KK City Tourism Hunt 2013—A Blast From The Past

I've been known to employ the element of psychology when setting hunt questions, and it has even become something of my trademark, so to speak. I admire CoCs who are able to also set questions to include psychological elements. In the KK City Tourism Hunt last Sunday, we saw a brave attempt by the CoC to do just that!

The question was for the walk hunt sector in the basement of the Suria Mall. It wasn't a "bolded" question, and one would expect it to be a touch and go sort of riddle, especially for the regular teams. The first time I read the question, however, I noticed that dreadful "?" at the end of the sentence. The "?" usually implies some sort of indirect meaning; perhaps in a punny way, in cryptic clues. For example "Sideway pedestrian?" may refer to the crab, because the creature walks sideway. A strong hunter I spoke to after the hunt said the "?" is a "sound's like indicator". I'm not sure where he got that information!

But anyway, where should we start? Well, the most logical approach is to start searching for all the big cats, such as tigers, leopards, cheetahs, jaguars, lions on any signboard simply because they are the big cats. Of course we may also need to keep our eyes open for the Malay synonyms of those too such as harimau or singa. And then hopefully we can then try to figure out how to connect the "berkembang".

The search didn't take very long; 2 signs practically leapt to the eyes. One was with a PUMA SOCIAL on it, together with a PUMA.COM underneath. Another sign was CAT EXPLORER. I liked PUMA a lot, but I wasn't really happy with both SOCIAL and COM. For a while we deliberated if there is anyway we could force-fit by equating SOCIAL to BERKEMBANG. We also considered the suitability of CAT EXPLORER. I thought the CAT could fit, but where does "besar" come in? My teammate suggested that maybe "besar" in this case means "huruf besar"? Hmmm.... looking very weak to me. Besides, I still did not find it very convincing to connect EXPLORER to BERKEMBANG.

But actually, all those were just the red herrings, i.e. decoys for the intended answer: TIGER ORCHID.

Truth be told, there is really nothing very completed in the solution. TIGER is of course a big cat; and the ORCHID, which is a flower, indirectly answers "berkembang". But I was amused by the location of this answer. It is found on the huge building column right in front of the main entrance of the basement floor! Who in the world would ever thought of looking there? I think it's a brilliant idea; I love it so much that I would have been proud to set this question myself!

The only thing I would not do, however, is to include the letter "H" in "KUCHING". That H absolutely destroys what would have otherwise been a masterpiece in my opinion; something so simple and straightforward, yet so many failed to find the answer! The presence of that H in that word has resulted in the TIGER ORCHID no longer a fitting answer, simply because since about half a century ago, KUCHING no longer means CAT! The correct spelling for the Malay word for CAT is KUCING (without the H). Let us now discuss about this issue for a bit.

Imagine for a moment that I want to say AYAM and I intend to mean CHICKEN. But a typo occurred somehow, and it became BAYAM instead; that is to say, I had unintentionally added a B to the word. Can I then insist that the hunter should still read my mind and know that I had intended CHICKEN anyway, and not SPINACH (bayam, the vegetable)? What do you think?

My view is that when there is a typo and the resulting word has a different meaning because of that typo, then that new meaning should prevail, unless of course if the CoC can intervene in time to make the correction. Perhaps the hunters can be a little forgiving if the additional letter does not result in a word with a different meaning(s). Then in such a case, maybe some people would argue that it is obvious that there's been a typo. But I still don't like it!

But what's the case with KUCHING? Because of that H in the word, it becomes a wrongly-spelt word for CAT. So that renders all the cats out of the equation! Do we then take it for granted that it's a typo? Or what if that H is there intentionally? The CoC was there watching the hunters in action. Yet he said nothing about the clue. So my belief was that that H must be there deliberately.

Quite honestly, I did not see all this for a while, until Claire remarked innocently that there's that H in KUCHING. And it suddenly came to me like lightning. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I missed that little detail before that! 

You see, KUCHING, when spelt like that has only one other meaning—it is the name of a city in Sarawak. It is in fact the capital city of Sarawak. So now I began to see the whole clue from a different angle.

KUCHING BESAR YANG BERKEMBANG?

Now when KUCHING takes the "CITY" meaning like it should in this case, then we are looking for a BIG CITY (Kuching besar), and one that is EXPANDING (berkembang).

I'm taking the trouble to explain all this because I have a feeling that whoever it was who marked Team Megapawns' answer for this question, he or she might have thought it was a random guess. But METRO is a common abbreviation for METROPOLITAN, a big city, and JAYA may in a way agree with and expanding city on account of that "?" at the end of the sentence. That's how I arrived at METROJAYA.

I was quite happy with my answer having failed to find anything better, until the time when the CoC revealed his solution. It was a case of a cat blasted from the past before 1972.

KK City Tourism Hunt 2013—One-Track Thought Process

I have mentioned in the previous post that the treasure clues for the KK City Tourism Hunt 2013 were fairly easy and fast to solve. I'd like to discuss the above clue which I still maintain is an easy clue to solve, not because I'm such a brilliant cryptic solver; rather, because it's basically a Googling exercise! I'm sure that many hunters would agree with me that such questions are no longer tough to solve because these days almost everyone in the street is carrying a phone with internet access! 

Some of you may want to give the clue a shot anyway; in which case, I'd suggest that you stop reading here. Otherwise, let me continue. But rather than giving you the answer one by one, I will simply reveal only the first letters of the respective answers to each of the clues from (a) to (f). Those letters should then be used to form the name of the item which is to be submitted as Treasure 5 (T5). So here goes:

a) E
b) M
c) T
d) S
e) ?
f) N

Notice that I'm giving a "?" for (e). This is because for this particular clue, we spent a moment to decide the available options. There are in fact several types of leaves from palm trees which were once popularly used to wrap food, but knowing that we would need the first letter of that word to combine with the rest of the letters, I told my team members that we're looking for a vowel. The reason is quite simple; we already had 4 consonants and only 1 vowel. So it's very likely that we would need another vowel to form a word.

Well, by Googling up from the net we soon found OPEH which is betel leaf. In fact, OPEH is known to have been used to wrap food in the good old days. The first letter of OPEH is of course O, and it is a vowel; just perfect for our present purpose. 

So now, we have: E-M-T-S-O-N. 

All that remains to be done is to jumble up those letters to form the name of an item. Just get a pack—any pack—of that item and that qualifies as T5. With a bit of practice in anagram, it doesn't take very long to find the word MENTOS, which is a common item in the market. As a Treasure Hunt jargon, we say that is a "perfect fit".

Now to digress from this topic for a bit, there was once when I was playing chess competitively many years ago. I was up against a strong opponent and it turned out that the game, which practically everyone thought was gonna be a stroll in the park for my opponent, became a long-drawn struggle. Most of the other players had already finished and people crowded around to see us play. In the crowd was a strong teenaged chess prodigy watching intently as I pondered my next move. I must have taken perhaps almost 15 minutes for that single move, but I finally found a forced mate in 5. It was quite an achievement for me against such a strong opponent, especially since I had only a little less than 3 minutes left on my clock, whereas he had more than half an hour! But then later on that chess prodigy came up to me, saying that I could have mated my opponent one move faster. He showed me the combination; it involved a dramatic queen sacrifice. He said it would have been a more elegant finish!

You may wonder what has this got anything to do with T5? Well, I find it interesting that people like to see action, something dramatic and all happening in a blaze of excitement. In fact, it would have been prettier to see a fantastic queen sacrifice followed by a checkmate. But having found a forced mate in 5, although not as "elegant" as the one in lesser moves and involving a queen sacrifice, there is to me no necessity to invest in further efforts to find a prettier finish. The object of the game is to mate the opponent. Once a means to achieve that is found, that's where it ends for me. I would not waste my time to try to find a prettier finish!

In arriving at the solution for T5, I would work meticulously step by step to tie all lose ends. But once I find all the jigsaw pieces and fit them into their respective places perfectly, that's where I would stop. There is really no meaning to explore further once the solution in hand fits perfectly as in this case.

Little did I know, when the CoC conjured up this question, he saw the puzzle from a different angle. And the tragedy was that far from keeping an open mind, he approached that puzzle rigidly on a one-track thought process, thus resulting in total ignorance of an alternative but perfectly fitting solution!

What he did was to decide on the item first, which was NESTUM. So he started looking for all those words of which the acronyms would give those letters found in NESTUM. When he came to that letter U, he decided to use the word UPIH which is also an accepted spelling of OPEH. So we come to the same item, but with different (accepted) spellings. I'm not sure if he knew of the alternative OPEH; or even if he did, he probably did not expect that that could then give rise to MENTOS. Such is the danger of one-track thought process when conjuring up these kind of riddles.

But MENTOS, as I have said, fits the clue perfectly. There is absolutely nothing in the clue that would exclude the possibility of MENTOS. You will therefore not be surprised that many teams, including strong master hunter teams, submitted this correct item, but rejected by the CoC. 

It is a good reminder to me why I'm sometimes tired of analysing hunt questions. They keep repeating themselves over and over again.

KK City Tourism Treasure Hunt 2013

It's been a while since I last hunted in a treasure hunt, but today Vivian Cham, Claire Andrew, Chirsty Kong and I, hunted as Team Megapawns in the KK City Tourism Treasure Hunt. Many of the readers of this blog are aware that I no longer spend a lot of time hunting these days as much as I run marathons and ultra marathons. Nevertheless, the love of the game is still very much alive.

For the benefits of the new visitors to this blog, let me say that I have been spending a lot of time on treasure hunting in the past. I even went to the extent of flying to KL to join hunts over the weekends. I would then report in this blog and then analyse hunt questions. I was known to be "passionate" in the way I discuss and dissect hunt questions, and my criticisms have for the most part been brutal to say the least! This, however, did not accord well with some of my fellow Clerks-of-Coure (CoCs) from the West, and I had a shrewd suspicion that some of them even hated my guts for it!

I am basically trying to shy away from treasure hunting, but I sometimes find it hard to resist analysing hunt questions. I have been trying to access the Treasure Hunt Society's site to have a peak at their questions so that I could "secretly" analyse them for my personal enrichment, but I have not quite figured out how to do it! I'm not sure if there is something to do with keying in passwords etc, but maybe it's a blessing in disguise because I know I'm bound to find many, many mistakes by the CoCs!

This year, as in previous years, there were some very strong Master Hunter teams from West Malaysia coming to our shores, and I'm convinced that the CoC designed his questions taking into account of their presence. I believe this has resulted in an extremely tough hunt for the local hunters. But then again, the way I see it, it doesn't really matter if it's a tough or easy hunt, as long as it's a level playing field.

The hunt this year started and ended in Sutera Harbour. The hunt was supposed to cover a distance of approximately 80km according to the CoC, but of course the actual hunt distance of 160km is probably closer to the mark. Time control was 6 hours 30 mins, which I think is not enough, considering the amount of chores, challenges/games, as well as the hunt distance including the traffic jams in the City on a Sunday. Not to mention some so-called "bolded" questions which were not actually intended to be solved. But I will touch a bit on some questions later.

The first thing I did upon flag off was to quickly get my team organised in terms of delegation of duties. Claire and Christy were to handle the games and challenges, as I have learned from past KK City Tourism Hunts that those were mainly dependent on luck, and not so much on skill—meaning to say I did not think that I could do any better than Claire and Christy if I were to handle the games instead. My time would be better utilised to tackle some of the route questions. We had to split the duties because it was obvious to me from the beginning that time would be our biggest enemy! It was unfortunate that the format of the hunt was such that I had to split the teams a few times, but it was totally necessary; the mission was to try to win. After all that is the true meaning of teamwork—you try to give a job to each member in something that he or she is good at. But actually, it would be good if they too can handle more route questions as they need to train themselves in that area too. But that option was not available in this hunt.

I was happy to find that the treasure questions were quite easy  and fast to solve this year. We merely took a few minutes to solve all of them. But one of them was rejected in the end, as we lacked the skill of mind-reading. Of course our solution was a perfect fit for the clue, and it was a bad call for the CoC to reject our submission. I will discuss this interesting clue later in a separate post.

I'm glad that we were able to solve some of the bolded questions, but some were never intended to be solved anyway. We spent the amount of time that these bolded questions deserved, of course, but very soon I saw them for what they're worth; they're there in the question sheets to make the numbers, and I decided to abandon them after randomly choosing signboards to fill in the blanks.

There was another question in the Suria Mall sector which raised my blood pressure a few notches, and it took me quite a while to figure it out. I had to run back from DBKK office to Suria Mall to find the answer which was later rejected for an inferior one by the CoC. Again, I will discuss this further in a separate post.

Well, in the end we were late for the final submission and incurred several points' penalty. Knowing that there're a fair number of strong teams in the fray, it all seemed gloomy for us to even break into the top 10 positions. When the winners were announced one by one, we were excited because we sort of had some idea what's our score. We reckoned that we should at least manage to sneak into the top 20 positions. But then as the prize giving progressed, we began to worry again. We got to the last 10 top winners and we were still not called. Then 9th, and 8th, and 7th and 6th! I was sweating bullets and I thought I was about to faint. There was a short pause before they continued announcing the winners. 5th... 4th... still nothing. We knew by then that we had counted our scores wrongly. It seemed clear that we did not even make the cut for the top 30 winners!

Then came the shock of the day—our team was announced as the winner of 3rd place. I had no idea how that happened, but I wasn't complaining!

I wish to congratulate my team members, Vivian Cham, Claire Andrew and Christy Kong for a job well done. I couldn't have done it without them; they have all contributed and went through all the pains and efforts to secure the 3rd place finish. 

Now how about we try to hunt for the 2nd place next year!

Standard Chartered Brunei Half Marathon 2013

When I registered for the Standard Chartered Brunei Half Marathon (SCBHM) a few months ago, I made up my mind to use the event as my long slow distance (LSD) run in the build up to the Borneo International Marathon (BIM) in May. I meant it to be a routine Sunday workout while collecting a finisher medal in the process; perhaps running at about 6min/km pace. But recently, it turned into a mission to pace my friend, Hana Harun, in an attempt to achieve her personal best (PB). She had a 2:10 finish under her belt, achieved at the same event about a year ago, but perhaps because of all the excitement following the recent Standard Chartered Hong Kong Marathon in February as reported here, she was hoping for a sub-2hours finish this year. 

Recovering from a severe knee injury after the Vibram HK 100 as reported here, Hana was out of action for some weeks, and by the time she resumed training for Brunei, there was somewhat too little time left for a major breakthrough. I gave her some tips on how to approach her training, but cautioned her not to expect too much. Unfortunately, I had no chance to see her run prior to Brunei, so I had no idea if my training tips were working well for her. Nonetheless, I suggested to her to revise her target to 2:05, and she readily agreed with me. 

A short discussion on the running configuration. Should Hana be running in front of me? I thought that’s an appealing idea, but that could potentially lead to two things: 1) My mind would be more focused on Hana’s rear instead of dictating the pace, or 2) Hana would be at risk of slowing down whenever she felt like it. It was also suggested that I should be running in front of Hana. But in that case, Hana might get distracted by my sexy bottom! So in the end, we agreed that we should run side by side. 

That, then, was the mission for SCBHM 2013. 

We found ourselves at the starting line just shortly before the flag off. Hana seemed all set for a good show. Although it was a small crowd when compared to other major races, it was still a little congested immediately after the start. We began at a pace of about 6min/km while waiting for the crowd to thin out a bit. I turned to Hana, saying that we'll take it easy for the moment, perhaps treat it like a warming up session, but we would have to pay back a little later. Hana had that grave expression on her face, but I pretended not to notice it. 

Shortly after hitting the highway, I gradually increased the pace. By about 3km into the race, I was happy to note an average pace of 5:48min/km on my Garmin. I said to Hana that we're doing great up to that point and on target for a 2:05 finish. In fact, we would have to maintain a 5:55min/km pace for a 2:05 finish, but I needed to allow a bit of time buffer for drink stops as well as the impending hills during the latter part of the race. 

Hana played the obedient runner all too well; she didn’t say much, but when she eventually broke her silence, she said her Garmin was showing a pace of 5:16min/km. It was in fact the Garmin that Darren had lent her for this race. But I dismissed it as inaccurate, as I was sure that we were running much slower than 5:16. 

We duly made our way into the Bandar Seri Begawan town centre, going around the Yayasan Building, and then passing through the Standard Chareted Bank along Jalan Sultan. After allowing for a couple of drink stops, my Garmin was still showing an average pace of 5:50min/km, but I knew that we would lose speed when we come to the hilly portions. As we were just about to exit the town centre, we caught up with Tan Yoke Lee, and eventually overtook her. And when we were approaching the drink station at Km8, we took an energy gel each in anticipation of the long climb after Km9. That climb wasn’t very steep, but it was almost a kilometre of hardwork. I was pleased, however, to see that Hana was able to keep going, although with a significant drop in her pace. It was quite a long downhill section on the other side. And just as we were climbing another hill, I was surprised to see Amy walking! But when we overtook her, she started running again. Shortly after that, John Chin came passing by, looking very relaxed and enjoying his run. 

The hills had quite an impact on many runners, and Hana was not immune from them. I noticed the gradual decline in her pace. On a few occasions I ran a little faster ahead in the hope that that might provoke her to follow suit, but when I turned back, she was lagging further behind. So I had to slow down again to wait for her. For a brief moment though, I thought perhaps a bit of spanking on her buttocks could jump-start her pace again. But I guess that was not a procedure to be recommended——for one thing, it may unintentionally turn into squeezing instead of spanking; and for another, Hana may deliberately slow down even more so that I’d continue spanking her! After all, women are not meant to be easily understood, if you know what I mean? 

And then suddenly Amy began running a little faster again, thus leaving us behind. I looked at my Garmin and noticed that we had declined to about 5:54min/km, barely enough to finish within the 2:05 target. I asked Hana if she could catch up with Amy, but looking at her face, I knew that that was out of the question. With a final short climb to the roundabout, I thought Hana was gonna sprint the whole way to the finish, but instead she was growing increasingly tired. We had by then declined further to about 6min/km average, thus indicating that we have gone beyond the 2:05 target. I said to Hana, we were now looking at a possible 2:06-2:07 finish, but if we slowed down further, we may even touch 2:08. She was in fact in danger of losing her PB even! 

As Hana was becoming increasingly slower during those last few kilometres, she was also making a lot of strange noises——a bit of “uhh” and “ooh” with increasing frequency; if I were not careful, I would be in danger of getting sexually aroused! We kept going like that for what must have seemed like eternity to Hana, until we arrived at the signboard pointing to the junction leading to the finish line. In between her grunts and moans, she said: “Is that it?”, meaning, “Is that the junction to the finish line?”, but it sounded more like “That run was too short!” I replied in the affirmative, and as we turned the corner, we could see the finish line! 

And then there was a sudden increase of those wicked and sexy, if painful, noises from Hana; and they were louder too! With all her might, face distorted into a painful grimace, she started running hard. And I started running hard too. I said, “Follow me, Hana!” and then went off in a sprint, thinking that this time I would provoke Hana for the homestretch dash. But she had very little left in the tank. Hence I slowed down again after a few metres as she was lagging behind, and we ran those last few metres and crossed the finish line together in a little over 2:08. A 2-minute improvement may not seem like a big thing to some people, but seeing how hard Hana had worked for that 2 minutes, I know that that was an extremely huge achievement for her. Shortly later, all the pain on her face melted away, and a huge smile emerged…laughter ensued… 

A friend took this photo of a very happy PB-achiever and her proud pacer. I’m sure with just one look at her big smile, you could tell that Hana was the happiest woman at the race venue that morning. 

There were many other familiar faces from KK too. These are just some of them. 

Some of you may know The Singapore Blade Runner (extreme right in yellow shirt) who was also there to grace the occasion by running the half marathon. Jai was also there and finished in an impressive 2:04. In fact he did so well that he became confused and entangled with his medal. But thankfully he finally figured out how to put the medal on. Audrey aka Odry (in blue running vest) finished in a decent 2:23 and was inclined to pose like a kaki pukul. Oh... what a happy moment for everybody.

Jiki also ran the half marathon that morning and I was given to understand that she finished in 1:57, which if I'm not mistaken, is her PB. That small little creature can run, I tell you. Unfortunately, I don't have a photo of hers during the event, but I managed to get this photo of the Ratatouille in action during a recent race in KK.

This was the first time I've actually paced another runner in a race since I started running in 2008. I didn't realise that I could get so much satisfaction from seeing a fellow runner achieving her goal.Who knows, maybe next year Hana will eventually achieve her sub-2hours in Brunei!

Learning By Making Mistakes

Once upon a time many years ago, I used to play chess competitively. Many hours were spent analysing chess positions; sleepless nights hovering over a chess board thinking of the many, many possible moves in the hope of finding chess novelties. Many more hours were spent studying famous games played by chess grandmasters and trying to fathom their thought process.

But a major part of the learning process is focused on analysing one's own games, especially those of losses. The reason is quite simple—there must have been mistakes made somewhere in those games, and who knows, if one is able to find those mistakes, maybe it is possible to find solutions for a better move(s) in future games. And even if one is unable to find a brilliant alternative move(s), perhaps one is then able to at least avoid making those same mistakes in future games.

"One of the best ways of learning in life is by making mistakes."

That is a powerful sentence I had overheard during a family debate when I was still a teenager a long time ago, and it has remained in my mind up to now. Over the years, I've improvised on that sentence by adding: "provided that the person who is making those mistakes does not repeat them!"

You see, strange as it may seem, mistakes, as are many other things in life, have the habit of repeating themselves over and over again without the person who makes those mistakes even realising it! Thankfully, however, many of these mistakes have only short-term repercussions, perhaps soon to be forgotten. But some of them have far-reaching consequences, maybe something that would haunt the person for the rest of his or her life!

My brother, Dennis—when he was a boy—did very well in his Primary 6 exams despite many people thinking he'd do badly. I think most of those who thought he'd do badly had that impression because Dennis wasn't such a hard-working boy; he wasn't very disciplined when it came to his studies. Well, he proved them all wrong! Then the same thing happened during his Form 3 exams. Many people thought he'd do badly, but again he proved them all wrong!

After his Form 3 exams, armed with excellent results, Dennis went to the science stream. Now the thing about Form 4 is that there is somewhat a sudden "leap" in terms of standard—"Science" is separated to 3 branches, i.e. Biology, Physics and Chemistry; whereas "Mathematics" is separated to 2 branches, i.e. Modern Maths and Additional (Pure) Maths. I consider this as a major "leap" in the level of difficulty when compared to that of Form 3, but I suppose it's a natural progression of the education system. 

Because of the sudden "leap" above, the first few months of Form 4 becomes very important. That is the time when the student should evolve—so to speak—to adjust his mindset so that he can cope with the "new subjects". In fact, it is imperative that the student is always on his toes during early Form 4 so that he is not left behind when the boat leaves the harbour, seemingly in a jiffy!

But fate would have it that Dennis took the wrong boat. Because he was one of the best students in the entire school, he was chosen to join a diving expedition organized by the British government which sent a group of its teenaged students to dive the coral reefs here in Sabah for the filming of a TV documentary. Only 4 students from Dennis' school were offered the slots. It was in fact an opportunity of a lifetime! Well, to make the long story short, Dennis accepted the offer (with my dad's consent), and while his classmates were struggling to adapt to the science stream, he went deepsea-diving all over Sabah. By the time he came back to class a little over a month later, he was totally lost. He had an overwhelming workload in Maths, Biology, Physics and Chemistry to digest apart from trying to catch up with the ongoing lessons. It proved too tough, especially for someone who's not so hardworking in his studies. He eventually ended up with a Grade 3 in SPM the following year, and the rest, as they say, is history. He's been switching jobs several times over the years, and today drives a taxi for a living. If only he could foresee all those years ago what a month of deepsea-diving could do to his life!

If Dennis could turn back the clock to the first day of Form 4 again, do you think he would do it any differently?

History has a strange habit of repeating itself.

Dennis' eldest son, Mohd Aqil, also has similar traits as his daddy. I saw Dennis in Aqil since many years ago, and I regularly reminded Dennis to be careful with his son. But I had to do it very diplomatically, as his wife, Shidah, resents negative comments about her sons. I know some of my readers would accuse me of going beyond my authority as an elder brother, but what am I supposed to do when I'm seeing history repeating itself before my very eyes?

However, the tragedy is that Aqil did very well in Primary 6 despite my concerns. His mommy was understandably overjoyed to prove Uncle Kong wrong. Then came the Form 3 exams, and again I was proven wrong when Aqil achieved excellent results.

Then came the stunning part of the story. Just as Aqil started his first few days in Form 4 science class, he received an offer from his grandparents (his mommy's parents) for a few weeks' holidays to West Malaysia including to the theme park in Genting Highland. Apparently, it was an offer that's not to be missed.

Well, I don't know what you think of this story, but I saw this whole thing basically the same as about 30 years ago. It's almost like a dream to me—de javu, if you like. I had a serious talk with Dennis about this matter, hinting to him if he felt, like, perhaps he had seen this whole episode before?

So anyway, Aqil went for his few weeks' holidays, came back to resume From 4 science, absolutely lost for the most part, and eventually obtained 4 As when his SPM results were announced a few days ago. You might wonder what were the subjects that got As? They were Bahasa Malaysia, Modern Maths, Sejarah and Geografi. None of his science subjects scored A. Now in an education system like what we have in Malaysia where it is very common to get at least 7 or 8 As in SPM, 4 As is just terrible, really, especially since not even one of his science subjects got the A.

A classic example that proves that some people will never learn from their mistakes.

Unsophisticated Criminals & Crime Rates

My sister, Audrey, worked as a beautician for a while over twenty years ago. Back then I was still in high school and even up to now I'm not sure what her job was all about. She had among her regular clients several Datins who had grown so huge in all direction horizontally, though unfortunately not vertically. They were creatures who probably had trouble sighting their own feet; breasts weighing a few kilograms each and sagging to the waistline. My sister spent her days removing hairs from their legs, and at other times did that thing which I'm afraid I don't quite know what it's called—it's some sort of beating of the breasts using the palms of the hands, thus producing loud flip-flop sounds (which by the way had nothing to do with slippers) in the hope that that might firm up the breasts a bit? The things that people do!

But that's not what this post is about. I meant to give a background of what I'm gonna talk about, you see, and I somehow could think of nothing very interesting to start with except that breast-beating ritual. And just in case you're wondering—no, it wasn't really effective in firming up the breasts. 

Anyway, Audrey had an electronic machine which looked a lot like a sound system amplifier. It had a number of those tiny switches and tuners and plenty of wires attached to the unit. But it wasn't an amplifier at all. Instead, it was some sort of slimming machine. I'm not sure how it worked, but I think the wires from the machine were attached to a fat part of the body; and when it's activated, the wires would heat up. Somehow the fats from that part of the body would be melted away! Those of you who are working as beauticians, please excuse my ignorance if I'm not explaining the process accurately.

Then one day, that machine was stolen from home. Audrey did not even realise that the machine was gone. Who stole it? Well, the thief was actually a distant relative of ours who was staying in the same house. The circumstances leading to how he was caught was quite something. He wasn't even aware what that machine was, thinking that it was a sound system amplifier. But I'm not blaming him, because it did look like one. Desperate for quick cash, he sold that "amplifier" to a dumb manager of a band for RM400. He thought he got a good deal, buying an amplifier at such a cheap price. Only God knows what happened next—I reckoned the manager tested the "amplifier", using an earphone and maybe burning both his ears in the process; or smoke came out of his hair. But after he found out that that wasn't an "amplifier", he lodged a police report. So to  make the long story short, the police eventually caught the thief, and Audrey got her "amplifier" back.

Years later, when I was working in Brunei, I knew a young man who was the only son of a rich man. He had 7 sisters. But he was a lazy bum and never quite measure up to his father's expectations. He always got into trouble, and each time his father had to bail him out. Then one day he suddenly went missing. News quickly spread around. Police report lodged and a frantic search was made. There were speculations that he had been kidnapped for ransom; that a syndicate comprising very sophisticated criminals had carefully planned to squeeze some money from his father. But in the end, he was found dead in a budget hotel room in Limbang. In his suicide note, he apologized to his family members. He lost heavily in football betting, and owed a big some from loan sharks. He took the fast but painful way out.

On Monday this week, a friend told me that his cousin brother had gone missing while trying to deposit money through an automated teller machine. A police report was subsequently lodged. And just in case you don't already know it, lodging police reports is a national favourite pastime here in Malaysia. Apparently, the police had to wait until at least 24 hours had elapsed before they could act. So the family employed the services of a bomoh. The bomoh, apparently having seen too many movies in the likes of The Expendables and A Good Day To Die Hard, somehow arrived at the deduction that the poor lad had been kidnapped by a bunch of drug addicts, and then brought on a joyride all the way to Kudat!

Remembering the story of the useless idiot in Brunei, and keeping an open mind, I suggested to my friend that maybe it's not a case of kidnapping. Rather, it's a case of his cousin wanting to disappear. I had to put it nicely, of course, just in case I might offend my friend with my outrageous suggestion. It's strange that whenever faced with problems of this nature, people have the tendency of dismissing the simplest explanation, and would rather venture with explanations involving very sophisticated criminals whom have spent a lot of time and effort to plan and then execute the crime!

Then today, another friend shared her recent story on a facebook page, about how she had waited for her brother in the car with the engine running, but with all the doors locked. A man had come and tried to open the door, but when that failed, he broke the window. The friend had the right mind to get out of the car, shouting for help, but unfortunately the man drove off with the car.

I find it interesting that in both the latest cases above, there were comments that it's no longer safe these days, as we have more crimes going on in our cities. There was also a mention that "They keep telling us that crime rate is down but that's crap."

I'm not sure what's the truth of the matter. Is crime rate really down? Or has it gone up? I'm convinced that the actual number of crime cases is on the rise. But the size of the population is also on the rise. So it's entirely possible that when the authority tells us that crime rate is down, that's the truth, because even if the number of cases had increased, it's possible that in relation of the population growth, the rate has declined?

But anyway, I'm convinced that most criminals in Malaysia are not as sophisticated as what our romantic mind would like to believe. Well, maybe they will become sophisticated in a decade or two from now. What do you think?

Standard Chartered Hong Kong Marathon 2013

Let me begin by apologizing to some of my friends—I lied to them; I said I wasn't gonna run the Standard Chartered Hong Kong Marathon (SCHKM) this year. But actually, I had planned to run the race since almost a year ago! You see, I've been doing quite a number of races ranging from duathlon to triathlon to ultra trail marathons, and had no choice but to neglect my road marathon. It's been about 2 years ago since the last time I achieved a personal best (PB) in the full marathon (42.2km) in Hong Kong as reported here. Since then, I've been running a few more full marathons, but was never able to prepare for a PB. So a little over half a year ago, I made up my mind that I must make it a point to achieve a PB in the full marathon in 2013. That's when I decided that my best chance for a PB is the SCHKM. The terrain in Hong Kong is a bit undulating, but the temperature is ideal at about 18C.

When the event opened for registration, I secretly registered after trying for almost 6 hours. But eventually, I made it into the first group, flagging off at 6:40am. I also decided to keep my participation a secret, especially from my friend, Teo. I thought I'd surprise him in Hong Kong. In fact, I pulled off a similar stunt once during a triathlon event in Miri as reported here.

Only a few people knew of my secret mission. But it wasn't easy to expect them all to keep my secret. Of course women are not generally good at keeping secrets, but my friend, Hana, did exceptionally well. Because of what happened in Miri before, Teo and Paul, suspected that I have secretly registered for Hong Kong. But they couldn't confirm it. They tried so hard to investigate. At one point at the height of their obsession to find out, they conspired with another friend, Marjie, to secure my passport numbers which they then tried to check with the SCHKM website to verify my participation, but to no avail.

I was careful to book a different hotel, and also bought the latest possible flight to Hong Kong on the eve of the race. For months leading up to the race, Teo tried so hard to persuade me to participate, but I was apparently adamant with my decision "not to go". Teo wasn't convinced though. So I had to help to convince him a little bit. You see, Teo was on a mission of achieving a sub-2hr half marathon in Hong Kong. He had been training very hard for it. So when he departed KK on the Friday afternoon, I went to the airport to see him off with this placard.

I had to show my face at the airport to indirectly convince Teo that he's not gonna see me welcoming him at Hong Kong airport when he arrived there. Unfortunately, Teo was too excited to achieve his sub-2hr PB that he went into the departure hall about 2 hours before his flight! But I had achieved my purpose of going to the airport anyway. Judy, who was waiting for my placard brought it to Teo in the departure hall.

My plan was going well so far, but little did I know first thing the next morning, when it was my turn to fly to Hong Kong, Anslem and Amy were also on the same flight. I could trust Anslem to keep my secret, but I knew that my plan was in jeopardy because Amy is of the opposite gender! Still, I had hoped that she could endure 24 hours of secret-keeping. Of course that's a long shot when it comes to women, but I kept my fingers crossed.

We duly arrived in Hong Kong, and we parted ways. I went to my hotel near Times Square, whereas Amy and Anslem went to the hotel where the rest of the group was staying, including Teo. In fact the rest of the group had all flown to Hong Kong a day or two earlier.

After checking in to my hotel, I walked to Victoria Park to collect my race pack. There were not many people there by then. But on my way back to the hotel, I had quite a surprise. Of all the places in the world, of all the times, I suddenly noticed the mighty Teo Chen Lung ahead with the rest of the pack! There were many people around, of course, but he would notice me for sure! I ran out of ideas; all I could do was to stoop low in the crowd. I saw Teo walked pass me. What a relief.

They went to Victoria Park where they met Tey Eng Tiong and some other Malaysians. And then of course the inevitable photo-taking, culminating in this jumping photo which has become quite fashionable these days.

I thought they were kinda overdoing the jumping thing, especially Judy (in black). With a spread eagle pose like that, it can give rise to unhealthy thoughts for men. But of course healthy or unhealthy, it all depends on how you look at the matter.

But later on, Judy sent me a text message, and somewhere in that message, she said "...see you later!" together with a smiley at the end, and I knew that's as far as Amy could keep my secret. Still, I was hoping that she didn't tell Teo.

I went around the city hoping to catch a movie, but in the end abandoned the idea. Later I went back to the hotel and finally fell asleep a little past midnight. I woke up at about 4:30am and went through the usual race-day ritual, finally leaving the hotel for the race venue at about 5:30am. The timing was just nice. I reached the starting point about half an hour before the flag off, and after depositing my drop bag, it was just a short wait before the countdown.

The thought that this was supposed to be the "faster group" of runners of 4-hours or less. But actually, after the flag off, the crowd was moving painstakingly slow. It wasn't till about 3km later when I was able to break free. But by then, I was a bit of a "deficit" in terms of time for my sub-4hr target. So I had to put in a bit of effort to regain some lost time. I had originally planned to run a constant 5:30min/km average pace, but because I've lost a bit of time, I had to run between 5:00-5:10min/km. That wasn't in my original plan, but I had no choice if I wanted to keep my sub-4 dream alive.

I eventually arrived at the 10km mark in a little over 55mins just as I had planned. So I was able to relax and eased down to about 5:30min/km pace. I was still feeling fresh at that point, but anyway it was still too early to tell if the 5:00-5:10min/km had an effect on my race.

I maintained that average pace, but when I went downhill, I took the advantage to increase my pace. Well, I reached the 30km point in about 2:40 and was very pleased that I was still feeling great! At that point of the race, I felt like I had a shot at a 3:45 finish. I thought I'd continue running at 5:20-5:30min/km up to around 35km, and then beyond that point if I still felt OK, perhaps I'd increase my pace for a strong finish. Running the remaining 12km within 1:05 seemed very achievable; it wasn't even very fast!

I finally went into that long tunnel under the sea. It's a long down-slope section, and I was happily running until I emerged on the other side when there's a sudden sharp climb. Immediately I could feel both my quads seizing up. I knew then I was in trouble. The thing about cramps is that once you get it, there is really no cure. It won't go away for the rest of the race. You just have to manage it, and hope to endure till the end! For the next 7km or so, I was running at pathetic pace, ranging between 7-8 min/km with occasional walking breaks. Thankfully, however, I had built up a big enough time buffer during the earlier stages of the race that I was still comfortably within the sub-4hr margin. All I had to do was to keep going.

The final few kilometres, as always, was the toughest part of the race. But when I arrived at the 40km mark, in spite of the pain in my legs, I was feeling happy—I knew that I've achieved my mission in Hong Kong. I eventually crossed the finish line, and looking at my Garmin, pumped my fist in the air.

Judy was running in the second group, and judging from her pace during training, I thought she should be able to achieve at least a 3:50 finish in Hong Kong. 

But as always, she had a bit of trouble controlling her appetite—she ran too fast in the beginning, and then paid heavily at the tail end of the race, hitting the "wall" after passing the 30km mark. Still, she achieved her PB and finished in 3:56.

Anslem and Amy ran together throughout the race, eventually achieving sub-4 finish too, i.e. 3:57. These are the happy faces at the finish line.

You may wonder what happened to Teo and his sub-2hr mission? Well, he ran his perfect half marathon in Hong Kong and achieved his target to a marvel; he finished in a 1:51 in dramatic fashion, with the final 100m sprint in what appeared like an Usain Bolt Olympics performance. The expression on his face was of course not something to be recommended for small children to see—as it may cause nightmares—but decidedly it was an expression that was impossible for the photographers to miss!

For the benefit of those who don't know Teo, that's him at the bottom (ignore the photos above).

SCHKM is a historic day for a few others from KK too. Fabian O. Daimon, the top Sabahan runner achieved a PB of 2:41 in the full marathon. Paul, although not very happy with his time, finished his half marathon with a PB in 1:56. Dr Heng made a debut 10km and was obviously very pleased to conquer the distance, though not really concerned about the time. Ah Diong finished yet another half marathon, but although he did not achieve a PB, he was happy nonetheless for the PB he achieved with his drinking sessions. Heng's son, and Paul's wife, Joe, Audrey, Jai Malik and Victoria did very well too. 

It was a day of PBs and record breaking affair; quite an outing for our Sabahan group. Congratulations and well done, y'all! But of course none of us could beat Teo's achievement. I'm sure anyone would know by just looking at his expression. 

Now I'm trying to convince Teo to run a sub-4hr full marathon next year. But, oh boy, I'm afraid to even imagine his facial expression then!