Intro... and I thought for a while what to put here about me. :) What do you wanna know? I am just a simple guy working in an IT Company handling Operations and Project Management. I'm also going through a torturous 16 months "express" double degree course at Kaplan APMI - Murdoch University. In this blog, you will basically find alot of nonsense from me. I like to complain and yes I complain alot but for things that are not right. If you know me well enough then you will know that I always complain for a reason :D otherwise I am just like any quiet guy next door starring at the laptop screen. This blog details my daily experiences as well as my training for my runs. I have taken an interest in running since last year and I am working towards completing a Marathon this year... Do feel free to comment or message me I will definitely reply and if you need to email me, feel free to drop your emails to terencetkp@gmail.com!     >> AH HUH! >> work? taking a toll on me .. >> long time no post hor! >> Lots of Fun in My Life but why is it back again? >> Part 2: Exams Results and Nike Human Race >> Part 1 of a Long Waited Entry: Singapore Bay Run a... >> its tough being a trainer >> Random Thoughts.. >> finally its over! >> Long Post Part 2!   >> November 2007 >> December 2007 >> January 2008 >> February 2008 >> March 2008 >> April 2008 >> May 2008 >> June 2008 >> July 2008 >> August 2008 >> September 2008 >> October 2008   >> SG Runners >> May My Run >> Bad Guys Win	Wednesday, October 29, 2008 //AH HUH! gosh it must have been at least 1000 years since I last posted and the usual reason? "I'm busy and I don't have the time to blog.." AH HUH! When will I ever change and say things like Wee I had done this today.. ate ths today.. bought this that day and practically have an update on my blog everyday? NEVER! I seriously doubt I have the time especially I am now very packed with work and my Final Year Project. FYP's pretty worrying with all the things to be done and the amount of time that I have.. its equates to SO DEAD. posted by Terence @ 11:59 PM| comments? (0)   Wednesday, October 15, 2008 //work? taking a toll on me .. sigh I just felt like blogging even though I have a stack of work pile up so high.. it can reach the sky. Yes work is bothering me quite a bit these days. I have lots to do and yet no time to finish. I feel very stress but yet I am not really showing it out. Instead I am taking the I do one thing at a time approach. Slowly I will be able to clear. Eventually I still have to clear so its a matter of time. I tell myself. No point trying to rush so many things at the same time. It will only lead to more mistakes. Mistakes have been made several times by my staff. I am pretty upset over it. Reason being: 1. I feel bad that I am not monitoring well enough 2. I feel bad that I am not delivering my work properly 3. I feel bad that I have to reprimand my staff 4. I feel bad that I am causing more problems to my boss.. 5. I guess I am just too perfectionist. Each time I receive a complain email, the only thing I can do is apologize apologize and apologize and then educate my staff on the right thing to do but thats all I can do. I cant possibly sit there everyday to watch over what they are doing. Its just too time consuming. Trust between me and customers at the same time worsen each time i receive a complain email. Its not being nice that I apologize that it wun happen again but yet things just happen like there's no tomorrow. I really hope I can pass by this phase of my life soon. I need a change of environment.. a temporary change. posted by Terence @ 1:06 AM| comments? (0)   Monday, October 13, 2008 //long time no post hor! yeah its been a long time since i last posted! I have been very busy.. extremely busy with running, work and school. Today I had got that bit of time to pack my room, take some photos and of course to update my blog as I am down with a flu. Had to give training run a miss today so yeah that explains. I am really busy to blog because I am tied up every week with loads of work. Work seems like never ending, especially with the amount of mistakes that my staff is making and the number of explain emails I have to type to customers.. its not making my job any easier. At the same time, there are the projects that are on going that I have to manage. Though one of the major ones recently launch already, it seems that there are still some tiny weeny enhancements that they want to make and that will mean follow ups. There's also another system that I had worked on previously and its like coming back to me now. They want to do enhancements so I am like the best person to do the development for it. So yes, project management, operations management and development all in one! Sometimes I really wonder why do I have so much work to do? Is it my own time management that is bad or is there just too many things for me to cover at the same time? I guess it will be good to take away project management so that I can fully concentrate on my BPO Department and its operations and to see how I can improve its internal processes.. but yeah easier said than done! School work has been hectic. Final Year Project seems to be the WORST subject ever. There's practically a delivery EVERY WEEK! So far back to back we have done up a requirement and analysis paper of 50 over pages, a project management plan of 60 over pages and a design and architecture paper of close to 100 pages! its pure madness especially we're only at the documentation stage! there's still the development and so on.. geez i duno if I can really manage all that! So yeah work is like mondays to fridays, school is like wed and friday evenings.. so tues and thurs and saturdays is like dedicated to my runs. I am now part of team fat bird so I have to do duties on tues and thursdays. These two days are the days that I really can rest and relax as I am doing things that I now enjoy doing. Its great to cheer people on and to run with them and to share with them your experience and story. Though I don't have alot of experience to share but I have come along way of LOSING MY WEIGHT, and I would like to share that experience with some of the i-runners, especially the ladies who are running to lose weight and to stay healthy. Saturday / Sunday will be the days that I embark on my Long steady distance runs for stand chart. I am training with my team fat bird so yeah its an enjoyable run. Though I barely made it for two of the runs, last week's run of 26km seems to be quite ok! I was doing at a comfortable pace as I talk with beverly and stop for water breaks. Yeah so you can see that i am really busy and at the same time I am heading the newsletter team for fatbird. Its really interesting to be doing that.. and this is just the beginning. There will be more contributions to come! :) For the next few weeks, I will still be focusing my time on my weekly trainings as well as my work. FYP i hope i will be able to pull through. My team mates has been great and I don't wish to let anyone of them down. Yeah so I will work hard for the 3 jobs that I have in hand! School, Work and Runs! That's all now though. Here's a banner that I have done up for fat birds! Do support our blog! :) posted by Terence @ 12:02 AM| comments? (0)   Monday, September 15, 2008 //Lots of Fun in My Life but why is it back again? I have been feeling emoey this few days even though i have been getting lots of great fun, meeting lots of great people in my new running career. It seems like a one year anniversary where the fats and the emoness starts haunting me all over again. I really want to walk out of this sick and tired life! And I am trying very hard to past by each and every day. Schedule has been very packed. Every Tuesday and Thursday, I have I-Runs after work at River Promenade, Every Wednesday is my Project Group Meeting, Every Friday is School and Saturday Mornings will be reserved for my SCSM Trainings with Fatbirds. Sundays will be my rest day and then Monday is where I go back to work again to repeat the schedule. Though busy, I must admit that I am at least enjoying 3 days doing my runs. I meet new people, I make new friends and I see a new achievement each time I run. I don't dare to push myself to hard but at least I am trying. It comes to a point where I feel that Running is not about competition to me at this stage of my life, its about enjoying and having fun during the runs and I'm glad that the people I have met from SgRunners has made my days so much happier. I've been to the CGH Sports Clinic after experiencing tightness and pains after my runs at my left knee. All along I have been suspecting that it could be ITB as I am experiencing most of the symptoms as described in the sgrunners forum. I also didn't want to make any wild guesses and thus I went to the polyclinic to get myself a referral to Changi Sports Clinic to see the medical officer. After a thorough check, its confirmed that I kena ITB and yeah I have been referred to see the physio in 4 weeks from now. Right now I am doing my own rehabilitation by doing stretching every night before I sleep. I am also intending to get the foam roller to start other stretching exercise with this exciting red "toy". I have also been busy working on my work stuffs as well as my Final Year Project. Yes the project has already kicked off and I am playing the role of a Project Manager as expected. I have gotten a great team with me and I believe we will all push each other to get things done. (I hope at least we can do well together as a team!) Work is rather hectic with all the stuffs that I have to look at everyday. You gotta look at my desk to believe it man! I am also kinda spending my time dedicating some nice photo montages and snap shots of events in the fourm. With my newly bought camera, I have been trying to train myself to snap photos for most of the events that we went to. Rachel was the one who started the trend and has been very helpful in doing up the montages for the events that she has attended and I must say she has done a very good job in starting out this montage trend. We are also forming a team (together with Edwin and hopefully another three mroe) to do the 100km walkathon somewhere in December 2008 and I hope this will be one of the most fun "walking" event in 2008! Ever since I joined I-Run a few months back, I have never stopped going to I-Run. Although each I-Run is siong because of the super fast pace that the people are going, it actually helps me alot in improving my personal timing (hehe and thats where I got my ITB too as I chiong too fast :P). Every I-Run session is an enjoyable run by itself as we gather as a group to run and then makan and talk about stuffs that we enjoy doing. Last week, we even organised a LunarCake Celebration Run with me contributing by getting the posters and preparing some of the stuffs for the event. I even met up with david the night before to go to Chinatown to buy some stuffs but wah liew the lanterns there were like 100% more expensive than the exact same ones I saw at the neighbourhood centre near my work place. The event was planned to be a "run" after I-Run but we ended up playing fireworks, carrying lanterns, snapping pictures and eating delicious mooncakes. Mooncake festival has always been a boring one for me for many years but 2008's Moon Cake Festival is one of the best that I ever had. Here are the posters and montages for the I-Runs and the LunarCake Event. On Saturday, I did my progressive marathon training and I guess there will be more saturdays to come. I have to wake up like 5.15am to get myself ready and to hop on a cab to make my way down to ECP. It is pretty impossible for me to take a bus down as they would have started by the time I reached and then i would have problems playing catch up as I am not a fast long distance runner. I tried to maintain my pace last saturday at a 6 to 7km pace but slowly dropped towards a 7.30 pace at the return mark from NSRCC. I was feeling very very tired and exhausted and I guess it must have been the various events that I had in the past few nights. However, I kept telling myself that I run my own race and I shouldn't be bothered with how others will overtake me or the pace that I am running at. Eventually I pushed myself towards the ending and gotten a cup of ice cold H20 from Ultraman. After the run, we tried out the centipede race concept that we intend to do during Swing KPE before heading to the toilet to bath. At ECP, there are two kinds of toilet for bathing, one that is free but in the open and another one that is not free and will need 50 cents. Both comes with cold water and of course the guys went for the free option. It was FUN though bathing in the cold in the open! We rewarded ourselves with a good meal at Carl Junior at Marina Square courtesy of a car ride by our Fan Club Chairman Ronnie aka Raven. Here are some of the photos from the training courtesy of Esther. :) On Sunday, I had to wake up early in the morning to go for Swing KPE Run. This time round, i overslept a little and had Justin and zco waiting for me downstairs my place. Kudos to Justin for offering to pick me up and sending us to Kovan instead of Tampines as the team has decided to meet up at Kovan. We were pretty early and we soon met up with the rest of the gang to gather and make our way to the start location. Everyone seems to be in a relaxed mode as this race was supposed to be a recovery for most of us. We reached the location pretty early and started distributing our "equipment" for the centipede run. At first there were quite a fair bit of confusion on how to tie ourselves up together to run as a caterpillar but luckily we sort it all out and started a slow pace towards the start line. There were 16 of us in the formation with Brokie and Edwin leading the pack followed by niwas, beverly, spencer, benny, charmane, me, zco, quincy, justin, DO, DreamRunner, Raven, Vincent and acidburn and when we reached the start line, we were all pretty SHOCKED as the people running 10k was like only maybe 10% of those doing the 5km fun walk! We practiced a little before the race started and the centipede started moving. The race started with a bang but we all soon began sweating towards the 1 to 2km mark. It was extremely hot inside the tunnel and we were all losing fluids pretty fast. The race was made challenging with the no lights in the tunnel at specific routes to cater to the Guiness World Record of Lantern Carrying and yeah with our strings and knots tied together, we had to keep close and prevent people from tripping or cutting across our caterpillar formation. We kept at a steady pace and stopped at the water point to grab water for ourselves before proceeding ahead with the run. Alot of people were cheering for us when we ran through the tunnel and we were lucky that taz, sleek and outrider were there to help us make way and to prevent people from cutting across our formation. DO and DreamRunner even led the team on with a cheer "Go FatBird Go" as we replied "Go"! It also helped to clear the traffic as we started merging with the 5km Fun Walkers! Finally we reached towards the 10km mark and I was relieved that we finally made it towards the end! It's never easy for a group of 16 to run in a consistent pace together but we have made it across the finishing line at a timing of 1hour and 2mins! I guess if we didnt merge with the 5km walkers, we would have finished the race in < 1hr! This is one of the most happiest, fun and memorable race ever in my life! Below are some photos for the fun memories. :) Now as I blogged about it, it just makes me feel happy again! Lastly, here's a cute little video of the fan from Swing KPE. It seems to brighten up my day I'm not sure why hehe. Thank to Taz for the video though! Time to sleep now! posted by Terence @ 10:59 PM| comments? (0)   Thursday, September 11, 2008 //Part 2: Exams Results and Nike Human Race Yeah, as promised the second part of my blog entry! Before I begin my story telling, let me just briefly talk about what I did today. As usual I went to work late (because I have been sleeping late GAH!) and then yeah was rushing and helping my guys out with some delivery of some last minute work from my boss so whole afternoon was spent doing alot of adhoc stuffs. Evening, I met DO to go chinatown to buy lanterns but man the lantern there was 2 times more expensive than the ones I saw! DO treated me to yu pian mian xian and thanks DO for all the advice on training and stuffs! Very useful and I really appreciate it! Rushed back home to meet Jeremy for a run. I met him in the forum la and we never really met before till today. It was a good run though until my ITB starts to flare up and then I had to slow down my pace. Ran about 5km with him before we did some form of light stretches in the park before walking home. I ran with my new MI:Adidas darling today and find that its rather comfy! Just that its alittle bit too bright though :P. Here's a picture of my darling with me. Alright I shall now continue Part 2 of my long entry. Examination Results As some of those who know, there were some saga with regards to my course units and a debate on the number of units to take before graduation arises. We have to achieve a minimum of 72 credits to pass and based on the number of units that I have taken, I would need another 4 more credits to complete the course if I pass my trimester 3 exams. And so I was informed by my dean that the results would be out on Thursday and so on Thursday night, I logged on to the system to see my results and was happy that I had passed and done well for my exams! Hurray! I have one more subject and that's my FYP to complete the degree program. So far I have already taken 8 units and I have achieved a total of 4 High Distinctions, 3 Distinctions and 1 Credit! I'm pretty happy as I have worked hard for it. Special Thanks to my boss and colleagues for supporting me and doing my work when I was away busy studying for exams! Thanks People! Nike Plus Human Race Spent the week after AHM to do recovery runs at i-run on tuesday and thursday. As usual went for the standard coffee and tea after run and I'm enjoying each and every single I-Run! The Nike Plus Human race was one of the most enjoyable race I ever had. Prior to the race on Saturday, I had specially went down to the Comex Show 2008 to get a digital camera to shoot some fun photos on race day! I am beginning to enjoy cam whoring with the new me. :). I was loss in a decision to make, Sony Camera or the Olympus Water and Shock Proof Model? or the latest Olympus u1040? Eventually, I settled down with the u1040 after much persuasion from Huiming. He was nice enough to go with me to buy the camera and in return, I went with him to buy some clothes for a wedding dinner that he will be attending the next day. The race started at 4.30pm in the afternoon and I was pretty early and so met up with DO, Raven, Niwazzz, Aero, BoSe and lots more sgrunners. I was early because prior to that, I had met up with my school's lecturer for a drink at Brewerks! I didn't drink la but its more of a chit chat and talk. Here's a picture of my class mates with Mr Danny. :) We went early to the start line and was able to squeeze in front to gain an advantage though I am not a very fast runner. :) We already start cam whoring before the actual run and I took quite alot of pictures with the gang. Saw the panda as well as jessica liu and joanne peh up close! Though not say very close but yeah I was able to see them within sight! The race started off abit late but yeah I managed to run at a comfortable pace. The roads were pretty slippery as there was a light drizzle during the rain and so I slowed down a little and at the same time encouraged those little boys to continue running and not stopped. Saw quite a few sgrunners along the way with Charmaine catching up or me and eventually running way towards the front of the pack. Make my final dash as I heard tekko shouted out my name :) and clocked in a timing of 53:59. I had achieved a new PB and was ranked 669 out of 10k participants! I am really proud of myself! hehe. After the run, I had spent the rest of the time cam-whoring with my new camera and my sgrunners friends before we go for makan @ Marina Square and then heading back home to work on a neat montage for the event. I'm glad that Nike has made up for the race pack collection saga by organizing such a great run! I enjoyed it with all my new found sg runners kakis! That should be all for tonight. Part 3 of my post will cover the i-run montages and mooncake runs, my trip to CGH Sports Clinic and yeah FYP Project! Time to go sleep already! :) posted by Terence @ 12:13 AM| comments? (0)   Wednesday, September 10, 2008 //Part 1 of a Long Waited Entry: Singapore Bay Run and AHM 2008 Ok. I have received like 1001 complaints through my customer service that my blog is outdated. Ok Sorry to disappoint everyone ah! I have been too busy doing montages for my runs, going out for trainings, attending lessons, surfing sgrunners.com forum and slacking to blog :P I have also been busy emoing for a few nights. Somethings didn't turn out the way I had expected it to be but well that's life right? Gotta move on and be happy. I belive this blog entry is gonna be another very lengthy one cos there's just too many things to update already! I shall divide it into sections so enjoy reading and dont scold me hor! Singapore Bay Run and Army Half Marathon 2008 on 24/08/2008, I have done something that I had never thought I was able to accomplish, and that's AHM. I still remember back in November 2007, I wrote this in the Running Resolution thread in SgRunners: "I Hope I will still be running! I MUST BE RUNNING STILL! and I hope to target by the first half of the year, i can finish my first 21km so that I can take part in AHM =X I'd nvr taken part in AHM before cos i always kena excuse and have to do clerk duties in tekong during my army days.. so hope I can achieve that goal.. AND OF COURSE! Lose weight and stay healthy! =) " Looking back, I have to say that I have successfully fulfilled the resolution that I have set for myself. This is the first time that I had actually fulfilled my new year resolution and I am so proud of it (Past years resolutions is always about losing weight and I had never accomplished it till now). I told myself to sleep early the night before the race and so I hit my bed like 9plus but was unable to sleep at all. I started rolling left, right and center and was still wide awake at 2am! I had arranged with Justin (ckoksing) and zco to meet around 5am so that we will be early to put our baggage and be ready for the flag off but sigh i just cant get to sleep! Perhaps I was just too excited about the race. I woke up as planned, ate my ham and sandwich before bathing and meeting Justin. When we reached there, I was like OMFG, why is there so many people! Ok I admit that I'm a suaku but yeah I have yet to participate in races of this scale so yeah I was shocked for a moment but managed to calm myself down and headed to meet Terence to deposit our bags into the locker. Went to the toilet, met Simon and then left to proceed to the start line. By then, I was already stucked towards the back of the crowd and luckily there was benny who guided me and quincy and several sgrunners further towards the start line. In a few minutes, the race began as I started with a slow jog and slowly picking up my pace. Was running side by side with Terence (Quincy) and it did help to maintain my pace throughout the race. Saw Charmane and the rest turning back at the u-turn point while we were only approaching it. 10km at 1hr plus minutes and I am feeling pretty good and energetic. Saw my ex army rsm along the way, said hi to him and he still remembered me! Was a pretty proud moment as I over took him hahaha! Stopped at a few of the water points and saw someone going into a seizure halfway through the race. Felt pretty bad for him and told myself to listen to my body and to slow down my pace if I am not feeling good. Tried on a pack of GU Gel and yeah it tasted very sweet, too sweet that it made me extremely thirsty and wanting to drink more fluids than needed. I started increasing my pace during my last 1km and raise my hands in the air like what the MC did and completed my race in 2hr 11mins according to my watch. The official race results is 2:13:24:24 for my Chip Time and 2:17:39:39 for Gun Time. Overral Ranking is 402 :) Photos for the race was uploaded today and I managed to find my picture! I have two with me hehe. I realised I always don't look good on my race pics but then again.. since when did I ever looked good? hehe :) Here's the race photos (just downloaded it on today) After the race, I met up with the sgrunners gang to take some group picture and cam whoring and then we proceed to Marina Square for breakfast before the Nike Human Race Pack Collection Marathon. Well, the race pack was one of the worst race pack collection ever, had to queue 5 hours for it but yeah it's over so lets not talk about it anymore. It was a great race for me, one that I had never thought I would have made it. The medal is hanging right in front of me now and yeah I'm glad I have made it this far. I have a few more sections to update and that is the montages that I have been working on, the Nike Human Race, My Exams Results, SCSM Marathon Pacers Training as well as I-Runs! I shall continue the blog entry tomorrow! posted by Terence @ 12:02 AM| comments? (0)   Thursday, August 21, 2008 //its tough being a trainer Finally! I have finished conducting 6 to 8 training sessions for a customer of mine. Had to do alot of talking and explaining of the system for the whole day since Monday and was practically repeating myself for like duno how many 1000 times. It made me extremely exhausted as I have to wake up at 6 daily to get changed and head on down early to the training location at raffles place and i ended up getting a bad throat from it. Worst of all, AHM is just a few days away and I have been telling myself that I can't afford to fall sick! On Tuesday, I popped by I-Run, not for a run but just to say hi to everyone since I am around the vicinity. It was fun seeing everyone and I had the urge to just run, but hehe had to be disciplined and rest. :D. However, today I went for I-run with quincy, Justin (ckoksing), zco, froot loops and with Sean Tan and Babe Nyan. Valda was supposed to join me too but she was too tied up with her work so hope to see her again. Today's run was pretty fun but I couldnt join them for coffee / tea as I had promised babe nyan and sean to go for dinner. Nevertheless, dinner was great as we went back to Changi Village to makan :D It was a walk down memory lane la, afterall I always go to that place during my army days so seeing the wanton mee stall and nasilemak was just heaven, and surprisingly, the lady selling the wanton mee still remembers me! gosh! >< Will be going back to office tomorrow. had planned to stay home to rest but I am worried about the deployment of a project as well as the guys in office (as I have not been back since I went for my exams leave) so yeah tomorrow will be another tiring day for me. I plan to pop by Running lab to check out some socks and stuffs and maybe school to collect textbooks as well for the next trimester. I am now eagerly waiting for the results of the exams as it will determine if I have to take just one unit (IT Project) or two units (IT Project and PM Management). If i pass then I would have to take only IT project to finish the course and that will of course be something to celebrate about for me. I am ending my entry today with two group photos from the nike training run. (FrootLoops and Sleek as the poster boys!). Thanks Brokie for uploading the pictures. I am really loving my runs now! :D posted by Terence @ 11:29 PM| comments? (0)