It’s amazing and ridiculous how much money is spent shooting people off to space, fighting the endless war, and yet a cure for cancer has yet to be discovered. It’s time we stand up for what is right and it’s now that we stand up to cancer.
In loving memory of my aunt, who lost her fight with leukemia. Stand Up 2 Cancer.
What's next?
That is the inevitable question that keeps popping up every now and then when I meet people. I can’t recount how many times I have repeated my answers over and over again, so I am just going to set the record straight on this blog. The next time someone asks me the same question, I will conveniently point them right here to this blog post. Nonetheless, for those who have asked, I am not saying you annoyed the hell out of me, but I’m just kind of tired of spitting out the answers. It’s just tiring like the seemingly obligatory “Do you have a girlfriend/boyfriend?” question that pops up without fail, during Chinese New Year, when you see your relatives that you hardly even talk to.
So what is next for me?
Obviously, the next thing I would be doing is National Service. Yes it’s that period of two years, when you will rarely get to see me online. If you do manage to see me, do remember to say hi. You will also probably see sporadic updates being made on this blog since weekends are pretty much what I’ve got, and I guess I have better things to do than sit at home and just blog. It’s all going to start next week when I get enlisted, so don’t hold your breath to long for regular weekly updates.
Beyond that, in the distant 2010, I would be furthering my studies with the Bachelor of Communication Studies at NTU. It’s a 4 years Honours programme and you will probably only see me joining the workforce in 2014/15.
Now that is a grand overview of what is next for me until 2014/15. That’s a whole lot of ‘what’s next?’ being answered for. We don’t even know which city will be the 2014 Olympic host yet!
This post is not a goodbye, nor is it a hiatus notice. It’s just a post to signify a new phase of life that I will be going through. The years ahead will come sooner than you think. 
The 10K finisher's band
Yes I finally ran my first 10K. The moment I passed the finishing line, I felt like it was the proudest moment of my life. The sense of achievement was overwhelming. To a lot of people, 10km may feel like a small feat, but to a person that has been running 2.4km at the maximum all his life, this finish was a momentous occasion for me.
The weeks leading up to the race, I have been training my endurance for longer distances, since 2.4km was really all I was running all my life. I swear. When it came down to the last two weeks, I was capable of running about 8km already. But last Wednesday, when I rollerbladed a little too much, I actually hurt my left foot after that 4 hours of intensive skating. So instead of training and increasing the distance for the rest of the days to come, I actually had to stop running for my foot to recover.
I felt miserable during the days before the race. I could do nothing. I couldn’t test if I can run a full 10K. Heck, I don’t know even know if I could run this race today. I think nobody understood how Liu Xiang felt when he couldn’t compete in his Olympic event, more than I can at that moment. All the preparation and anticipation and yet you can’t do anything about it. The only thing I could do was apply the cream on my feet like nobody’s business.
My inauspicious-sounding bib number on the tee
Race Day - I didn’t sleep well the night before, as I was too excited. It’s after all my first ever race. What if I can’t complete the race? What if my foot starts to hurt again? Frankly I have no idea if I really can finish it. My left foot was feeling okay, I felt no pain at all in the morning, and so I guess it’s a go ahead. Fast forward to the race, and at about 2km, the pain came back. The thought of stopping and walking the rest of the route came to my mind. It was a dilemma for me because I don’t want to seriously injure my foot and put myself out of course from the army. Then again, if I couldn’t finish this race, I will be seriously disappointed.
Running in a race amongst 11 000 other people really motivates you and pushes you. So I keep making myself run/slow jog even if I felt pain at every step. The strange thing though was, as I kept going on, the pain became neglegible. Maybe I got acclimatised to it already, I don’t know. So the total time it took me to complete was about 1h 22min, if you must know. It’s not a race against time, nor is it a competition. This race was all about accomplishing my personal goal. I did it, and I am proud of myself for doing it.
With 10K down, running a 21km will be my next personal goal. And ultimately, my lifelong goal will be to run a full marathon.
The post-event concert. (Camera phone= bad photo) We left before even the show started to find food to fill our stomachs. LOL.
It’s been more than a month since Apple launched the new iPhone 3G in the US, the iPhone/iPod Touch software 2.0 and also the App Store on the iTunes Store. Amidst the controversies and problems plagued by Apple during the launch of these products, what Apple has put out to all of us have been pretty impressive so far. Having spent quite a bit of time on my iPod Touch playing around with the apps that I have downloaded, I thought this is the right time to actually review my experience with the new software update and also list down some of the gems the App Store has to offer.
At the time this post is written, Apple has already pushed out the firmware 2.02 to owners of the iPhone/iPod Touch firmware 2.0 users. If you own an iPhone (1st generation), the update for you is free of charge. However, if you own an iPod Touch before July 11, you will have to settle for US$9.99 for the 2.0 firmware upgrade. You may baulk at the idea of ponying up 10 bucks just for a firmware upgrade, especially when the iPhone users are getting it for free, but let me tell you this, this might be the best $10 you might spend in a while.
What firmware 2.0 brings to you on an iPod touch?
Your iPod already plays music, videos, lets you surf the whole web using the mobile Safari, and watch YouTube videos on the go. But why stop at there when you have such a powerful device in your pocket? The iPod Touch is basically an iPhone without the phone, camera, and 3G. Although it isn’t a phone, it could still do a lot more than just listen to music. With the firmware 2.0, it brings you a desktop-class Mail client, Google Maps, Weather & Stocks widgets, a Notes application, and most importantly the ability to download 3rd-party applications.
The App Store
3rd-party applications is where the true potential of the iPhone & iPod touch platform truly lies. Since Apple launched the iPhone SDK, many developers have made used of the tools to create applications for the platform. At the launch of the App Store, there were more than 500 applications being offered for users to download, with new applications added daily. What really astounds many critics is the phenomenal success of the App Store. At the weekend of its launch, 10 million applications were downloaded.
Then it became the real problem- overcrowding. With the success of the App Store, many developers saw the chance of cashing in on the opportunities present in the App Store. Not so soon after the launch, the App Store is now crowded with either applications that lack quality (crapware), or simply applications that are just overpriced. But that is not to say the App Store has no quality applications that should have a place in your iPhone/iPod touch! I’ll now move on to highlight some of my picks from the App Store.
App Store Gems
Only the best apps get to stay on my iPod touch, and as of this writing, I have 5 pages of apps on my iPod. That’s about 60 applications! Some are free to download while some are not. Nonetheless, none of the apps that I have bought are more than US$10- the maximum I will pay for a mobile app. The honour of being the priciest app I have bought belongs to Things, which I will discuss about later in the end of the post.
After a year of wait, Singapore finally gets its iPhone. SingTel, which carries the iPhone in Singapore for a time-exclusive period, celebrated the launch of the iPhone with an official midnight launch event at SingTel’s ComCentre. And yeap, my brother is actually crazy enough to be amongst the first Singaporeans to get the iPhone. Since I had nothing to do on a Thursday night and being the Apple fanboy, I decided to queue with him for the phone.
The crowd wasn’t as big as we thought it would be when we joined the queue at about 10pm, but as the clock ticks closer to 12am, the crowd grew bigger and bigger. By my estimate, there were probably more than a thousand people waiting in line? I may be wrong though…
There’s not just one queue in the whole line. A queue brings you to another queue and then to another queue, if you get what I mean. To the organiser’s credit though, they were actually kind enough to distribute free drinks and snacks to the people in line. Not that bad after all.
At exactly 12am, after some pyrotechnics and some fanfare, they started selling the iPhones to the customers in line. We thought we could be getting the iPhone very soon, but we still had to wait for about an hour before actually getting into the store. When we were in the store, we waited for about half an hour before we were served by the staff. The process of setting up the phone was pretty swift, and we were already ready to pay in less than 15 minutes.
Considering the wait the Americans had to endure to get their hands on the iPhone on launch day, SingTel’s iPhone launch seems to be a considerably pleasant experience. At about 2am, and after almost 4 hours of wait, my brother became a happy iPhone owner. Now where’s my iPhone!
I wish I've got an iPhone instead.
More photos will be up tomorrow. Stay tuned.
UPDATE: Photos are up! Click on the thumbnails to view the larger photo.
and not with your crappy Internet Explorer
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