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Dominic, four years ago today you became my Godson.

Most people remember their birthdays, but few recall the day they were baptised.*

For cradle Catholics, the excuse is that we were baptised when we were infants.

But you have no excuse not to know the date, because I remember.

I admit, I only remember because I have technological assistance – EXIF information on photos from your baptism. I have transferred the date to Google Calendar. So, no excuse for me to forget either.

I have to admit something else: I’m not entirely clear about my role.

On paper, in theory, I am supposed to assist in your spiritual development.

How to do this? That’s another story.

If I follow the example of my Godparents, then you will get better gifts than your brothers for Christmas and birthdays.

Surely it has to go beyond this, especially as you become more aware of the world around you.

Perhaps it can start with seeing you more often. And chatting with you. And listening to you. And playing with you. (Double-take. Yes, some of you are probably pondering, “Is Kenneth able to… play?” Hmmm…)

After all, if I don’t have a relationship with you, then I am not worthy of being called Godpa.

I will try my best to journey with you as you grow up. That’s the least that I can do.

Be good! :)

My favourite photo of Dominic. Can’t help him to fly anymore – he’s too big!

* Reminder to self – find out when I was baptised. I have a vague notion it was January 1978.

I hesitate to call this my running playlist, because I can’t sustain a pace that can be considered running. To be accurate, this should be called my walking/jogging playlist. Some of these are labeled Parental Guidance, so consider yourself warned. Here goes:

Time Title – Artist
“Lyric quotes.”
Comments

1. 01:30 Magnet – Nike ad featuring Lance Armstrong
   A very gentle and inspiring start.

2. 04:37 In My Heart – Moby
   This one has a moderate speed bass rhythm to get into the workout. You have to have decent headphones/earphones to hear it though.
3. 02:47 Happy Feet – Randy Spendlove (Shall We Dance? Soundtrack)
   Picking up the pace.
4. 04:05 I See You Baby (Radio edit) – Groove Armada
   “I see you baby, shakin’ that a**.”
   I guess I’m supposed to look the back of a girl who is running way ahead of me.
5. 02:45 Wonderful Night – Fatboy Slim
   A really infectious song. Not sure why it wasn’t a bigger hit.
6. 04:08 Hey Ya! – Outkast
   “Shake it, sugar. Shake it like a Polaroid picture.”
   Refer to comments for I See You Baby. No, I do not imagine André 3000 when listening to this song.
7. 04:23 You Can Do It – Ice Cube
   “You can do it, put you back into it. You can do it, put your a** into it.”
   ‘Nuff said.
8. 03:11 Be Faithful – Fatman Scoop featuring The Crooklyn Clan
   Actually, I don’t know what this song has to do with being faithful.
9. 03:37 Don’t Give Up – Chicane featuring Bryan Adams
   “Don’t give up, you know it’s true. You gotta do what you gotta do.”
   This song brings me up to half an hour, and it is a nice song to end off on a fast pace. Love the bass.
   

There are more songs, for when I used to work out after half an hour on the elliptical machine in the gym. Maybe I’ll share the extended playlist another time.

Cycling: One of the few types of exercise I can do now without my joints and muscles screaming out for mercy. 40km is do-able, so I signed up again for OCBC Cycle Singapore.

Last year, I did the distance in 2 hours 13 minutes, which is slow. This was supposed to be the impetus to train harder and go sub-2 hours.

Naturally, things didn’t go as I planned. My training was limited – mostly by sheer laziness – to three short rides at Ubin – and an attempt at the Kallang Park Connector.

Nevertheless, I managed to achieve my timing goal. This morning, I clocked myself at an hour and 38 minutes. Almost half an hour better.

Not that I can put this down to training. I probably knew how to pace myself better this time round. Perhaps, the earlier start this year helped too. Despite the recent hot weather, it was a relatively cool morning. And with cycling, you always feel a breeze. Although when you’re tired, you feel like the same breeze is conspiring to slow you down.

During the ride, I was looking out for @gadgetygirl and @sivasothi (and friends). While I didn’t manage to spot them, I did bump into a friend from secondary school days. Audrey D’cotta was a prefect I knew from CHIJ (Toa Payoh). She now runs her own pilates studio: The Moving Body.

Meeting fellow foldie-owners is always a treat too. I think I saw a Dahon guy that I saw last year, on his distinctive yellow-orche bike with matching tyres. As we whizzed past me, he hollered, “Go, bro!”. And the support staff are always generous with their cheers for guys on small bikes (read: supposedly inferior equipment).

The ride itself – I preferred last year’s route. The organisers seemed to have switched the start and end sectors, which meant that this year, we headed towards the finish, then headed away from the finish… several times.

All in all, I enjoyed myself. The rest area after the ride was much better too. Last year, there wasn’t much. This time, there were a few booths, the most important of which was NPark’s Park Connector booth. They had maps showing the Park Connector Networks, which included park connectors being built and in planning. Picked up a couple of brochures and got myself a nice PCN cap.

Oh yes, the goodie bag includes items that I might actually use!

This is Sarah Soh.

Formerly Sarah Wong. (Salah So Wrong… hahah!)

And this is her audition for a new Australian Broadcasting Corporation kids’ channel.

Gooooo Sarah! Hope you get this. =)

Her boy, Aidan, is already the face of Heinz formula milk… so she has to keep up with him!

Twitter is really gaining traction.

Once it was the domain of geeks and geekettes. Now, it seems non-techies are getting in on the tweet too.

They are either signing up for accounts or asking about it.

Ironically, Twitter is a difficult thing to summarize. My attempt, within Twitter’s word limit:

Twitter is microblogging. A post in 140 characters, somewhat akin to SMS broadcast rather than SMS to an individual.

With 24 characters to spare too.

But I digress.

Siva highlighted #sgweathernow on Twitter.

By appending #sgweathernow at the end of your tweets, individual users can give others live updates on the weather wherever they are located in Singapore.

And the sgweathernow Twitter account provides hourly updates on Singapore’s weather. No need to visit NEA’s website, unless you want more details.

So now, everyone can talk tweet about the weather.

túrána hott kurdís by hasta la otra méxico! from Till Credner on Vimeo.

Saw this on Geeks are Sexy. Just had to share it. (You have to check out the HD version.)

Music reminds me of Rambling Librarian‘s work.

2009 has personally got off to a good start.

And Murphy’s Law dictates that now I’ve said that out loud, everything’s going to come crashing down.

We’ll see.

My grandmother turned 90 today.

Nine decades.

That’s a very long time to live.

When I think of my grandmother, I think of the photo above.

I imagine her brain, with two huge holes where neurons and synapses should exist.

My grandmother has Alzheimer’s.

The last time she remembered who I was was before I left to study in Australia.

When I came back for Christmas in between my two-year stint overseas, she could still talk coherently but she couldn’t remember me.

After I came back to Singapore, she didn’t really speak English any more, reverting to a combination of Kristang (a pidgin Portuguese language spoken by Portuguese Eurasians) and Malay.

And I didn’t exist in her worldview, which just kept on progressively diminishing.

Alzheimer’s Disease photo by AJ Cann.
Reproduced under a CC BY-NC 2.0 license.

Kevin Lim recently pointed out that Google Street View will be coming to Singapore soon.

So, if you spot an Opel Astra with the strange appendage, you know what that’s all about.

I received my new refurbished iMac on Thursday. As you can see, I unboxed it and fired it up.

What happened after the fancy Welcome clip?

Nothing.

There are a few things to fill in to set up OS X.

At Select a Wireless Service, the computer froze.

So, I restarted and tried again, this time choosing no network. The computer froze.

I unplugged the wires, plugged them back in (just the power cable and keyboard), tried again. Same result.

Time for Google. I found two similar cases – one which seemed to resolve itself, another one (also a refurbished set) which is unresolved.

Since it was late, I didn’t try reinstalling the OS.

I called AppleCare the next day, and the support guy asked me to do everything that I’ve already tried. He also asked me to do what I was intending to do anyway – reinstall the OS.

Still hung at selecting a network (whether I choose no network or my home wireless network).

After all that trouble, support guy 2 (I had to call back after the reinstallation and got a different guy) concluded that my iMac was DOA – Dead On Arrival.

Not a good advertisement for Apple, eh?

(Photos follow.)

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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