Blind Date with Books

About a week ago (22nd of March), after celebrating my mom’s birthday, my family and I were just walking around and we went inside the BookXcess book store. As usual when visiting bookstore, I would normally walk around to see if there’s any good deal and something caught my attention. At one of the bookshelves, all the books were wrapped in brown paper and out of curiosity, I went closer to have a look.

Turns out that they are doing the “Blind Date with a Book” event and it’s the last day. Lucky me, I almost miss this thing. I’m lazy to describe how the event work, so here’s the picture.

I find the whole idea of having a blind date with a book is really interesting. It’s a bit hard to describe the feeling of buying a random book without knowing what it is, except a few description but it’s something like a bit of suspense, excitement and spontaneity. And so, I chose this because I’m curious on how “murder”, “watch from heaven” and “sentimental” blend together to form a story.

Ready to see what’s underneath all those wrappings?

.

..

…

….

…..

……

…….

……

…..

….

…

..

.

The Lovely Bones. Finally understand the description that they used.

Am I suprised? Yup.

Am I’m happy with my blind date? Not really.

Firstly, I already bought this book a long time ago because I heard a lot of good things about the book but unfortunately, I don’t find the style of the story to my liking. But still, I’m impressed with the quality of the book that they sell because it’s still brand new. By wrapping the book (hence, you won’t be able to tell whether is it an old or new book) and selling it at cheap price (RM17 something), I was expecting a second hand book. So kudos to BookXcess for making the experience of buying book more enjoyable, unique and mysterious.

 

10th Run: ACKU Charity Run 2015

 I would say that this is the hardest run so far. Most of the marathons that I joined before took place in stadium or open field, hence the routes are mostly flat with minimal slopes. But for this, the run is organised in Taman Botani and if you went there for cycling before, you will know that there’s plenty of killer upward slopes. In the beginning, on the way to the venue, I thought to myself to just push myself running and don’t walk when encounter the slopes. Strong mind over tired body. It’s all about the mindset.

However, once started running and saw that steep upward slopes, I don’t give a crap on the ‘strong mindset’ stuff anymore. Will just gonna walk all the way up. And it seems like every other runners think the same way too. Every time we reach the killer slope, there’s a silent agreement between all of us to just walk, no point to race against each other here.

Since this is a charity run, I didn’t put high expectation for the medal and I was expecting something small, as a gesture of appreciation for those who joined. After crossing the finish line and saw this medal, I was really surprised. It’s a really good medal; it’s huge, solid and heavy and the design is quite unique. In fact, it’s even way better than the Viper challenge’s finisher medal. There’s magnet at the back of the medal for you stick on the fridge. How cool is that. First time getting medal with magnet.

 

Viper Challenge 2015

Though I had fun joining this event, I not sure whether I will join again in near future. This event gave me the just-join-at-least-once-is-good-enough kind of feeling. The obstacles are really challenging, especially the one that require upper body strength. Sadly, I didn’t manage to complete all of it.

I skipped the balancing beam because there’s no way for me to walk and balance myself from one end of the beam to the another. My shoes are slippery from all the mud and the wooden beam is shaky because the soil that hold the end of the beam become loose due to earlier attempts from the previous batch of participants. I also skipped the ‘Bad Plumbing’ obstacle because I can’t swim. The water level is at least 6 feet high and there’s a sign saying ‘For confident swimmer only, swim at your own risk’. There’s must be a reason for them to purposely put up that sign right? So yeah, I didn’t try that. Didn’t feel the need to put the YOLO spirit into test.

The other two obstacles, which I’m really really upset for not able to complete, are the monkey bar challenge and the final obstacle at the finishing line. No matter how many times I tried the monkey bar, I couldn’t reach the third loop because it’s just too high for me to grip on. Perhaps my body strength is not good enough. Gotta train more instead of sitting inside office.

Was a bit disappointed with the finisher medal. It looked so ordinary for such a huge event. I think the only difference between this year medal and the last year medal is the chequered plate appearance on the medal. Last year medal is a smooth finishes. But still, to finally go through it, it’s a reward itself.

 

9th Run: Brooks Bukit Jalil Marathon 10km

This is my 9th post about running marathon, and I’ll be going for my 10th run in two weeks time. Finally going to reach that double digit mark and I wonder how much longer I will run after my targeted 20th run.

I guess the memorable moment about this run would be that after the whole event is over, we traveled back to my place to prepare and get ready to travel all the way to Yong Peng, and from there, travel again to Batu Pahat to attend our fellow coursemate’s wedding. Once the wedding is over, we traveled back to Yong Peng to spend the night. So in other words, we’ve been traveling a long distance in one day, either by running or sitting inside the vehicle.

My 2nd run with my bestie, which make the day extra special. Just noticed that it only happened once every year. Hopefully it won’t be the last and there’s more to come in the future.

Not sure if you can judge from the picture, but that’s a one BIG medal. Perhaps the biggest medal among my collection so far. (with 100 plus run being the smallest medal)

A group picture with my fellow colleagues aka running kaki as well.

When you burned so much calories by running, of course the right thing to do next is to replenish back all that lost calories XD
On the way back to KL, we chose to pit stop at Melaka to eat all those yummy Nyonya food. I forgot the name of the restaurant that we went, but you can easily find it in the building next to the Mahkota Parade shopping complex. The food is quite good and I most probably will give it a second visit the next time I’m in Melaka again.

 

Bukit Tabur Extreme

It’s not easy to find the entrance to this hill because the route is not obvious at all. To reach the hill, you will have to park your car in a newly developed housing area and walk through the construction site. There’s few signs at the gate that forbid any unauthorized entry due to the ongoing construction but we ignored them anyway since it’s a weekend and there’s nothing going on. And because of this construction site, it is quite impossible for you to know that that’s the route to the base of the hill, unless you already have an experienced friend going with you, who went to this place once.

It took us several minutes to walk through the site and the one thing that you will notice is there’s several stray dogs barking at you from the distance. Don’t worry so much about the dogs; they are pretty harmless. They will distance themselves as you get closer.

Word of advice: Make sure you bring at least a bottle of water before you start hiking. They don’t call this hill Bukit Tabur EXTREME for no reason. The journey to the top and back is quite tiring and you will get dehydrated if you didn’t drink enough water along the way. The route is not that dangerous, just that it really test the limit of your stamina. And be careful with the natural booby trap that can be found along the way. See the picture below and you will understand what I mean.

See that thorns? That’s the mother nature’s booby trap, placed in strategic locations. You can find these little suckers at the place where it is easily to slipped down. So be extra careful when you hike. If you accidentally slipped because of the slippery soil, watch out on where you grab for balance. Make sure it’s not this sucker before you do the full hand grip on it, else you will wish you just slip and fall all the way down instead, since it’s less painful that way.

That’s the view from the top and it’s worth hiking all the way up. =D

You can also spot this while hiking (I guess that’s why people also named it as Crystal Hill). It’s more common to find as you climb higher to the top.

In conclusion, you can try to hike this hill if you want to test out your stamina. Avoid from hiking this place if it’s raining season because the soil will become softer and extra slippery. More importantly, bring enough of water.