Been away

I've been away for the last one week. Bukan pergi bertapa kat Gua Niah laa, but I had to attend a seminar in KL. Hence, no blog update for the whole week.

Yang lagi sedih apart from no blog update ialah, ZERO training. ZERO!!!

But, the good thing is, I spent lots of quality time with my family. Awesome.

So, this week will be a pulun-cukup-cukup-sebab-minggu-lepas-langsung-tak-training week. Harap-harap takde orang mengada-ngada set-up meeting pukul 4.30ptg, ke, 5ptg ke. Memang cari nahas la.

Another draw back for going to a long days seminar is that, after a week of not checking my email (work email that is), today I have to read approximately 230 emails. Mampus!

Fun, fun, fun!

Yeah, right.

Loose Vs. Gain

If we were asked to define the term 'success', can it just revolve around loosing or gaining?

For example, is it fair to say something like "I'm not being so successful today because I just lost a business opportunity". Or, is it fair to say "I'm a successful person because today I get the offer to work as a bla bla bla..."

We all wish to be successful. Who doesn't, right? Everybody wants to gain things, to win things, to be on top of everything. It's just a normal thing as a human being.

But hey, is it not a natural thing that a gain would sometimes come after loosing something?

Maybe yes, maybe no.

For example, a student may be said as being a successful student opon scoring or gaining good grades during the SPM, but God knows how much he/she had to loose in terms of fun times with friends, burning late night oil to memorize the notes, etcetra etcetra.

Another actual example would be on my self, in my sports life, per say. Previously, I envied all these super-powerful triathletes who could swim, bike and run much faster and much longer compared to what I could do. I felt like I'm not going to see a success in it.

But, after 'loosing' lots of energy and time to continue training harder and harder, at the end, I hope I can see the success coming nearer to me. We just can't stop trying and doing what we need to do, or the thing that we need to 'loose', before we 'gain'.

This posting is to mark a point in my career life where today, I feel like I'm making a decision that might be seen as 'loosing'. This is all done with the highest hope that one day, sooner or later, I'll be more successful than yesterday.

Only God knows what will happen tomorrow.

The Istana Garden - JB

Few days ago I posted the satellite view of the place I'm running nowadays - The Istana Garden, or 'garden' as the short form of it. Today, I'd like to share with you some of the beautiful scenaries around the garden which makes it the most favourable running/walking/exercising ground for people around the JB town.

Ample parking space with lots of trees to provide shades for the cars.

This is the Istana itself.

Lots of greeneries. Very refreshing to the eyes and the breathing.

Yes, what you see is the Straits of Tebrau. And on the other side of the water is our neighbouring country, Singapore. Just imagine cycling on the road just alongside the straits, wonderful isn't it? Who said there's not much beautiful places in Malaysia?

Sometimes you could even spot youngsters like above taking photos. I've also seen many times newly weds came to this garden to take their wedding photos.

Last but not least, this is me. Photo taken on one fine evening few days ago, after running 45minutes around the garden (menyibuk ah mamat ni, dia pun nak enter frame jugeekkkk...).

Cicak Bike

If people in KL can produce the movie Cicak-man and Cicak-man 2, here in JB we from the JTriClub presents...

The Cicak Bikes

Main actor #1

Main actress #1

Supporting actor

Those people responsible to cast these actors and actress are:

Mr. White, standing on the left leaning by the car - he's responsible for the casting of main actor #1 (Nama sebenar terpaksa dirahsiakan sebab aku takut kena balasah

Mr. Baps - he casted the main actress #1 and supporting actor. He's standing second from right. (Nama sebenar terpaksa dirahsiakan sebab aku tak tau nama sebenar dia)

Anyway, those are some photos of our new year's eve Wednesday night ride last week. Not so many people turned out actually, but we had fun cycling and then mentekedarah kat kedai mamak sampai pukul 1am.

This was what I had - Nan cheese + tandoori chicken set. The most favourable dish amongst us. Super yummy! Sehingga menjilat jari dan jugak tray.

Say "Nan cheeeeeesseeeeee..."

Tu oh-oh nain

Today we are already in the fifth day of the new year. How time flies by very fast, that I missed out the chance to wish everybody Happy New Year on the first day.

Anyway, what did I do on the last new year's eve? Well, I went cycling as it was our normal Wednesday cycling night. Rugi la kalau miss. And then we went for makan-makan and borak-borak session until 1am.

As far as I could remember, being an introvert person as I am, I do not gila-gila celebrate new years, or even my own birthdays. I normally kept things low profile when it comes to celebration.

But, I remember doing a bit gila thing during one of the new year's eve.

It happened back in the year 1999, on the few last hours before the clock strike 12 o'clock midnight, entering the new millenium of year 2000. At that time, I was in my cold room of the rented small house which I shared with my other two uni-mates, in Manchester, U.K.

During that time, it was already considered as a luxury to have a PC with 180MHz Pentium II processor speed. Mine was only a mere 150MHz Pentium I. Many of the assignments and even lab reports have to be 'PC-written', i.e. to make write ups with Word, and to make spreadsheet and graphs with Excel.

Errm, I also used my PC to pratice my blind-typing skills - through chatting via MiRC. Haha.

Those who were a bit IT savvy at that time should still remember the famous Millenium Bug, which was expected to cause a dramatic crash on computers when the PC clock cannot recognize the year change from 99 to 00 (during that time, the PC clock only showed 2 last digits of the year, instead of 4 digits being used nowadays). Konon-kononnya when the clock turned from 99 to 00, it will register as year 1900, instead of 2000.

Maka, aku pun dengan bangangnya (I repeat: BANGANG) telah menanti saat ketibaan detik 12 malam memasuki tahun baru 1 January 2000 di depan PC tanpa berkelip kelopak bijik mata sambil-sambil berharap PC aku tak crash dengan tak semena-mena.

Luckily, my PC did not crash and nothing went wrong with my PC until the end of my degree.

But, remembering the story make me smile by myself, looking back into the past where we as human being, once in a while surely may end up being or doing, well.. something stupid.

Happy New Year 2009 to ya'all.

My run route in JB (for now)

"Eish Nik, the road is dusty la. No good you know."

"Nik, dangerous lae running here. Banyak lori, banyak kereta. Run somewhere else laa better."

Those are the common comments I heard from my colleagues at work who noticed me running in the evening outside the office. I used to run from the front gate of my office here at Taman Teknologi Johor, towards the main road (Jalan Skudai), and u-turn back to the office. A distance close to 5km for one loop.

At first, I did not bother so much about their comments for only one reason - after running in the evening, I would continue working until late night. So, the best (and economical) place to do a frequent 5km run (and then continue working macam orang kurang siuman) would be at the route mentioned above.

At one point, I totally stopped running. Due to massive work load, I guess.

About three weeks ago, I started to run again and this time, at a new running route. Known to the JB tri-group here as the "Istana Garden", you can cover around 2km or 2.5km for every one loop you run - depending on which loop you choose. Here is my normal run route, doing 3 loops of 2.25km/loop within 45minutes. Nothing impressive (yet).

There are also a 5km and 10km and 18km routes outside of this garden. These are the favorites routes for those who are training for Ironman.

I'm pretty happy to be running here, except for one thing which is I need to drive about 20 minutes from my office (or house) to get to this beautiful place. You can even see the Selat Tebrau and the main island of Singapore while running at this Istana Garden.

And yeah, if anyone would wonder, the Istana Besar Abu Bakar was where Mawi and Ekin get married few weeks ago (not that I was invited!).

I'll be running around this area as much as time (and mood, and energy, and err.. apa lagi ek?) permits me to run.

Ermm, can anyone tell me what 'endorphin effect' really means? Hehe...

Where is it?

I just realised something.

This is what appears in my company calendar for December 2008.

Something is definitely missing. Do you see it?

Look carefully. No, no, no. It's not about the Awal Muharram holiday on December 29th which we were not able to enjoy.

Can you figure?

Well, I'm sorry to say that whoever's birthday fall on December 31st, won't be able to celebrate it this year, according to this calendar lah of course.

Weird, or funny?