mini triathlon: yes/no?

inspired by han ee and the many participants i saw at the recent osim triathlon... i'm thinking of taking part in a mini triathlon in October! reading lance armstrong's autobiography also kinda egged me on.

The mini tri requires you to do half the distance for all three categories.. swimming (750m), biking (20km) and running (5km).

I'm not sure if i'm able to get fit in time for the mini tri... but i'm gonna give it a try and just train for it first. heheh.

so started my training on Monday.

i decided to test my fitness level first.

to have a baseline, ya know.

Monday: I walked at the Botanical Gardens in the evening. Brisk walking for about 30 mins?

Tuesday: I decided to time my 5 km run. I jumped on my mum's treadmill. By the end of the 3rd km. I had to hit the eject button. time check? heheh. Dig this?! an AMAZING 30 minutes. hahah. ideally, the time for a 5km run should be around 40 mins...and this is after you've swum 750m and cycled 20 km.

Wednesday: I went to Queenstown swimming complex, which has an adjoining running track!!! perfect. I timed my 15 laps in the 50 m pool. time check? 23 mins 36 secs. not bad.

Thursday: I tried running again - and got a confirmation that i NEED a lot of help in my running segment. i won't reveal the numbers. it's really dire.

anyways. i've yet to time my 20km cycle. I don't have a road bike. yet. need to figure this out soon.

consciousness

over an extended dinner conversation last night, wendy and I were talking about art, the artist's work process and the multiple layers of consciousness that we live in.

being an individual can be a liberating yet scary place to be. you inhabit a consciousness unwitnessed by no one else but yourself. this singular consciousness sits uncomfortably with what i believe is every human being's need to be "seen" and understood by someone. the idea of being an "invisible" man is alienating.

some artists need to paint as a means to exist. to express his consciousness on a white canvass. it releases the intensity of his consciousness, his being. this applies to other art forms as well. writing, singing, dancing. etc.

i was sharing with wendy my process. in my writing, i've recently realized that the process has been more draining than expected cos i'm tapping on the multiple levels of consciousness that make up my own.

"can you explain it?" she asks. wendy is schooled in art and art history.

"my senses can be really heightened...so much so that when i walk into a room. i feel the entire room and every single entity in it all at once."

i was surprised wendy didn't look surprised. the first time i shared this with someone (my sister) she thought i was just thinking too much. but i knew it wasn;t so and felt even more isolated.

well, until wendy pointed out that there are artists who work on that level. i've never met sylvia plath or michael cunningham myself...but through their work, i sense that these individuals too process the world and life in a way similar to me.

"and mark rothko too. and maybe that's why you're drawn to Pollock's works as well..." wendy offers.

wendy was trying to soothe my anxieties about my writing after getting some preliminary comments that threw me off guard/ some may not "see" what i'm trying to do not cos they don't want to but cos they can't... they simply enjoy different sensibilities and a different kind of consciousness.

at the end of our conversation...wendy shared with me the story of painter Mark Rothko whose works she saw at the Tate Museum in London last week. (i love the tate museum...)

"Rothko donated a series of paintings to the Tate. They are huge canvasses...many buyers would not want to buy the paintings collectively simply cos to have the entire series required a expansive space. And so rothko gave the collection to the Tate. he wanted the paintings to be viewed collectively cos viewed together.. the viewer will be offered a glimpse of rothko's consciousness when he was painting them. the nine paintings are in a dimly lit room at the tate... when you go in... you just stand there looking at it. after ahwile the paintings become alive...(likely through some optical illusion.) I asked my brother who was with me what he thought of it... he said..the paintings are 'breathing.' the paintings were breathing."

Rothko remained true to his consciousness and stayed focused on expressing on canvass what he saw in his mind's eye.

the story of rothko and his series of nine.. totally inspires me.

i am looking for that kind of discipline. discovering this work process has been totally unexpected and pretty draining for me.

about rothko:


(source: wikipedia)
Mark Rothko (born Marcus Rothkowitz) (September 25, 1903 – February 25, 1970) was a Latvian-born American Jewish painter who is classified as an abstract expressionist, although he rejected not only the label but even being an abstract painter.

rothko quotes:
""The fact that people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate those basic human emotions.. the people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when painting them. And if you say you are moved only by their color relationships then you miss the point."

"I am not an abstract painter. I am not interested in the relationship between form and colour. The only thing I care about is the expression of man's basic emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, destiny."

cross ref: blog entry on my fave malaysian artist.

I love Pandora!!!

I'm totally hooked on pandora!!! it's a personal online radio software (www.pandora.com) that allows you listen to favorite tunes....best thing is it's FREE!!! i love it. the person behind this idea is pure genius!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! just when you think the world is running out of great tech ideas (after the ipod) something wonderful like this comes along and shifts the paradigm.

now imagine the possibilities when pandora goes wireless...mobile?!!!!

check my pandora's box on the left panel folks. check it out!

i got sunburnt at a triathlon

two sundays ago. And i wasn't even taking part in it. I was the sports photographer and Han Ee's cheerleader heheh! He did great for his first tri!

what i was thinking ... on May 13, Mon, 1995 at about 12.20pm

Before we entered the new millenium, before the Internet, and before Blogging... i was essentially the same person post experiencing the new millenium, Internet and blogging.

Only difference was i penned more of my thoughts in my journals. I started writing in my journals from a very young age. In a box near my writing desk now contains all those pages.

As i was attempting to get started on my writing today...i decided to look through one journal in particular...that belonged to my life 10 years ago. it reads like/and reading it again is like a homecoming of sorts...

12:20 pm May 13, Mon, 1995.
now at matilda bay...which overlooks swan river...(perth western australia)

"i'm lying on the grass and feeling like a million bucks...The weather is just perfect. I'm facing the river as i write now, the sail boats, some anchored at the marina on the right and some just cruising along the blue waters with the city skyline as the backdrop......"

"....I've never seen seagulls in real life before and seeing them now i can understand why they are always an issue in poems. About one metre away from stands two yellow wild flowers - really pretty. Were they in Singapore, someone would have plucked them out by now! But this is perth and I'm able to write about them now."

"...the sky is really clear in different shades of blue, the wind is cool and my exposed skin on my hands and face is sunkissed. The waves seem to be playing a rhythmic tune that calls out some unspoken freedom as it breaks onto shore where the white foams of the water is formed...just like the cream on freshly brewed coffee! the pace of life here is just right ie, for me. no rat race shit. just the way i like it."