Some idiot on Facebook wrote a note about squashing cyclists on the roads like ants and then got miffed that someone complained about him to the police. Yeah, dude, I don’t know about you but when someone writes the kind of content of your first note with that sort of attitude that you are allowed to kill people you deem inferior to you even in jest, society as a whole should start getting pretty worried and be reporting it to the police. In case you never noticed, this sort of sociopathic misanthropy is exactly the sort of attitude that precedes fun things like lynchings and indiscriminate mass killings. Best to be nipped in the bud immediately.
Also? Complaining that we’re too sensitive and you can’t even have a good rant without getting into trouble? Why not look at what you wrote in your FIRST note? When you told us that if we want the right to ride on the road, we should move to the west because we have no rights here. Let me hand your words back to you. You may think we don’t have the right to ride on the roads here. But guess what? You don’t really get to exercise the right to free speech that contains threatening and inflammatory content in here either. Don’t like it? MOVE WEST.
And for the record, what the hell are schools and parents teaching these days? Its not done to fantasize about killing people you deem as inferior or annoying to you. Its an indication that something is very wrong with you and the police and ISA need to start taking you very seriously and watching you very closely in case you really turn out to a nutter who has mass murder on his mind. Or worse, you start influencing young minds towards this brand of mass murdering nuttiness.
I’d like to commit mass murder, please. I’m getting annoyed. There’s this thing which has been bugging me non-stop since I woke up this morning. Its a sort of a heat behind my eyeballs which feels a bit feverish but I’ve checked and I’m NOT RUNNING A TEMPERATURE. DUDE, WTF??!!!
If it could have a monologue, it’d go like this:
“Oh hai, I’m a fever, mmm, actually, wait, I don’t think I AM a fever, I’m not sure what I am, maybe I am one after all, ooooh, maybe not, weeeeeell, then again, I am an elevated temperature which might technically qualify as a fever, no? Oh but I’m not beyond 37 degrees! So maybe I’m not one after all! But Ooooh, loooook, I CAN MAKE YOU SO MISERABLE!!!!”
The scratchy throat that’s been bugging me since daycare on Friday has finally come to a head after the Thursday night ride. I more or less lost my voice yesterday, its gone kinda husky and when possible, I’d rather not talk. Which was torture because of last night’s #kissmyass tweet up and all the awesome tweeples there.
When my alarm rang at 6.30 this morning, my ears were itching like mad. Perfect, because the next place whatever it is will spread to is my sinuses. And in a few days’ time, my throat, ears and sinuses will be itching and burning like mad. Which will explain the crankiness. My sinuses are starting to feel a bit heavy and I’m constantly doing that “Am I running a fever? Am I RUNNING A FEVER??!” thing. And no, I’m not running a fever. Days like these, I curse that we don’t have shelves and shelves of cold/flu/allergy remedies like they do in the US. I could use some Tylenol Cold right now, that stuff burns its way down my throat like acid and even if it’s not a cold I’m having, the burning helps relieve the itchiness and stuffiness for a few seconds.
To make things even more fun, after washing up and putting my contact lenses in, I walked the back of my head into the sharp corner of my bathroom wall. Guess I should be thankful its the back of my head where no one can see the bruises, not on my forehead like I did with the bathroom door the last time. Maybe shaving my head again isn’t such a good idea, there’ll be nothing to hide the bruises when I keep getting into stupid accidents like these.
I think I shall start a new tag called ‘Training Notes’. If anything, it’ll help me stay good about entering crap into my training log regularly. I’m such a slacker.
Anyway, the good ole Thursday night expo ride. Alan gave me a yell over bbm in the afternoon asking if I wanted to ride. We finally nailed down it down to meet at 7, do a full loop of Coastal followed by the Coastal-Selerang route before heading back to Expo, meeting the others and deciding what else to do.
Not a terrific start to a ride, I was still feeling the effects of last night’s weirdness with the cramps and the giant cable tie around my ribs. Also, migraine. Wtf, seriously. But when Alan finally turned up and we rode, everything sort of fell into place. That’s riding for me, its not until I get cruisin’ on the bike that all’s right with the world again. At least for that short time.
The interesting thing about today’s ride was that I didn’t hit the wall after the first half of Coastal as I usually do. The few factors that are different is that I wasn’t trying to catch up with people on the climb towards Coastal, Alan was pulling me along and helping to limit my pace to the range of 27 to 29km/h. Usually, on Coastal, I’d try to bomb out at 30 odd km/h and end up too tired to spin consistently.
Another interesting thing was that despite the relatively slowish pace, my average speed went up from 21km/h to a respectable 26.7km/h. At one point, it was reading 27.6 but I’m not exactly crazy fast on the hills, so that went to hell. I think that starting and keeping to a consistent pace and pedaling constantly definitely made this a better training ride than my usual ones. It’s so annoying that I tend to slack off when riding alone. Also, I need to work majorly on learning to draft properly, my vestibular issues make this one a real challenge because I can’t judge the space accurately and its a bit scary. So when I was riding behind Alan, I was either too far behind, too close or riding too far out on the road. Rather annoying but I think this problem should go away if I ride some more.
Numbers from today’s ride:
Average speed: 26.7km/h
Max. Speed: 37.7km/h
Time spent riding: 1 hour 52 mins
Distance: 49.88km (DUDE)
Pre-ride and Post-ride weight: No bloody difference, still stuck at 43.1kg.
Also, I want you guys to hear this awesome song that’s SO STUCK in my head. I was whistling it while riding my merry way home and freaking out the security guards.
The Hush Sound is simply awesome. I got this song from a friend while going through an insomniac period after a freelance project that had me staying up until 6 in the mornings and a few other shitty things just happened in my life along with that. It’s so soothing and the lyrics are beautiful. Their song “Echo” is also pretty awesome but I can’t find a decent video on YouTube to share…
Yes, I realize how RANDOM that was but I can’t help myself (poor impulse control, remember? *Grin*)
Today, I peeped through Chloe’s viewfinder with the intention of catching up on Project 52 only to realize something really bad. I can no longer see clearly through the viewfinder in my glasses. At first I thought it was the settings of my lens being off or something, but after focusing blind and snapping a few shots, it became obvious, there was nothing wrong with Chloe or her focusing. It was my eyes. My eyesight has gone to hell so badly I can no longer see clearly out of Chloe’s viewfinder. So I shall not be shooting much for a bit until I visit the optician’s (which, god only knows when it’ll be, I dread optician visits only a little less than I dread doctor or dentist visits) and get my prescription up to date.
Its a terrible pity because I picked up the yummiest fabric from Arab street yesterday. It reminds me so much of when I was a little girl in the early 90′s. It’s bright red with pastel flower prints on it and I’ve already used it to line a cream colored coin purse with a bicycle stitched on the front. See? I’m combining my girlie crafty side with my nuts about bikes side. =D I’ll charge up the Lumix and snap photos of it to show you guys. For once, I’m thankful some cameras are made without viewfinders.
I’ve also stumbled on another pretty. First on Sarah’s blog and then on nabbycat which is funny because Nabilah actually blogged about her first. Anyway, pretty in question is Nicole of Gary Pepper Vintage. OMG, I am in love. The dresses she has for sale on her shop are so nice. I also love her style, the photography on her blog, it also doesn’t hurt that she’s extremely striking to look at. I’m a sucker for vintage things, every time I go overseas, the first thing I look for are second hand shops. I found one especially amusing one in Amherst last year, The Cajun Queen run by a lady who was a law student. She had these gorgeous, gorgeous T-strap heels going for 20USD. We both stood admiring their prettiness were until I looked at the size and realized they were 2 sizes to large for me. BOO! But anyway, lest I get ahead of myself, yes, please do go look at Gary Pepper Vintage. Even if you don’t like vintage clothing or aren’t a girl, the photography is pretty great to look at.
It might just be my inner expat brat talking but Skype has always thrilled me. It’s this slightly giddy, almost rebellious feeling of “Hey, I get to hang out and talk to my friends like nothing has ever happened despite being forced to spend school vacations 3000miles away from them every 6 months.” Well, it’d have worked better if circa 2003, said friends actually bothered downloading Skype on their computers so we could chat but it still doesn’t make the possibilities that Skype offers any less thrilling.
When Daphne extended an invite to me to go check out the Skype booth at CommunicAsia with some other bloggers, you can imagine I was pretty thrilled to go. After all, my knowledge of Skype doesn’t really extend past using it on my computer, despite actually having used it for a while. I was more than just a little curious to see how else you could use Skype, especially after a friend showed me the very awesome Skype phone he acquired in Hong Kong.
Unfortunately, I don’t think the Skype phone is going to make it into Singapore any time soon. Who knows? But it kind of doesn’t matter because there are now some models of phones which allow you to use the Skype app to make calls on them using your data plan instead of phone minutes. Heck. You can even make video calls on these phones. They’ll let you make calls to people using Skype on their mobile phones, laptops, TVs or landlines, so there’s not really any restriction to who and where you can call. Even if you do have to use Skype credits for calls to mobile phones and landlines, I still think it beats paying long distance roaming charges on your mobile phone plan.
And yes, you read right before, you can make calls on Skype using TVs. This one’s pretty exciting. Skype has linked up with Panasonic to manufacture TVs with the Skype application installed in them. Hook that TV up to a TV specific webcam and an internet connection, you’re good to make video calls using your TV. Because the range of a TV webcam is 3 to 4 meters, you can comfortably lounge on the couch while making a video call. Skype is in talks with some other companies to manufacture TVs with Skype downloaded to them. The user interface on the TVs are really simple to navigate and require minimal typing. So its not really intimidating to use, even for the non-technologically savvy.
Skype has also come up with group video conferencing for Windows computers. Up to five people can video conference at any one time if you download the thingy off the Skype website. Group video conferencing for Macs will only be available later this year. This application is free for use until the end of this year when there will be a charge for it.
We were also shown the Skype Manager which is one of Skype’s solutions for businesses. The gist of that is an employer can basically get Skype Manager and then under it, create Skype accounts for any employees they have. They can top up the accounts with credits for their employees’ use and not have to worry about currency differences if they happen to be different countries. When their employees leave the company, they can take the account back and retrieve unused credits. If you want to know more about Skype Manager, head on over to their website here.
It was a pretty great event at CommunicAsia. Peter Parkes, Skype’s social media lead conducted a really interesting tour although at times, I had a hard time hearing what he was saying. Apart from all the other stuff, Skype was also showcasing a fun little thing called augmented reality. Basically, while on a video call, if you waved a white folder with the Skype logo around, a bunch of funky rainbows will start following the folder around on the screen. It was also great seeing a few faces I hadn’t seen in a while like Preetam and Hillary and of course, Daphne who had invited me for the event. They were serving up Skype juice, this blue slushie things which looked pretty good but since I’m avoiding food coloring, was a no go for me. Boo.
So I seem to have blipped off the screen. But I’m still alive. Just very busy with some things, very unmotivated and very blah about something. I don’t really want to talk about it. But there’s some hope somewhere. I think I’m beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Also, easing back into training after a week of complete rest (overtrained, don’t ask, I’m stupid), its going surprisingly well except for the weird, inexplicable pain in the middle of my femur. Seriously, the hell??!!
Anyway, once I find Amelie’s cable tomorrow morning, I’ll upload the post about what this little kettle saw and heard at the Skype booth at CommunicAsia. Also, will do a race write up of the mountain bike marathon. OH and catch up on Project 52. There you go.
I’m embedding this streaming video so you can have a looksee at what’s happening at the Skype booth later today at CommunicAsia 2010. Write up to follow after! =)
Some time ago, I did something that could be construed as truly stupid or truly brave. Or perhaps, bravery usually requires some level of stupidity. Either way, after about 5 months of saying I’d sign up to ride the Singapore Mountain Bike Carnival 12 hour marathon solo, I actually bit the bullet and did it.
I’m by no means terrifyingly fast on the trail. And I’d also just spent pretty much most of 2009 off my bike and in front of the computer, smoking, drinking way too much alcohol and losing fitness. Even though with my brand new not-underweight-any more body, I can perform once impossible feats like run 10km without dying and cycling for 8 hours at a stretch, it’s still only been 5 months of more or less proper training peppered with knee injuries, overtraining and the odd health problem or two. So you’d understand why I feel slightly less than confident about surviving this race. (Read the rest of the post on GetSet’s page here)
June 30, 2010 
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Some time ago, I did something that could be construed as truly stupid or truly brave. Or perhaps, bravery usually requires some level of stupidity. Either way, after about 5 months of saying I’d sign up to ride the Singapore Mountain Bike Carnival 12 hour marathon solo, I actually bit the bullet and did it.
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