all bikes and wheels merely players

"All the world 's a stage, and all the bikes and wheels merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one wheel in its time plays many parts"


as tania departs, radar arrives. this will be the new addition mr guava and i will be getting for neon. after sourcing around, i will go with ben's recommendation and get this.

tomorrow i start spinning again. ho ho ho!

Ave et Vale

tania left with a nice guy named merill yesterday.

as i gave it a last look and saw him push her away, i know she'll be in good hands. he'll put her in good use.

i'll miss her and all the places she has travelled with me.

Ave et vale. may we meet again some day! on the road! =)

still spinning

Tricia managed to keep up with the 2^nd day of morning spin. And what’s worth giving myself a pat on the back is – I woke up at 5:05am and promptly started spinning at 5:10am. I extended the session by 5mins over yesterday’s 30min. I hope to keep that up for the entire week if possible,

There are more people enquiring on the bike and a guy came to view it yesterday. He’s a newbie sourcing for his first bike. Today he texted mr guava (my dearie’s new nick) to ask for a further reduction of price..but 1.6k is the lowest we are willing to part with the bike. After all, I paid slightly more than 3k for the bike..with the new bar tape and new tires.. I won’t go any lower than that.

Mr guava and I are hoping to sell off the bike before we leave for cny on Saturday..at least that’ll be one load off our minds.

Another hour before I end work. Honestly, I’m just totally jaded now. I need to run..after wolfing down the extra 2 slices of mulit grain bread..i better do so. Run some hills then hit the flats with the rest of velocity gang.

And then what? WAFFLE! My peanut butter WAFFLE! Muhahaha. That’s one reason why we train hard – to EAT!

all spun up in the morning

I’m feeling hyped up today. Finally, I’ve managed to move my butt out of bed to spin in the morning. I set my alarm at 4:45am, 5am and 5:30am. In the end I only managed to get myself out of bed at 5:15am. I just had to snooze it a few times before the determination kicked in to propel me out of bed.

Somehow getting the motivation to gain inertia is very uplifting. I must keep up with this. My goal is to gain enough biking fitness to complete A Famosa well.

I’ve dropped the price of my bike further, in hope that someone would pick it up and make good use to it. it’s a good bike and I sure would miss riding it.. however, I do agree with the fact that I don’t have much use of it if I start training on neon more. Moreover, it’s more important that I get training wheels for neon now so that I’ll start riding it more. At the end of the day, that’s the bike I’ll race with, so it only makes sense that I train with it.

There’ll be a guy viewing it tonight. I’ll set it up on the trainer for him. With the cheap price I’m letting it go at, I’ll not change the stem for the buyer. He has to find his own stem and change it to the length he’ll be comfortable with.

I’ve got 2 options for 650c wheels – ambrioso and xero lite. I’ve emailed tbb to find out when their stock is coming in but no reply as yet. Well if they don’t get back to me, I’ll go for ambrioso. Maybe small time purchases like mine not worth the time of tbb..unlike ben who really takes effort to source the wheelset for me and reply my email promptly.

If there’s anything I need to get, the first place I’ll ask has to be C2C. it’s still my all-time favourite bike shop. Thumbs up for Ben!

I am sooooo looking forward to the long week of break coming my way. counting down now.. 5 more days then off to Segamat we go.

Somehow having that in mind makes going through the week of work a lot more bearable..because the break is oh-so-near!

when your $ is my $, and my $ is my $

our first joint account.. finally got around getting it done. this is our travel fund.. we'll put in $200 each per month and whatever amount accumulates, we'll use it for our phuket and melbourne trip. =)

of course if not enough then we top up with our other savings lor.

tricia's wishlist 2008

1. Savings & Investment

Primarily to work hard for a good bonus and pay rise so that dearie and I can be even more financially stable. I do hope we can start an investment account to diverse our savings by year end of 2008.

Action:

- to start monthly budget and expenses tracking starting Feb 08, in order to enable better monitoring of cash flow and plan for future savings.

- Start a joint account with dearie to set aside more money monthly.(DONE!)

- Not sure how much I can save because there will be more spendings for travel (as mentioned below), but I’ll still make sure to set aside a reasonable amount monthly.

2. Travel

Dearie and I plan to go 2 places for this year – Phuket & Melbourne. I really want to bring my mum along to Melbourne for a holiday. I’ve never done so in my life and she deserves it. I told her it’s an all expenses paid trip I want to give her but I don’t cover her shopping sprees! =P she’s really looking forward to it too, as she shared it during one of her presentation in her class.

Action:

- start buying tickets early to get them cheap.

- Start researching and finding out more details of the places.

- Save more!!

3. Personal Bests & Races

5km – we have plans to go for the mr25 time trial and I really hope I can qualify. I know I’ve never been a fast twitch runner to begin with; tricia has never been put next to side with the word “fast”. But for a change, I really hope I can say I’m a mr25 runner. Perhaps in my little myopic world, it is my short term goal to achieve that name for myself. I’ve been doing my hills and speedwork, in hope to one day complete that 5km in macritchie under 25mins.

Marathons – tall call but I hope to shave off more time off my current marathon timing. Give me a few more years and my mid term goal is to go under 4 hours.

Not expecting any personal bests in tri but just want to get back into action with my biking and swimming to be in a decent shape to attempt the A’farmosa, PD and desaru tri.

Ultra marathons – my goal is to beat 7laps to go for 8laps in this year’s mr25 ultra. I’ll not be doing the sundown even though that’ll be a good spring board to give me a gauge on how it’ll feel running 80km non stop. Nonetheless, I’ll be doing the north face 50km off road so that’ll be the 2 ultras for 2008.

Adventure racing – not main focus for this year per say. It’ll be more for the thrill and fun rather than aiming to do that well. Reason being ar has too many disciplines we seldom get to train on – kayaking, ascending, mountain biking. There are too many things to do hence ar has to take a back seat. However, if eco-extreme is on, we’ll be there. In addition, we’ll be game for some local races like ace adventure, which was a lot of fun last year apart from the double jumma.

In short, yr 2008 our major races: marathons (phuket, Melbourne, standchart), ultras (north face, mr25), tri (a’farmosa, pd, desaru), ar (eco-x if there is and some local short races).

Actions:

- continue to do speed and hill training religiously. Chase dearie on run if necessar

- Ramp up mileage with ample runway for major races

- Run more at macritchie. Train as at race day condition.

- Bike at least twice a week: Sunday morning + 1day on trainer

- Swim at least twice a week: got to start my interval swim training I don’t fancy. But what to do..must get faster so must work harder.

- Find time to do LSD, probably on Saturdays. Run to rl maybe?

4. Health and Fat Loss

I want to be in good health, lose more fats and gain more lean muscles. I think weight is not a good representative of health. Therefore my goal is to be more lean and lose more fats.

Action:

- be more controlled with my junk food intake (up till this point in time still quite hard to curb).

- Do more gym. On top of swim, run, bike, I’m going to include 1 session of gym work per week. I need to build my core strength as well.

5. Work

I’m not that ambitious but if given an opportunity I would want to be daring enough to take the challenge. i hope to do well enough to deserve more performance bonus. Show me the money!! –chuckles-

Everyday in itself is dynamic. We choose to welcome the challenge or shrink off in denial. I choose the former. May the above not be a wish but become reality. Let’s race the year and complete it well. At year end, let’s review and take stock..we shall see how we’ve fared.

Off we go!

caught in translation

I feel so caught.. caught in translation.

Attempt to sell Tania seemed unsuccessful up to this point in time. There seems to be many people trying to sell off their bikes and the market isn’t that active as it’s not near to the tri season. Often when osim or some tri events draw near, people start scrambling to get a bike, which is silly because if you want to attempt a tri, you should have started biking long before the race and not last minute.

Another factor that’s making my bike hard to sell – it’s caught in the middle. Newbies would not want to splurge $2k on a bike, usually going for something within the $1k budget. People into the sport, given most of them with deep pockets, would lavishly spend to get the best parts. Mine’s a middle class. It uses ultegra parts, second from the top dura-ace. It’s a alu-carbon frame, second to full carbon frames but better than full alu.

I hope to sell it off so I can provide for the new 650c training wheelset but I’m reluctant to let it go at a dirt cheap price because I maintained it to retain its good condition. I really don’t want to fall into desperation to let it go, in any case, keeping it might yield some purpose in return.

I can use it for the trainer, because we won’t want to run our other bikes on it. I can still use it some times because it’s a sturdy little baby.

However, if I so decide to keep it, then the next question is if I’ll buy a training wheelset for neon. If I do so, it’ll set me back by a good $470 ($330 for wheelset, $60 for cassette, $10 tubes, $70 tires). Gulps. Hence, if I don’t sell Tania, would I decide to bite the bullet for this?

Sigh.

I’m so caught. So so so caught.

Someone from malaysia’s bicyclebuysell enquired. I’m really dropping my price like mad.. arranging to view is another big issue because he’s located in KL. I’m really not keen to plan a meet up, go through the trouble of bringing it back to Segamat if it’s not a definite deal. I can save a lot more trouble if it’s sold to someone here locally.

I don’t know what to do now. sell? Don’t sell? Buy new wheelset? Don’t buy?

I want to start training on the trainer now I don’t even know if I should use Tania on it or not.

Argh. Someone nice, won’t you just pick Tania and save us all from being so caught in translation? Pretty please? =(

the wants and must dos

Some things I want and must do:

1. despite being an accounts exec, I don’t keep a budget for myself. Usually I give myself a gauge by looking at my savings balance and that’s where I tell myself how much I can spend or not. Perhaps for better planning purposes, I shall adopt dearie’s suggestion of keeping track of my expenses. I’ll kick that off in feb 08.

2. after the bike ride on Sunday, I realize how much I have slacked off in biking for the past half a year. I couldn’t even keep up with an uncle on a dahon foldable bike. It’s a disgrace! Hence I do have to buck up if I am going to go for any of the tri races in Malaysia come later part of the year. I’m tossing with the idea of training on my trainer on some mornings, that’s the best way to get a good bike workout without having to weave through traffic.

3. sell off my road bike. After much consideration, I’m going to let go of my Tania (my orbea vitesse). Dearie reasoned with me on why am I keeping neon (my cervelo) like a white elephant; spending so much on it but not using it. I always gave the reason that it’s too expensive to run on the road for training, so I’ve always kept Tania for training despite it being a little big for me. time to let it go and I’m really hoping I can sell it off at a decent price. Bad thing now it’s not tri season as yet so there might not be a demand. Nonetheless if I can sell it off, then I can finance a new 650 wheelset for neon to be used for training. The hed will be kept for racing. So, keeping my fingers crossed, I hope to find a good owner for tania.

4. get my wisdom teeth removed. After enduring 2years of wearing the tormentous braces, those idiotic wisdom teeth pushed my row of straight pearlies all out of place. Grr!!! I’m so angry to see all my nice pearlies messed up because of those “wisdom” teeth growing inwardly. Not very “smart” teeth to begin with. I’m really hoping to get them removed before cny when we’re back in Malaysia. To get it done in Singapore in crazy expensive. On the average it’s about $500/tooth. my eyes nearly rolled off their socket upon seeing such a price tag on removal of teeth.

shabby dog with a big nose

There seems to be a lot of hush-hush whispering going on these days. It makes me curious to what is going on but I’ve been suppressing my natural woman’s instinct as a nosey parker.

She seemed pretty disturbed and upset since the week began, when we saw her sitted in boss’ office in conversation. Not too sure how are things working out on her side.. boss doesn’t look like he’s in his best of moods either.

Big nosed tricia has been itching to find someone in the department to bounce thoughts with but can’t seem to find someone trustworthy to share. Hence I always go back to dearie, whom often advise me to stay neutral. I certainly do agree that’s the best stance to take as well.

So much for all the undercurrents in the department..

Work is getting more these days.. somehow the urge of going on for more studies is extinguished by the daily grail at work. Somehow the uncertainty that clouds our department makes my path ahead a little hazy. With the moving on and up of the colleagues around me, I can only hope the haze clears up so that I can better plan my own future ahead.

Alongside with each passing of day, I am looking more and more like a doggie. My hair has outgrown its initial proportion and now I find myself resembling a shabby dog, with its fringe covering my eyes and puffed up doddles by my ears. Yikes! Nancy to the rescue! I’ve made an appointment with nancy to give my tresses a trim.

Work hours at rl has been cut by an average of 3hours per week. it’s disturbing to find the figures on my cheque getting smaller. However, optimistically, it’s a good thing to get to return back home earlier to rest.

Nowadays I’ve been scheduled to finish at 7pm on both sun and sat - that means sat I can rest earlier in order to bike on sun morning. On sun I get to rest early for getting back to office on mon. in light of that, a diminishing figure on the pay cheque is well worth.

Afterall, my livelihood does not fall on rl but my full time job. That’s the aspect in my life I have to give 100% and make something out of. Running is a passion and sometimes an elusive way for me to get away from reality. On the list of priorities the part time job would probably come in with less importance. It’s a good-to-have; not a must-have.

I can’t wear shorts and t-shirt all my life. I want to belong to the world of power suits and stilettos. Oh look! Shabby dog in a suit! - chuckles

one handful of true friends

I think leading your days finding fulfillment in the things you do is important. Somehow I’ve been sensing tension suspending over the workstation diagonally across where I am. Perhaps it’s pay related, like always. Perhaps it’s promotion related. Perhaps it’s just the ego making things hard to swallow.

I hope her requests would be heard and something would be done for her. if any case if it doesn’t work out, I hope she’ll move on and find something that’ll suit her better. It’s definitely better than hanging on here, feeling all miserable and short changed. Learning to leap over the fence takes courage and by doing so, sometimes we do find a pasture that’s greener than the present.

The boat which holds our department should be experiencing a little commotion coming its way. Keeping the morale of the department staff high is important. Despite changes, it’s important everyone else hold fast to their positions and not let the changes bowl us off our feet. If everyone is rooted well, there won’t be much an impact. However, if everyone is built on sand, then be ready for some damage. In any case, the boss must do some damage control and after disaster work. So let’s keep observing and see how things would progress into.

Meantime, I know it’s important I stay as neutral as possible. I’m not paid to poke my head into the business of other people. If they do share with me I’ll just listen and not comment. It’s their own lives, I can’t offer much but a listening ear. Moreover, to avoid people quoting me off the things I say, keeping quiet is the best policy. God gave us 2 ears but only 1 mouth. Isn’t it a clear sign that He wants us to listen more than we talk?

God gave me 10 fingers. It’s a sign that He wants me to express my laments and thoughts in writing rather than tell people around me. because these days, there are not many people I can truly trust.

How many is not many?

Let’s just say only one handful.

dearie's new school shoes

guess wat? even my dearie has a new baby. i call it his new school shoes.

and yea, it's on 46% discount too!

that calls for another "WOW WEEEE JUNIOR JUICE" cheer!

new reason to run..even more!

i could not resist the 46% discount on this baby. it is now clearing at 40% on top of that with the print out i get an additional 10% off. that's 46% off it's original price.

wow wee junior juice! it's like 11% more discount from what i can get it on STAFF DISCOUNT. what?!!

GRAB IT! =)

life in bobian

After working through the account of RPR for 1 whole day to close off 2007, my boss sprung on me and told me he wants everything zerorised. He wants to start the accounts all over again so the transactions between the BVI and Singapore company would be concealed.

I was dumbfounded but I kept my cool to nod in acknowledgement to the tall order. If I could express in words, how I felt that very moment, it would probably be, “ WA LAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO…”(a real long one), followed with a sigh (hai..)

After dealing with the shock, I know come to the stage of resignation.

“Bo bian. Boss is boss. Boss say what, must sayyy yesss.”

Before I can redo everything I’ve done for the entire year, I’ve got to wait for the IT dept to retrieve the “tape” which they backed up their files into. Wait for the restoration, then redo. I foresee staying late to finish work next week.

WAAAAAAAAAA LAOOOOOOOOOO..life in bobian. = (

study-eat-train-& dun grow fat

I processed through what my boss evaluated with me on 31st December during the appraisal. His affirmation encouraged me greatly and I sensed his prompting for me to do a marketing course again. He said doing a marketing course would give good insight of what it means to run a business, an additional facet that sometimes an accountant fail to perceive. His faith in me to do great things made me nod in understanding that if I would be willing to think out of the box, there are many options ahead of me to explore.

I’m jostling with the idea of taking up a short part time marketing course to enrich myself. However, coming to the financing portion of the course, I wonder if the company would send me for it under its training budget and at the same time with SDF funding. Prior to approaching the respective heads for approval, it’s my responsibility meantime to source and decide on a good course to take up.

Dearie and I hit the gym yesterday, after quite a long break from it. Both of us agreed that incorporating gym work into our training programme will definitely be beneficial. Hence we’ve decided to set aside Friday evening solely for gym work.

In addition, we’re really looking forward to start biking again. I bought for myself a discounted discount cycling top from rl on Sunday. I’m determined to get back into the biking action!! The spirit is willing, just the flesh is weak. Ha!

Work has been quite a heady brew as we prepare to close the financial year. I’m happy to be busy with closing, because it’s doing something within my grasp, instead of grappling with something I cannot seem to put my finger on.

I wolfed down 12 biscuits today. Small they might be but I know how deadly they can be! Gee, I can’t help it, my tummy was growling badly..and I had to pacify it. alrights, I will bring 2 more green apples to work tomorrow so that I won’t have to feel all that guilt.

And of course, training is back in motion. For off season training, dearie and I will be focusing on building strength as well as cross training. No urgency to clock a lot of mileage, but I’ll be focusing more of getting the most of my runs. Let’s see how I fare with that endeavour.

Study, eat, train and try hard not to grow fat – that sums up my blog entry for today. =)

pain in the neck

One kind of person I cannot stand is those who are constantly looking for weaker ones to trample upon so as to alleviate themselves onto the pedestal.

Encountering one early this morning got me really irritated. If you are fast, so be it. I don’t need your kind of advice to go faster. I run because I love doing so, not because I want to use that result to go around telling others you should come join my kind of training to be like me.

I got to speak to eng huat for a while just now and I could sense the same kind of sian-ess that lingers in his voice. I identify the sian-ess in myself too. Sad but true, working at rl is no longer like the former days. Gone are its glorious days.

i suffered a bad headache on Wednesday. Not sure the cause of it but the bouts of pain paralysed me. I took the morning off to see a doctor and then went home to rest after which.

Work’s starting to get more challenging with my sup hounding down my back for the consol which I can’t seem to understand. I need more motivation in this.

Don’t despair, tricia. Hold your head up and keep going. I’m not good but I will get better. Hang on. Hang on. And don’t give up.

the road ahead

the adrenaline of crossing the finish line, the pain of holding through, feeling the kilos burn off with every step.. with all that running brings, it leaves me a different person. i can't wait to put on my running shoes, dress up in my shorts & singlet..let's take the road again. it's time to start running. no excuses, just us and the road ahead.

our new toy!

look at this baby! this is the new toy dearie has bought. he is letting me bring it around and snap photos.

what a wonderful new year present! thank you dearie!