Standard Chartered KL Marathon 2009

28 JUNE 2009: The 1st Standard Chartered KL Marathon had been held at Dataran Merdeka today. I’ve participated in the 10km run that started at 7am. I woke up at 4am on the day itself to get myself ready and took a light breakfast of cereals and bananas; drove myself to Bukit Jalil LRT station for the bus to Dataran Merdeka just to avoid the traffic jam due to road block around the city. I won’t critic on the event over here though I heard quite a lot of complaints about it. Anyhow, there’re a lot spaces for improvement thatI hope Standard Chartered will do a better job next year from the experience they've got this year.

I’ve tried my very best to complete the 10km run this time in order to break my own personal record. The result can be checked on the official page within 48 hours that I’ll definitely share with you guys once I’ve got it.



If you noticed that I didn’t wear the shirt given, it was because the L size was really oversize and they didn’t allow me to change the shirt size during the goodies collection.

Did you join this marathon? If yes, what is your review on it?

Next run: Siemens Run 2009 (19 July 2009)

SC Marathon Goodies Collection

26 JUN 2009: Went to Dataran Merdeka with friends at 12pm to collect our goodies bag for Standard Chartered Marathon. It was a gloomy noon and the queue was pretty long when we reached there. So we patiently took the queue for 10km run that was around 50m away from the collection counter. However, We moved less than a meter forward after 15 minutes and it started to rain. Luckily we had our umbrella ready. As the rain was quite heavy, my jeans and shoe were wet badly. After another 20 minutes of wait under the rain, we’ve got to know that the electricity was out due to rain. Perhaps it was an unpredictable scenario where it took them another 30 minutes to repair it.

Another 30 minutes of wait after they fixed the electricity, as the staff were too efficient to pack the goodies bag. Here’s the process that I observed:
1. Get your IC to be entered manually into system to get your bib no and t-shirt size (The typing speed of the lady was….SLOW).
2. Grab the bag and put in all those goodies one-by-one into the bag (Why didn't they do this earlier?).
3. Sometimes will ask for contact no (Another manual entry with slow typing speed).
4. Pass the goodies bag.

It stated that a person can only collect maximum of 6 goodies on behalf of friends. But the guy in front of me collected at least 8 goodies bag without the lady said anything. Such a friendly management they were.



It took me freaking 2 hours there just to collect the goodies bag. In addition of time taken to travel back and forth, 3 hours gone. It was a bad experience comparing with all previous marathon joined. As this is the 1st time ever for Stand Chart, hope they can really improve it for years to come.

Weekend Makan-Makan + BodyPump

22 JUNE 2009: I had been rushing to complete a document for a whole past week, with lots of night conference calls with U.S. for discussions. It supposed to be a father’s day weekend, but my dad left me alone to Bali for his vacation with siblings. Therefore, the lonely me had decided to retreat myself by joining my gym mates for dinner at Gu Yue Tien Chinese Cuisine located at Chulan Square KL.



I parked my car nearby Pavilion and walked over to Chulan Square, which took me around 10 minutes of walk with chit chat along the way. There was a nice swivel staircase upon entering the main entrance that leads to 1st floor. The restaurant was nicely designed but the space is kind of limited. We ordered a father’s day dinner set that cost RM298 for 4 pax excluded additonal charges. It was a 6 courses dinner with a seafood cold dish (crab, prawn and oyster), shark’s fin soup, scallop, duck leg, noodle and Suet Yi dessert (A free bottle of red wine). The food served was nice in an acceptable portion. Even though it was a bit pricey (for me la), but the lovely decorated environment and great services provided paid it off.

After a heavy makan session over the weekend, I finally joined the Body Pump class at CF today. As a 1st timer, I need to test the water and didn’t put too much weight. I was sort of loss in between that I think the instructor didn’t provide enough explanation for a beginner like me. I warmed up with the weight of 3.5kg (each side) and the maximum weight used was 5kg (each side) during squat. I was still standing after an hour class that my friend said I didn’t use enough weight. Anyhow, it was a great workout and I’ll definitely do it better next time. Next target of mine is cycling class on Wednesday.

While waiting for another conference call here at 12:45am, flashing back what have I done for the past 1 month within the quiet and peaceful night. Obviously, my work load is higher comparing few months back; I've joined gym that I think I'm improving slowly in term of my physical appearance and social life and I've got to know some great friends at gym. However, I think I've loosen up a bit in term of my contact with some close friends of mine like Meg, David, CicakFong, Pontivan, BabiMummy, Anton and etc. Kinda miss them suddenly and will definitely try my best to catch up with them soon....I promise...

Company Annual Dinner

13 June 2009: Went for my company annual dinner at Crowne Plaza hotel, located beside Wisma Genting. The theme of the dinner was “Occupation Night” where I supposed everyone should dress in their dream occupation. But surprisingly only 10 of them reeally put effort to dress up. As I’m damn busy lately managing and running few projects on my hand, I just simply dressed like an office boy. Well, I thought of being a fisherman though but I didn’t have time to prepare those clothes and tools.

The ballroom was located at 30th floor, which is quite with a lovely view of KL. The dinner was scheduled to start at 6:30pm but lots of typical Malaysian colleagues were late. So the dinner ended up started at 7:30pm. It was a buffet style dinner where the food served was fine with acceptable varieties. As far as I’m concerned, I ate quite a lot of salmon and mutton that made me feel guilty until today. But luckily I did go to gym these 2 days to burn those excessive calories taken.

Talking about gym, I purposely went to CF earlier today to join the cycling class. But the class was full, with 5-6 names on waiting list. So I ended up did my routine workout of running plus weight training. Will definitely try out the cycling and bodypump classes someday.



Oh yea, almost forgotten about the lucky draw session. The "lucky" me have got a voucher for a night stay at Cyberview Lodge with 2 breakfast. Why on earth I need to stay there as my house is just 10 minutes away? So I traded it with my colleague for a Nike bag. Not a bad deal huh, at least I can use the Nike bag for gym.

3D2N Lang Tengah trip

8 June 2009: Was busying with works for the past week after back from the island trip, till no time to blog about it. Yaya, I know Granny Twilight has been complaining again on my expired blog again. We wouldn’t name him Grandma for no reason right, hehe. Here is a summary of the whole trip.

Wed - 27 May 2009
Took the bus from Pudu Raya at 1030pm.

Thu - 28 May 2009
Reached Kuala Terengganu Jetty with my aching back and ass. The 8 hours of bus-ride with uncounted stop/rest in between has been tested my patience. Sleepless and exhausted me could almost scared off other tourists around Kuala Terengganu. Took the boat to Lang Tengah at 800am where we reached at D’Coconut Resort an hour later. Upon arrival, we quickly went for snorkeling and camwhore around the resort. Not much surprise though with the usual fishes and corals.

Took lunch at the restaurant where the food served wasn’t that good as I remembered. First snorkeling trip outside the island at 3pm but I skipped it as I was so tired; and I went for a short sun-bath instead.

It was the first night in the island. We brought some beers and a bottle of whisky that we ended up with a lot of drinking and some cheeky games till 2 hours passed midnight.

Fri - 29 May 2009
Supposed to go for sunrise jungle trekking, but we skipped it again due to rain. It was a free and easy morning that we had walked around the resort for photography and camwhore. Another (2nd) snorkeling trip at the noon itself, but I skipped that again (Haha, you might start cursing me). Well, snorkeling wasn’t my main purpose for this trip as I just wanted to relax and recharge myself.

It was 2nd and final night in the island where we spent it with stargazing and had some quality conversation among few of us. The sky was much clearer with much more visible stars comparing with KL. The same old sky, but it’s totally different from 2 points of view. Same thing happens on our daily lives, aren’t we all seeing thing/issue just from our point of view? Being a selfish and negative us? Just a thought of mine over the night.

Sat - 30 May 2009
Woke up at 7am for breakfast to take the 8am boat-ride back to KT. Reached KL at 7pm where the tired me took a LRT back home.



The above is just a short summary of the whole trip, and I didn’t mention some of the details of course especially on the cheeky games part. Anyhow, it was a great trip where I’ve met with some wonderful new friends. Most importantly, I’ve recharged myself after so much stress (due to work and also relationship) for the past few months.