Sgrunners 

It was 3.50am in the morning, and I woke up from my 2.5 hours of sleep feeling weird. I didn’t have any headaches or anything, but just didn’t feel exactly fine. Since I was supposed to meet my friends to share a cab, I quickly packed my stuff, changed into my running attire and got outta my house. Feeling weird still.

At 5.20am, I was already at the starting point. Technically speaking, it should be 100m behind the starting point, since there was a horde of army boys packed in front of me. The atmosphere wasn’t right. No music, no nothing, just ocassional words from the emcee to tell everyone to get ready. And then, the horn sounded and off everyone walked. Walked, because too jammed to even jog.

After walking for 4 minutes, I finally crossed the starting point and I could finally run. As usual, I’d my earphones on, but this time round, I  listen to radio from my handphone tucked inside my running tights because I’ve forgotten to bring my arm pouch. The weird feeling is still lingering in the air.

I think I only ran about 2 km when I first encountered something really weird. In front of me at the roadside, I saw a huge object. Upon running closer to it, I realised that it was an elephant! A baby elephant. There was even a mahout sitting on it! Geez, I was like, OMG.. am I seeing things? It wouldn’t be of any surprise if I saw an elephant in the streets of Grungthep, but.. on the roads of Singapore?! I wasn’t sure if I was dreaming, but I’m not gonna punch myself like how every other person does to make sure he or she is not dreaming.

Instead, I ran next to a girl in hope to confirm the sighting. "Eh.. ah..,excuse me, did you, er, see an elephant at the left side when we ran about a minute ago?" I stuttered breathlessly in my half-awake voice. "Yah, I saw that." was her nonchalant reply. It soon made me realised that the situation was even weirder than I thought, as none of the people running past the elephant seemed to be affected by it at all.

Whatever, I thought to myself. I continued on, praying not to see any weird stuff anymore. Fat hope. Ahead of me, I suddenly noticed a huge group of runners wearing like some kind of uniform, because all had the same words printed on the back of their running tees. Upon closer observation under the dim street lights, I noticed that their tees were pink in colour and the words at the back read "Now you cannot catch me!". Weird, because they were running slow, and I overtook them not long after.

Luckily, no more weird encounters for the next few kilometres. The sky was finally brightening up, and things became a little more normal. I ran past some pirates, but they looked friendly and even cheered all the runners on. I ran past some cheerleaders as well, but they were not yet ready to perform their stunts. It was fortunate that nothing that I saw for the remaining part of the race was as weird as the elephant and pink platoon sightings. Phew.

I crossed the finishing point in about 2 hour and 15 minutes gun time, which means my chip time is probably 2 hr 10 min. Not bad, I thought, considering I’d not been training consistently and also, slept only 2.5 hrs before the run. Yay, collected my medal, and it looked cool. On one side, it shows the CBD skyline just like the noticeboard of 2 Grace’s.

Took some pictures with sgrunners, before leaving for lunch with another group of friends. The weirdness went away upon completion of the race.

I’ve finally done my first half-marathon.

 

My deepest condolences to the family of Cpt Ho. It is sad that this had happened.

I initially wanted to sleep super early tonight (or rather, yesterday night), but I decided that not going out on a Sat evening would be quite pathetic. So, I called up my buddy and we headed down to Esplanade.

 

Claude Diallo Quartet 

It so happened that there was a free outdoor performance at the Stage@Powerhouse, and the band performing in that evening was the Claude Diallo Quartet. Their genre of music is jazz, with much rearrangement and improvisation.

Claude Diallo on keyboard

Soh Wen Ming, the drummer, was exceptionally interesting to watch when he was strutting his stuff. The complex rhythms and beats totally wooed the crowd. Claude Diallo was fabulous on his keyboard too. I always hold high respect for jazz musicians, I think it takes a lot of skills and effort to do jazz, and be versatile enough to improvise the pieces.

 

Angelita Li

This singer has a very beautiful and powerful voice! My buddy and I were really mesmerised by her vocals. She’s lotsa charisma, I must say. After the second set ended, we left, satisfied.

I should’ve gone home and slept, but we stopped for coffee instead (of all things).. Which explains why I’m still awake now. 2.5 hours of sleep left before my half-marathon.. Great.

 

Anyway, nice blend of colours for a $7.50 drink yah? Haha. Coffee with some red bean bits at the bottom. Ok, this is getting random..and I better get to sleep!

 

I couldn’t think of a better title to use, so there.

It’s been a slightly better week than the previous one, as I’ve finally recovered from the flu bug that prevented me from doing my runs for almost 2 weeks. In fact, the flu bug got me so bad that I was babbling through my lessons (which was particularly so evident during the lesson in 1 Grace) on the day I returned from MC. Yeerks.

So I’ll be doing my maiden Army Half Marathon tomorrow while everyone else is still deep in their dreams. Yay..kind of looking forward to the 21km run and a good meal after it. However, I’ve not been conditioned enough, and I shouldn’t expect any good timing this time round. So, my target this time round will be a humble timing of 2 hr 15 min. Well, more updates on post-race tomorrow!

 

You wasted my time also lor.. checked through 2 times before realising your question was copied wrongly.. ><

 

Finally, another week has passed! Due to my busy schedule recently, I’ve not been able to blog as frequently as I wished to. Now, I’m working in the library again, with endless piles of homework waiting to be marked. The mundane marking has taken a toll on my half-asleep brain, so I’ve decided to take a break by surfing the net.

Anyway, I’ve found some interesting trivia when I was surfing the American Scientist Online site, and thought I would just post some of them here. Well, have fun figuring them out!  

Q1: In industrialized countries, what proportion of adults are affected by food allergies?

• A. 1 in 2,000
• B. 1 in 640
• C. 1 in 50

Q2: How much weight can a single gecko’s sticky toes support?

• A. Two apples
• B. Two bowling balls
• C. Two people

Q3: The average yawn lasts

• A. 4 seconds
• B. 6 seconds
• C. 7 seconds

Q4: Which of these has been levitated sucessfully using strong magnetic fields?

• A. a golf ball
• B. a frog
• C. a pizza

Q5: Natives of the Tibetan plateau are, in general, well able to cope with the thin air of their high-altitude homeland because:

• A. Their blood contains an especially high concentration of hemoglobin.
• B. They are able to pass air through their lungs at an especially rapid rate.
• C. They have notably low metabolisms, which require considerably less oxygen to support.

Q6: The precursor to HIV-1 (the virus responsible for the vast majority of AIDS cases) is found in which of these animals?

• A. chimpanzees
• B. African green monkeys
• C. baboons

Yeah, just 6 questions. Scroll below to see if you’ve got them right!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ans 1: C. Food allergy affects 1 in 50 adults and 1 in 20 young children, and the numbers are rising: The incidence of peanut allergy doubled between 1997 and 2002. 

Ans 2: C. Theoretically, the 6.5 million hairlike stalks on a tokay gecko could generate 1,300 newtons of shear force.

Ans 3: B. Yawns also come in bouts, at intervals of about 68 seconds, on average. 

Ans 4: B. Andre Geim, a physicist at the University of Manchester, and his collaborators have levitated a live frog using a powerful superconducting magnet. With a sufficiently intense magnetic field, any diamagnetic material can be levitated. 

Ans 5: B. Tibetans can maintain very high respiratory rates while at rest. Andean natives, in contrast, respirate normally but show very high hemoglobin concentrations—two strikingly different human adaptations to life at very high altitudes.

Ans 6: A. The closest relative of HIV-1 is the simian immunodeficiency virus SIVcpz, which is carried by chimpanzees. 

 

Have a good weekend!!