irish pub behind my apartment to just join in on the St Patrick’s Day celebrations. Lots of people turned up wearing green and just gulped down pints of beer. Had two pints of my favourite stuff. Guinness pints brings back memory of New York city, the drink of choice after work with my then boss.

* * *

The official time for my run has been released. It was 1 hour 41 minutes and 44 seconds. The interesting bit was I had completed the 10km mark at 1 hour 5 minutes. Heh, was hoping to be able to reach 10km within an hour but I only managed to get to 9km at that point, at which, my brain just switched off and I continued running as best I could. I just didn’t try any harder.

I’ve been wondering at the back of my mind. As we grow older, we start dismissing things more easily. “I’ve done that before”, “I’m too old to learn this”. Heh, maybe the latter bit doesn’t quite apply to me yet, but there are a lot of us who are so used to just learning enough on how to do something and they stick with it. It serves its purpose, and we are all busy people, so why bother to take the next step up? For the former, it represents a mental block at times. This is my third run or this is the umpteenth time I have to sit for an exam. Heh, the run is behind me now, an my cousin has mentioned the Melbourne Marathon in October. I think I might sign up for that, but I’m still deciding between the 10km and 21km track. Not wanting to be overambitious, my friend asks me why I torture myself. Heh, I do things simply because I can, and because I want to, and I’ve always had the need to prove that I can do better. It doesn’t quite translate into the effort though, as in hindsight, I didn’t push myself hard enough to start aching all over. Your body will adapt to conditions and while I have come a fair way (first time I jogged, I was unable to even complete a third of the course of Princes Park, last year at my peak, I could run two full rounds without slowing down for more than 10 seconds, as of today, I can probably do 5km at about 11-12km/hr without too much drama).

I’m just a little worried about my upcoming exam. I’ve done accounting bits in and out since 2000. Covered some of it when I was studying for exams during my first year of work. Covered some of it studying for the CFA exam. I’m studying it again now. It’s the case of I’ve done it before, but I can’t say I’m very good at it yet, just as I’ve been running on and off since I first trained for the Kid’s run in early 2007.

Heh, maybe as a kid, you have less responsibilities, you have no hindsight, no benchmarks (other than your peers) to set you up with, you basically just do. We should not get tired of rising to the occasion, of facing the challenge. Maybe it’s also because we have worked so hard previously and it’s wedged us into a style of living, that we are so afraid of giving it up, and we stick to what we know best. “I’ve always done it this way, the results have always been as per my expectations, I can live with it, so why change?”. Well, maybe not everything lives up to our expectations, and then we revert to our habit of complaining about everything around us as the reasoning behind our unhappiness.

* * *

I fall in and out of this trap, so some days can become really mundane and you see no light at the end of it all. Not going to get stuck in a loop, and I have to break the circuit every now and then just to keep things in perspective.

Number Six

I find that my taste profile for beers favour the darker ales, so when I picked up some White Rabbit to try (being a fan of other Little Creatures beers), I found it to be very good (in my opinion) and am currently a fan of it. It’s full of flavour with strong caramel notes to it. Always happy to pop open a bottle just to savour the refreshing taste.

* * *

So it’s the big six for this blog now. 6 years since I’ve started it. Wrote a silly and worthless first post. Heh, it’s moved on to a new home without hiccup and all the better for it, considering the blistering speed at which I upload stuff to it via FTP. Would like to do a few more enhancements but this weekend already seems chock full of activities with Chinese New Year just around the corner.

* * *

Took delivery of photos from Snapfish when they had their 9c per print offer. It’s a significant saving from the usual 15c, saving me about $10 for the 160 or so prints I made. Delivery charges were painful though, at $10, so it’s sort of like paying for 15c copies but free delivery.

Printed my pictures at the standard 4 x 6″. Only bad point to the photos were that the photo paper was on the thin and flimsy end, and would probably bend easily, unlike older film developed photos that had the postcard feel to it. Other than that, the pictures were great. Having a colour calibrated monitor really helps out here, as the pictures in my hand were exactly as they looked on my screen (well, from memory anyway, I didn’t compare them directly). Having a colour corrected monitor helps you to identify colour casts on pictures and fix them up (another side note that even with a calibrated monitor, you need a colour calibrated printer to go with it and my previous prints on the home printer were slightly off). Without colour correction, my monitor tends to be on the warm side, with white webpages imparting a slight yellow hue that you probably wouldn’t even take notice of. Images were sharp, and some colours a little too dark but mainly due to error on my part for overprocessing the images. They look fine on the screen but didn’t translate over to print.Your eyes can see more variation of colours than your screen can display, and the screen subsequently can display more colours than what you can print.

* * *

My cousin has caught the grub growing bug and I transplanted some of her tomato plants (I hope they are what she thinks they are) that grew offshoot and have invaded into her chilli plant pot. Heh, will try my luck again with the coriander and parsley later on this year. Also have more experience with aphids, and when my friend (who is also trying out some herbs) brought it up, I knew exactly what she meant by white bugs covering the plant. Coincidentally enough my cousin is also experiencing the same problem now, and it does require some urgency to remove the bugs before they destroy your plant, as they have done so in my previous two attempts with growing coriander.

* * *

Heh, just so many other fascinating things in life to keep me occupied, the only dull moments are when I can’t do it all quickly enough.