Let the nail biting commence.

Since January, I’ve been pushing my ass to start running at least once a week and doing some riding. Which is more activity that I’ve had in the past year but is still not enough. I believe the whole thing started with Alan asking me if I wanted to consider taking up road biking. And things sort of went from there. Among other things I’m doing, 2010 will be the start of challenging myself to progressively take my thing for sports to insane levels of…well, insanity.

Doing something insane in biking and running has always held a fascination for me. Swimming, not so much, I’ve never enjoyed being in the water too much. But the idea of riding punishingly grueling distances or running myself close to collapse is enticing. I’ve never had a chance to do it, because for a long while, I truly believed I was wasting everyone and my own time on pursuing something like that due to the fact that I’m inherently lazy and/or just don’t have the thing needed to do stuff like that. But among the changes I’ve made to myself this year, I intend to start believing that I can do shit like that until proven otherwise.

A few things I intend to do this year would be first up, the Tribob Singapore sprint series duathlon this Sunday. Followed by going for the Bike Asia endurance race solo, the Army half marathon and finally, the Singapore marathon at the end of the year. I might pick up one or two other oddities to do but that’s pretty much it.

In the long run, there’s the insane, self inflicted challenge of finishing the Bike Asia race solo next year with a respectable distance clocked and then doing the Adidas Sundown marathon. I’m still undecided though, whether I should hazard the full marathon or ultra-marathon.

So, after the duathlon, I’ll be starting to haul ass on bike and road to build up my endurance for the Bike Asia race. I’ve even gone and bought a skort to ride it in. Because, y’know, why just ride off road trails for 12 hours at a go? Do it in a skort too, eh?

Ok, I’ll admit, I don’t like sports photography. Maybes its just me but I think my life is fast moving enough and the camera is a chance to slow it all down and catch the slow moments. In other words, my skill level isn’t there to capture people moving above 30km/h with any kind of decency at all.

But, Chloe got this one shot and while its not too terrific, I love it because it was the very moment of silence before the assorted race hoopla and finally, the riders came through.

But never mind. Because the damned thing was still awesome anyway and it was the first night. What could be better?

I remembered having a copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass as a child. It was a fascinating read for an 8 year old, I loved reading long books then even though I never really understood what I read, I had the most fantastic dreams of Wonderland after reading it and the adaptations of that book for children would pale in comparison to the volume my dad had bought me.

Alice in Wonderland does not disappoint. Well, ok, the story line in Alice’s world? Disappointing as heck. Its far too fairytale, far too glazed over version of a young woman’s reality in Victorian society. Everyone knows that in that era, even if a woman wanted to, there was no way to avoid getting sucked into a marriage instead of being able to work in her father’s company and earn her own living because a woman in that society without a man, is utterly without protection or rights. BUT, we shall not go there.

Instead, we shall focus on what happens in Wonderland. Or Underland, as we see in the movie. The first thing about Underland, you’ll notice is Tim Burton’s, by now, extremely familiar style of animation. The colors jump out at you, the costumes and objects are delightfully surreal and colorful and everything is just gorgeously fantastic. Its a proper fantasy world in there, with a slightly demented twist that just makes it all the more wonderful. The characters are an extension of the visual effects in there, they are loud, larger than life, twistedly demented and utterly lovable.

And of course, there’s Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter. I have the world’s biggest crush on Johnny Depp, its no secret, I love anyone who looks like he’s nothing more than a pretty face but has the depth and brains to carry off the insane roles that he plays all the time. Looks and insanity – those are very important traits for a man to have. Along with Johnny Depp is Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen, the utterly bonkers and rather sadistic tyrant of Underland. You’d probably remember this pair from Sweeny Todd and honestly, I think the two of them do have an energy that seems to rub off on each other in these sort of roles. Joining the party of pretty people who are terrific at playing twisted and demented characters, is Anne Hathaway who actually does a pretty freaking awesome job of playing the White Queen. In fact, my favorite character of all might be the White Queen in that movie. The White Queen is this floaty, dreamy, tree hugging hippie fairy princess sort who floats around in a dreamy daze of sorts. But she’s got this slightly nutty side to her, that comes across pretty well in the one scene where she mixes up the shrinking potion for Alice. In short, the White Queen is my kind of girl.

I’d say watch Alice in Wonderland for the visual effects and the well played character but don’t expect Alice’s storyline to be much good if you can’t stand the standard ‘and they all lived happily ever after’ romantic comedy type endings. I’d say that everything else about the movie more than makes up for the shitty, overly positive and unrealistic ending, and I do intend to watch it a second time. Also, Johnny Depp reciting ‘Jabberywocky’? Makes me very, very weak at the knees.

Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! and through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

(Source: www.wikipedia.org)

But anyhows, I thought I’d tell the mutant cyst “Fuck you, I’ve got a duathlon next week and I’m running whether you like it or not.” this morning. Turns out, aside from causing major discomfort, mutant cysts never take well to being told to fuck off. Because this morning’s run was crap. After the first 500 meters, my flipping ankle started to hurt everytime I landed on it. When the damned thing hurts, it just reminds me of getting my ankle cut open and know what happens when you tell me the word ’surgery’? Despite all my better senses, I Google. Obsessively. And find images of body parts cut open exposing a glowing white orb that is presumably the cyst. Images that just come floating up into my brain when my ankle hurts while running. Which is pretty damned nauseating.

Anyway, a map of this morning’s run. I had meant to do two loops of the route but the ankle wasn’t agreeable. I’ll try again tomorrow morning. Fuck you, cyst.

This week, I decided to snap a self portrait of Chloe and I in my mirror.

As a person, I’m extremely fluid. The world knows me by many names, many roles. If I’m not careful, I can fade into the wall and become a non-entity. Some days, I forget that I exist. Seeing myself in photos always gives me a certain shock because its affirmation that I do, indeed, exist and occupy this space in the universe, this human body and I breathe and eat and feel. It never ceases to amaze me. It was only in the past few months when I’ve begin to accept that I am in fact, not part of the wall but a person. And as a person, I need a personality, a reason for my existence, a set of beliefs and values I’ve formed for myself. It’s been a very strange few months, but I look forward to keep moving with everything and traveling the way of the universe.

Check out what my fellow Project 52-ers are up to in the links on the side bar!!

How was your Chinese New Year? Mine was uneventful. We’re into week 7 of Project 52. Which means we’re in the 7th week of 2010. Man, time flies when you’re having fun. This week on Project 52, my subject is yet another pet. A canine, this time. This is Buddy, an absolutely adorable Scottish terrier we spent Chinese New Year dog sitting. Chloe has the world’s biggest crush on Buddy, I swear. Once I got her settings right, she shot some pretty awesome photos of him. This was taken on manual mode and eventually retouched to correct the smidge of overexposure and deepen the colors in the photo.

This photo brings me back to the kind of hot, golden afternoons when all sounds are muted and barely any life stirs around the house. Overall, this might have been the best Chinese New Year I’ve had. Hopefully, plenty more pleasant Chinese New Years to come.

Annoyingly enough, pretty much all the run tracking thingies are linked to Apple devices. As you all know, I’m just NOT a fan of Apple, the only thing I’ve ever felt they did right was the second generation iPod shuffle, everything else is meh to me. I do have Amelie, my Blackberry and I went online to search my butt off for a running application for Blackberrys, but guess what? There are maybe, less than five of them, two of which I’ve downloaded and turned out to be an utter waste of time and space. And then, there’s MapMyRun.com. They have a Blackberry app. The catch, you gotta subscribe to their gold memebership to the tune of 50 odd USD a year to get it. Even more bloody infuriating is that they have an iPhone app which does not require a membership subscription and can be bought one off at the app shop. EVEN MORE annoying, they have iMapMyRun AND iMapMyRide for the iPhone. Blackberry’s app is for running only.

Oh jeez, why not just say the world hates Blackberrys and be done with?

But, all bitching aside, I signed up for a free membership on MapMyRun.com and tried using it to track my run this morning. Which proved to be kinda helpful in that it gave me a general idea of how far I ran. It also has a calender that will show my training logs and stuff. They have a lovely feature that allows you to search for run routes in your country by other runners, which is pretty rad, all things considered. The other features are a moot for me but they do have a section under training with things like calculating your heart rate zones and a gear tracker to keep track of how many miles your hear are put through. Supposedly, its to ensure you don’t use stuff past the point where they’re good but its not like I give a flying heck, for me, gear gets replaced when it falls apart. Which might explain all the injuries I’m riddled with. -_-

Anyhows, I’ll try using MapMyRun.com for a couple of weeks of training and give it a proper review soon. In the mean time, I’ll just blog my run routes when I remember to. Here’s my route for this morning:

Let me preface this by saying, yes I know my entry for this week is late but it was Chinese New Year eve weekend and I’d been working all week long. Life gets in the way. *shrug*

Anyway, I love shooting photos of animals. This week’s subject is Greg, the family cat. Otherwise know as Cat, Greggy, Gregory, Greggers, Greg-hiss Khan or the Supreme Ruler of all the Universe, this cat knows that its a cat’s world and the humans only live in it. Greg came to our family as a 8 week old kitten whose first week at home resulted in a fall from the second floor landing into my mom’s plant (afterwhich, he attacked the poor plant every chance he got for the next two years that we spent in Beijing) and terrorising Cookie, the sweet little doggy belonging to our neighbors on the estate.

This photo was shot on Chloe, my Nikon D100 on aperture priority mode.  I’m trying to improve on my technical knowledge of photography but am not always successful so please bear with me.

Go to the sidebar and check out what my fellow Project 52-ers have been up to! I’m sure they’re all religiously posting every week. =)

School bans pupils from sending Valentine cards: report

A school has banned its pupils from sending cards on Valentine’s Day, saying the youngsters are not mature enough for romance, a newspaper reported on Thursday.

Ashcombe Primary School — which teaches students aged four to 11 — has threatened to confiscate any cards found on the premises in Somerset, said the Times.

- By Agence France-Presse