Two Special Individuals; One Remarkable Journey

This wedding poem is dedicated to two good running friends, Ong & Jaime.

Two Special Individuals; One Remarkable Journey

Two delightful faces at the racing start
Hand-in-hand you cross the mat
May you be blessed with the energy to last it all
And the endurance to sustain through

This special couple, I wish you both
A lifetime of happy celebrations and strong recoveries
To love each other through joy and pain
And have little angels just like you

Through terrain change and spectator cheers
May your hearts sync, as two become one
Your journey of a hundred years
On this 4th November it begins

To our golden pair, we celebrate
Your courage, love and commitment
To start and end, together across the lines
Two special individuals, One remarkable journey

Congratulations!

A Little Birthday Reflection

A little birthday reflection

I first saw a lean tanned guy
Trying hard to address a crowd
As he tried to project his voice
Each time he spoke
A hand coolly perched on his back
The other gesticulating away
His body weight slightly on one foot
His face slightly turned

I soon learned he was the trainer
Whose training plans I eagerly await
Every Monday before 830am
My Inbox I would check
One week it was late
Repeated refreshing brought nil mails
What relief as it finally beeped
With the awaited plan at 10am

Many speed and distance runs
Across interesting routes and mixed terrains
Through unknown roads and linkages
Hidden estates we bashed through
Cantebury Portsdown discovered
Brings much respite to the runs
Easing the pounding monotony
And hard panting breaths

On this twenty-ninth of September
As you turn two past thirty years
I wish you many more happy returns
As you attain many better PBs
Amongst the greatest one we can never beat
Your choice of significant other
As you continue your journey with her
Have a happy birthday, Ong

Domestic Therapy

My mum's away for a couple of days. She goes on these free cruise trips a few times a year, courtesy of my cousin's gaming prowess. When mum's away, that means DIY-everything. Read: recycle more of everything. So I have tried out domestic therapy for a few days. Some people claim that household chores can be uplifting and almost detoxifying for the spirit. I reckoned only my arms were uplifted from the packing and my hands throughly detoxed (aka disinfected) from the cleaning.

The first afternoon, I merrily cleaned out my wardrobe. I should hold an auction, I might rake some profits from all the recycleable stuff. One small shelf led to another, and I turned the entire cupboard inside out. It was gratifying to free up an extra 50% space in the bulging cupboards, whose metal rods and doors threaten to spill their contents everyday. Being organized means sorting the clothes into 4 neat piles - the outing, the sports, the sleep-in, and the post-sports - never mind if they sound similar. I've a premonition the 4 neat piles would soon morph into 1 big mess, but then one can't keep worrying about the future can we? :) Laundry was up next. I'm thankful that I'm small-sized, so there's less cloth to wash. I'm such an inefficient washer, if my mum was away longer, Singapore would need lots more Newater. But hey, I'm quite good at scrubbing clothes fast. I managed to do my laundry today, before coming to work. Well, I was sort of late for work. But hey, someone has to do the laundry right?
And here comes my all-time favorite activity. Food. Maggi mee. Via microwave. I flooded the machine. It was a bowl, plus noodles, plus hot water. With a glass lid cover. It flooded the microwave tray. I then set the lid slightly ajar to let some steam out. It flooded more. Excellent. The 3-min fast to cook, fast to eat meal, became a 15min clean up session.

And there ends my attempts at domestic therapy. Clean sheets and clothes beckon. My mum is back today.

Blow-dryer Career

I think I can start a 2nd career as a blow-dryer. We went riding on Friday morning with my swanky new bike. Alas got caught in a torrential downpour. And since I didn't have any bike cleaning stuff at home, I could only wipe it and blow-dry with a hairdryer. I've no idea if I'll spoil any parts of the bike with the hot air.... But it was super cool seeing beads of water droplets scurrying out in all directions from underneath the nuts and bolts and all nooks and crannies. And you learn to press every part that's movable, every joint, and aim the hairdryer at it. Ha. And then suay suay, the next day, there was another downpour, and my precious in the balcony kenna a washing on its front. Again. Out comes the hairdryer. Repeat the whole cycle.

I'm getting quite adept with the hairdryer. Geez, I mean I use the thing on my head like twice a year. And now I'm fully utilizing it, twice 2 days in a roll on the bike. Oh man..... I'm dedicating that hairdryer to the precious. So I learnt I needed to buy cleaning solutions and cheem stuff that all the guys seem knowledgeable abt, but which are greek to women.... For which I had a hard time visualizing how to use them on the bike.

Today I rode to Tuas & Sentosa. By the time I got home it was 10pm. Time to groom the bike once more. With the correct tools this time. Thank goodness I had presence of mind to clean it in the corridor (uh, not a recommended place, but beats inside the house). Proudly, like what the shop owner demo, I aimed that degreaser spray straight at the cassettes & chain. The solvent smelt of orange citrus. My my, even bikes have perfume! Eau de-greaseur! Haha.... Must have done it right, cos black gooey stuff promptly sputtered out & dripped all over the place. It was both a sense of achievement, mixed with drats-i've-greased-the-corridor dread. Next to clean was the chain. 2x toothbrushes held bristles to bristles, and run the chain through them. Sounds simple. Wait til one of the brushes is from an SQ flight. Already cannot make it on my teeth, totally cannot make it on the chains. The brush broke!! After a couple of chain-spins, the bristles all became detached (think of an old broom that sheds 'hair' as you sweep), and the 1inch brush section split into two. And created more mess on the already dirty floor. Buy oral-B next time. The 2nd brush I used. It's tested even to withstand tough chains! So anyhow after that I had absolutely no idea if the chains were clean or not, they still left black marks on my fingers when I touched. But I know I've successfully ruined a nice clean bucket, cos it's now got a rim of grease where the dirty water level was. Plus 1x broken brush, 1x blackened Oral-B.

The precious temporarily (definition = my mum's tolerance) stays in the living room, away from the climate elements, until I get a giant groundsheet to cover it. Thought I'd lean the bike against something & put newspapers beneath the wheels to keep the floor clean. Um, I forgot about laws of friction. The papers kept sliding out against the floor, and the whole bike wouldn't lean upright. Darn. Forced to use the triangle stand. Wrestled with the thing for 7min before prying it open & attaching to bike. Sense of accomplishment #2. By which time it was 45min past, and in terrible need of a nice shower & food for myself. And haven't blow-dry yet!

I concluded that if each time I ride, I need 15min before the ride to pump tires, lubricate the chains, and 45min after to hose and clean the bike.... Whew! (I don't even take that long to clean up myself!)... The ride had better be much longer than 1hr to justify all that cleaning time!

PS
- who now understands why men suffers from obsessive polishing & waxing of cars, but not their bods....

(pps: i don't even clean my climbing gear as thoroughly.....)

A Last Climb

This is for my climbing team-mates from the Singapore Women's Everest Team.

A Last Climb

As the trip draws close,
My apprehension grows.
This could be it,
The last climb, I fear.

A journey this far,
It seeps into your life.
Every aspect touched.
All senses engulfed.

But not a tinge of regret,
Should curtains be drawn.
If scenes could replay,
I would wish the same cast.

A path less trodden,
A life more lived.

Thank you,
For walking it together.

Nerve-wrecking Dentist

Oh my good golly! I swear I'll be religious abt brushing, and visit the dentist regularly, and taste of minty Darlie all the time. If you read my last instalment, I had to go fix this crown over a molar. But alas there was this nerve infection and it became a root canal treatment instead. To the lucky all of you who don't know what that is, it's basically a process to remove the dying or infected nerves in the tooth, before crowning it. It was an interesting idea of a nerveless tooth. Oh blammy.

The anesthetic jabs around the tooth didn't work, and between holding my breath and trying not to die from asphyxia, and trying to catch THE expert's cheem lingo abt acidic pH from infection inside the tooth is much lower... jazz like that I cldn't hear above all the gassy sounds... ok well, then THE expert took a look, and decided to give 6 jabs in total (!!), 2 of which went directly INTO the nerve zone. It brought new appreciation for the phrase "to hit a raw nerve". Thereafter there were lots of scrapping sounds apparently from fine needles clearing out the nerves.

Ok, the visit was absolutely educational, cos all along I thought nerves were this lines that ran beneath the tooth. So I had this visual image of drilling through the tooth and snipping the nerve. But haha, then I was told nerves were actually in the middle of a tooth. Amidst the equipment sounds, THE expert said something about "rocks stones" in the nerve, which I later found out were calcium deposits as part of some bodily self-defense mechanism. And oh, bet you didn't know that nerve can have pus? It was absolutely bordering on gross yuckiness.

THE expert announced those discoveries with some tinge of pride and amusement like a school boy in a lab, while the patient was just dying in the chair. Yucks! Right, I shan't gross people out further. Back to days of mush and porridge diet. I'm now the #1 loyal fan of 3-in-1 cereals and instant mashed potatoes. Sigh....

Sensitve Dentist

On a melting-hot bright sunny Sunday afternoon, the sort of day when one should be out there getting toasted on the beaches of Sentosa, I had to make a dreaded trip to the equally-dreaded dentist. There was this nagging tooth throb that I thought I should nip before my next climb or else be jabbed with painkillers in the cold mountains. So I bravely made an appointment with THE tooth expert, who took a quick look and said he'd need to do something about the tooth, and that I'd two options - to jab a local anesthetic, or bear with it. I asked if it'd be painful, he assured me it'd only be "sensitive". I took the jab nonetheless. And was I glad. Even after the numbness set in in half the mouth, I could feel him boring down on the tooth, and was so tense my back was off the consultation chair. I might as well have been at gym doing abs workout. Imagine what "sensitive" would have felt like! Thank goodness for the invention of anesthetics. Halellujah. I couldn't help wondering if they told pregnant women the same thing about feeling "sensitive".

So THE expert had to remove the fillings to check the beneath. Turned out I'd bitten on something so hard that penetrated the fillings (which are supposedly to last you for 30yrs!), and cracked the tooth and touched the nerve. Ouch x3. And that could have happened within the last 3-9mths, which could have been anything. Anyway, he refilled it with some temporary stuff, and said I'd need to fit a metal crown over it to prevent splitting the crack further. And meticulously went through all the options, one of which was to just wait til it totally split and extract the tooth. But then an old man doing that with a whole row of missing teeth could fix in dentures, whereas young lady like me would have a gaping hole... Wow! It was sales pitch at its most subtle! I was auto-pilot from then on, from asking questions to fixing appt. Haha.... Ok, no more gory details. On a porridge and little-chewing diet for the next few days. Thought of doing a detox while I'm at it, but then I just couldn't resist those choc cakes and meat.... *Grin* I guess I'll just bear with that "sensitive" feeling, THE good expert would have been proud of me. *LOL*