#39 - MAKNA Founder's Run 2013 - Pre and Post

Hey-oh! Just got back from the race at Padang Merbok, and boy, do I have no story to share. So, let's get cracking...

Act 1 - Pre-Race

For a Friday afternoon drive, and a lunch break hour at that, the trip from Bangi to Petaling Jaya was rather smooth-flowing. The plan was to pick-up the race pack, then a Nasi Arab lunch in Gombak, then drive back to Bangi. But since the traffic was too kind to us, I changed my plan.

But first thing first...

Oh yeah... shiny forehead. All marathon champions have that. Yeah...

Apart from the bib number obviously, which came along with what they call it a ChampionChip - basically a timing-chip device - which considering how many other races have their timing-chip attached to the bib, this one feels rather 20th century-ish, the small paper bag also carries three packets of Salonpas medicated plaster, two packets of shampoo that I will never for the life of me use, and a number of coupons.

No complaints there.

Act 2 - Post Pre-Race

As we (Oh, forgot to mention that I went to the race pack collection with the housemate; the other two girls, apparently, I totally forgot to take into consideration. Ha!) were leaving the place, feeling very hungry, we drew up a list of places to go to have our lunch. Along the way, my attention was directed to a bunting -

"SportsDirect.com is having a stock clearance sale. And it's on today."

The housemate has announced earlier that he wanted to look for a new pair of running shorts for the race. So, off to Subang then.

Lunch! It's our lunch's pre-lunch!

Oh, sorry, that picture up there just had to barge right in the middle of things. But just look at it. Look at it! It's mini chicken drumet doused with buffalo sauce, chicken deep fried in batter, and some chicken mushroom thing in a bread thing. It's the chicken holy trinity.

Yeah, shiny forehead. You dig that don't ya...

And that drink that I'm having right there is called Pina Chillada. Yeah, it's the pansy's version of the Pina Colada. I know. But holy fuzzball schmoly guzzler that drink was a real kicker. (Note: the 'kick' comes from the generous amount of calories, not alcohol)

Lunch! It's our lunch's lunch!

As a side note, I ordered the starter plate, and the housemate picked the main course, which is the Fajita Trio. It has tender grilled steak, marinated grilled chicken and spicy garlic, and lime grilled prawns, all served with a generous serving of onions and bell peppers, with a side of tortilla bread. Soft, soft tortilla bread. Sounds delicious isn't it? Yeah, copied all that from the Chili's web page.

Awesome.

Act 3 - Post Race

This picture is now starting to prove it's jasa

First of all, this race was held at Padang Merbok, and the route they're using is exactly the same as the one with the MPIB Run, which means, I totally love it. If it's hygienic I'd lick it.

Not that it would be any less awkward...

Second of all, as usual, being a disciplined person that I am, I woke up at 3:30 a.m., cooked fried rice, had breakfast, showered and is ready to leave by 4:30 a.m. The housemate however, being the ever midnight oil burner himself, only stumbled to have shower by 5. Still, that was nothing.

So, after all said and done, we left the house at 5:30 a.m., which to my standard, is already considered late. The race starts at 7:00 a.m., granted yes, but I like a lot of prep and warm-up time before the race. For this race, the two girls, Lala and Ain, are riding in a different car, but we're supposed to meet up somewhere along the way. Now, that was the exact trouble that I'd really love to avoid...

We arrived at 1km away from the starting line exactly at 7 a.m. We had a late start.

Even worse, right before we run off with the rest of the 12km runners, the housemate announced that he had to use the toilet for a while. Fuck.

Yes.

Seeing that the last of the 12km runners have already left us on the farthest horizon, and the 7km runners are readying for their flag-off, and the housemate still nowhere to be seen, I'm resigned to accept the fact that:

No.1 We'll be flagged off with the Fun Runners

No.2 I'm not having my race at my beloved route today

Fuck.

And, the finisher's t-shirt is cotton. And there is no finisher's medal. Poop.

Since I started with the Fun Runners, I thought I just have to make this run a Fun Run as well. Caught up with Ain after 1km, and with her running at a predictably slow pace, it just kind of seals the deal once and for all. I'm definitely not having a race today.

And Lala this time around didn't win anything. So - Haha!

Act 4 - Post Post Race

I was starving, yes. I'll make it straight forward this time around. That up there is Nasi Goreng Ayam. It's basically just a plate of Nasi Ayam, but the rice is fried. Decent meal, agreeable price, and good service, it's easy to love it. Not highly recommended, but if you ever drive by around Bangi area, drop by the PKNS building in Seksyen 8 Bandar Baru Bangi, second floor, behind the escalator, you will see the food court. Look for stall no.4. It's the only one with a noticeable long queue. It's easy to spot it.

Not that it's a very big food court to begin with.

There - that's the one.

#38 - Dark Side of the Moon is 40 years old

"I've been mad for fucking years, absolutely years, been over the edge for yonks, been working me buns off for bands..."
-Speak to Me-

To be brutally honest, never realized that there was a sung/spoken part in the (largely silent) opening track "Speak to Me" until I came upon this website. I never even knew about the existence of that particular website until, literally, two minutes ago. But anyway, the March of 2013 marks the 40th anniversary of Pink Floyd's most important, well-known, and weirdly still very relevant, album called Dark Side of the Moon.

I feel like I have to post something thoughtful for this one.

(Takes a deep breath)

OK - here we go...

It's a mildly humid night, tonight. The only wind that is blowing is coming from a stand fan behind me, slightly to my left. Seated in front of my PC with an almost-empty glass of water, with "Time" playing in the background - "It's a very thoughtful, and yet inspiring song" - I thought to myself.

Flashback to 2003, it was my first time listening to Dark Side, so yes, admittedly, I'm not going to even slightly pretend that I know shit about what the album stands for. What I do know, though, was that a copious amount of drug was involved in the making of this album - and possibly in the proceedings of millions of lives who listened to this album on their big hi-fi stereo, in their living room, lying down, stoned, on the floor.

It must have been quite an experience.

Anyway, back in 2003, I still remembered clearly this one class, Poetry with Miss Adibah, the pseudo-bitch uber-feminist lecturer, where we were given a group assignment where we had to come up with our own poem, and then we have to read it in front of the class.

Neither one of us remembered anything about the assignment, right until the moment when we were in the class and the lecturer announced: "Okay, so we'll begin with the ladies group first to recite their poetry".

It was one of my 'oh shit' moment.

Luckily at the time I kind of remembered by heart almost the entirety to the lyrics of the song "Time". With time fast ticking away, I put pen to paper...

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day 

You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way. 

Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town 

Waiting for someone or something to show you the way. 

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain. 

You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today. 

And then one day you find ten years have got behind you. 

No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun. 

So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking 

Racing around to come up behind you again. 

The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older, 

Shorter of breath and one day closer to death. 

Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time. 

Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines 

Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way 

The time is gone, the song is over, 

Thought I'd something more to say.

Much, much later when I look back at it, the irony of it kind of stings. I mean I can safely say that 78 percent of my time back in university I have spent it on doing meaningless things that at the end of it amounts to nothing. Not that I did not enjoy it, far from it for me to regret it - but if I could have done something else more worthwhile back then, I would have certainly done it. Back then, when my family is still living in Subang Jaya, a place that is remarkably bleak and weary from what I can recall, I was still trying to come to terms with who I actually am.

I looked around me and I see everyone else is... normal. And here I am, wallowing in self-pity, and self-doubt, and self-hatred, all mixed together in equal measure.

Us, and them 

And after all we're only ordinary men.

And speaking of Subang, I still remember my old mate Pa'an, who remarked to me, aware of the bleakness of his surrounding as well, that Subang "is just like Manchester".

Manchester - because at the time we were both listening to a particular Mancunian band with equally bleak song called "Powder Blue". Not because any of us had actually been to Manchester.

What moved me when I listen to Dark Side of the Moon? Well, to put it in a way that a young listener such as me can only fully grasp, by comparison with the band's other releases, content-wise, I'd say it's not the most outstanding of all. The arrangement isn't what I would reckon to be memorable, as opposed to, say, "Shine on You, Crazy Diamond" or "Echoes". From start to finish, they are more sort of lukewarm and 'just about there'. But what made it significant though is in the theme. It's very grand, larger than life, and very 'out-there'. It's the kind where people high on marijuana goes "Woah, dude!"

From what I understand, it was more of a joke rather than the real thing. Not that I have tried smoking weed.

Breathe, breathe in the air. 

Don't be afraid to care. 

Leave but don't leave me. 

Look around and choose your own ground. 

Long you live and high you fly 

And smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry 

And all you touch and all you see 

Is all your life will ever be.

On a gentle note, David Gilmour lets the listener in with these assuring opening line (refer above), like the way a father would whisper into the ears of his newborn son/daughter, welcoming him/her into the world. Then as the note soars into the second verse, the flow was interrupted with a dizzying synthesizer line, harrying the listener along random clips of female announcer announcing flights and distorted evil laughter, before it ends with a boom. Then came a masterpiece:

Well, yeah, the video is kind of shitty, with all that flashing colours and still pictures expanding and contracting and countless reference to the band and the album (the pyramid is one), and the endless stream of pictures of all shapes and sizes of clocks - okay 70's video clips, we get it, this song has the word time in it.

But if you look beyond the cheesy video clip and pay attention to the song, you will be greeted with what I would say one of the best song (ever) from the most important album of our lifetime. "Us and Them" is the second best song (ever).

"And I am not frightened of dying, any time will do, I 
don't mind. Why should I be frightened of dying? 
There's no reason for it, you've gotta go sometime."
-The Great Gig in the Sky-

Back in 2002 if I'm not mistaken, there was a Malaysian post rock band called Damn Dirty Apes, and they did an interview in the long-gone music magazine Tone where they describe their debut album Ape Kill Ape as the current generation's version of Dark Side of the Moon.

The only thing I could think of at the time was: "how silly of them. Nobody can ever recreate Dark Side of the Moon. Not even Pink Floyd themselves. It's a special moment that happened once, and forever remembered in a lifetime". Thank you Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Richard Wright, and Nick Mason, and Alan Parsons, and everybody else who was involved in the making of this album.

It is truly spectacular.

And if the cloud bursts, thunder in your ear 

You shout and no one seems to hear. 

And if the band you're in starts playing different tunes 

I'll see you on the dark side of the moon.

P/S: I'm just guessing that these words in the song "Brain Damage" is a reference to Syd Barret. Just a hunch.

#37 - Sigur Rós new single Brennistein

Received an update e-mail from Sigur Rós this morning where they announced that a new album (already?) will be released worldwide on June 17 called Kveikur. Pre-orders can be placed here. More importantly, this would be their first release as a trio after Kjartan Sveinsson officially left the band (Reddit AMA, 24 Jan 2013). The first single accompanying the release is entitled "Brennistein" - and it's... unusual.

Unusual for Sigur Rós. Not that their music has not been unusual to begin with.



I'm having a mixed feeling about this release. For one, I still haven't yet fully properly 'listened' to Valtari. The thoroughly sparse, cinematic, beat-less album, though a welcoming return to Sigur Rós of old, proves to be quite a terribly slow grower to me. It's like sitting in front of a potted plant in the front yard watching the flower bloom - I'm hardly that patient for that kind of stuff.

Secondly, in the build-up to the release of Valtari, Georg Hólm did mention about the new album having "more electronic stuff than before". A number of quick listen to the album does not reveal a lot of electronic stuff. They were more orchestral, actually.

"Brennistein" however, is very electronic, from the outset. It's very metallic, brutal (to say the least), and does not share any of the operatic quality of  Sigur Rós's previous works. If I am to stretch it a bit, I'd say it has a closer semblance to Von, the band's debut album. Not necessarily dark and sombre, but metallic nevertheless.

This new musical direction could work. I guess.

#36 - Raptor Watch 2013

Friday, 8 March 2013, 6:00 p.m.

Just finished my tea break at McD (twister fries for the win!), I glanced at my watch - it says 18:08 hours. Yeah, I'm wearing the Casio wristwatch. Very helpful this watch is to me whenever I'm going for a run because it has this feature that allows me to stop time at will. Kind of like Doctor Who.

Not that I've actually seen the show.

But whenever other people turn to me wanting to know the time, that's when I actively hate the watch, and then the time-asker. "Fuck it now I have to deduct eight minutes from the time on my watch to give the correct time reading", I grumbled quietly under my breath.

Friday, 8 March 2013, 6:30 p.m.

Okay NOW I'm in a rushing mode, having spent a good ten minutes trying to decide which Nature Valley granola bar should I buy. Apparently I made the mistake of undermining the power of surprise of Friday evening traffic jam.

"Surprise!"

"Gah! Kill it! Kill it with fire!"

You see, I have promised to my two carpoolers that we will be meeting at the KL Sentral at 6:50 p.m. With ten minutes to go, I am still stuck somewhere in Kajang. I had my brief moment of road rage.

I'm not very proud of it.

Saturday, 9 March 2013, 9:00 a.m.

PNB Ilham Resort - ground zero. So I see that the number of booths for this year has slightly increased. That is good. But because of it the Nature Guides booth was slightly hidden. That is not good.

After finish setting up our booth, the duty roster was put up - the lead guide's name was put first, then the sweeper have the freedom to choose with whom they want to team up with. Since my name was on number ten, I thought my first trip would start somewhere around the region of 11 a.m. or so.

Boy was I wrong.

Saturday, 9 March 2013, 6:15 p.m.

First day of the event and I had to do three trips - the first was with the form 4 students from the Royal Military College. Very good kids. Then it was another group of students from Melaka (Notre Dame school). Then it was the walk-in group - six adults and four children.

Worn out and sweaty after a long day, I was only thinking of going back to the hotel and take a nice cold shower. I deserve it.

Azmir (one of the carpooler) announced that he will be joining Elena for a hike up the Batu Putih trail. I've never gone to that place before.

"I'm in".

The ten or so minutes hike was totally worth, even though my left knee was giving up. Once we were on top of the 'batu putih', I climbed down towards the edge of the cliff where it is looking out westward towards the Sumatra island.

I sat down on one of the white stone and soon enough, swiftlets flew one after another right in front of my face, coming from left to right.

Mother nature is awesome.

Saturday, 9 March 2013, 9:00 p.m.

As usual with all dinner events where some Dato' VIP has to officiate the event, everyone else who is actually doing something, breaking sweat and their own back, to ensure the success of the event, has to patiently sit at the table, having a (presumably forced) discourse while the food that is already served on the buffet table gets cold.

They made us wait. They - the people who are not even contributing an ounce of anything worthwhile to the cause - have the gall to make the rest of the world wait for them.

If not because I was too lazy to go out and get a better dinner anywhere else, I would've just said no

Sunday, 10 March 2013, 10:00 a.m.

Final day - final thoughts. I got to do only one trip for the day, but this time it was a group of adults (Specifically, staffs from uh, some cement company) It was nice to finally get to talk with fellow adults after so long been talking to half-wits - non-adults, sorry.

They are a far more appreciative crowd, I can remark. Which I really appreciate. A lot. I wonder - if only college students can be just as appreciative as these adults are...

Oh, I just cannot be outdone by a suave raptor on a whiteboard.

Thank you Raptor Watch 2013 for the experience!

Also, a note of thanks to Elena Shim for some of the pictures.

#35 - Brooks Half Marathon 2013, and the subsequent self-realization

As it stands for now, my PR for half-marathon is still 2:04.44, set at the 2012 edition of the Seremban Half. But then, that was then, when things are still a bit, um, different...

One person, however, is not feeling as victorious...

There was a few mental notes that I had made prior to the race; one chiefly being that to finish the race at all would be an incentive. One thing that only hit me a day or two after the race day of the fact of how much I have fallen behind, physically.

The conclusion of the Brooks Half, as it turns out, is a low point for me - made ironic by the teeny weeny trophy medal I received at the finishing line - of how I have actually regressed, and not the opposite. I am getting slower, not faster; my legs are hurting more, all over the place, rather than feeling as fresh as a horse...

Whee...~wait, fresh as a what? Why am I in a metaphor?

The self-realization here is that I might be suffering from burnout.

Yeah...

Well boo-fucking-hoo

The regression is such that I have gone from targeting a sub-2 hours finish to a sub-2:40 finish, all in a timespan of less than a year. That started with the Seremban Half (a 2:04), followed by the PJ Half (2:11 - marred by a last 1km calf strain), followed by the Penang Bridge Marathon (HM in 2:19 - lack of sleep was the perpetrator, plus the humid condition), and now this.

Well, I suppose luck plays a major part in this, as time and time again it proves itself to be quite a cruel, heartless bitch that it is...

So now I am three-fifth Bad Luck Brian, and the rest one-fifths of Good Guy Greg, and Forever Alone guy.

Thus, I'm taking a break - break from running, break from reading about running, break from even thinking about running, and even break from blogging about running. I've had enough of it. I'm leaving running...

All for a good one week. Yeah - just one week. Then it's back to light training for three days, then a (possible) trip to a physio and see how I'm actually holding up physically.

A bowl of tow huay! There is a loving God!

Other thing that I gathered from the race, apart from the ultra-long line for the breakfast, and the amazing bowl of tow huay (Oh I love tow huay), and the lack of isotonic drinks at all the water stations (or was that just my bad luck?), and the lack of photographers along the race (or was that just my bad luck?), is the presence of honkers, or horn-blazers.

Or assholes.

Lots of impatient driver living around Bukit Jalil as it seems, blaring their horn endlessly as if that will make the traffic move at their will. Look: I know it's a pain in the ass when you have to actually get somewhere but then were held up in a traffic because thousands of people are running up ahead.

I'm a driver too - I understand the sentiment.

Here, the mighty trophy medal sizes up with a laptop speaker...

But... ah well, not quite sure how to end this, but you guys are just terrible. Even scumbag like Chris Brown I can stand.

And here it is again, sizing up with a mouse...

I remember going for a run at lots of other places, where drivers on road are held up as well, and they all behaved like a civilized people that they are. You know - tolerance. We're all road tax payers as well, the money that we all knew went into paying for a Korean superstar that did not appear to toss the yee sang. Please, don't be such a...

And... the inevitable comparison.

...dick.