5K

The 5,000meter race. On the road, its commonly as the 5k.

Men’s world record - Just below 12 mins.

Women’s world record - About 14 mins.

Both held by Ethiopians.

Men’s Asian record - Just below 13 minutes. Held by a Qatari.

Women’s Asian record - 14 and a half mins. A Chinese national.

Malaysian men’s record - Just over 14 mins. Since 1994.

Malaysian women’s record - More than 16 mins. Since 1997.

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I tried doing it seriously the first time two weeks ago. Clocked 44mins. Geez, at 15 mins i hadn’t even reach 2km yet!

Last week i paced faster and i dipped below 40mins.

Tomorrow will be the third attempt. Targeting 0:36.

Going Back To Ceylon

Back when i was in Primary 2, we had this Indian classmate (of Tamil descent). He came from a very rich family, one time he took a week off school coz his family went back to visit their ancestral homeland in Ceylon. By that time Ceylon was already long known as Sri Lanka, but somehow our parents and us still referred to it as Ceylon. So for weeks we kept teasing him about “balik Ceylon“.

The funny incident was one day when he had already left for the holiday, a teacher asked, “where’s that Indian guy?” to which the joker of the class Azmi replied “kena tembak robot Cylon“. The Battlestar Galactica series was pretty popular back then, the original Lorne Greene / Dirk Benedict one not the new sexy one. Azmi got scolded by the teacher for his cheek, of course.

Mention of Ceylon or Sri Lanka always conjure up that memory, plus maybe my Form 5 geography random factoids (”Ratnapura juga digelar ‘Kota Permata’…”)

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Anyway, few days ago i was reminded of it again as the longest armed conflict in Asia had “reached its bitter end“, with the defeat of the LTTE. But most reports also added that the conflict will still continue guerilla-style.

Bata Badminton Master

Remember this?

It’s the same type of shoes we wore to school when we were younger. Well, almost all of us. The richer kids had the Pallas velcro shoes, the ‘mat rock’s wore the high cut variety but this is was the standard.

Saw this vintage series at a shoe store recently, good to know Bata is producing it again.

I remember it was a lot cheaper than RM29.90 though.

Brings back memories of me painting it with Kiwi Blanco shoe whitener in front of my house every week… and using the teacher’s chalk to cover the black scruffs during class.