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While at the hairdresser’s, I picked up a magazine which had an article on the phenomenon termed as the Quarter-Life Crisis. It’s a state of mind that afflicts people in their twenties and is as its name suggests quite similar to the mid-life crisis. In the article, some young girls from 23 to 25, supposedly recovered sufferers, were interviewed. One talked about having gone through the ‘crisis’ after graduating from school and sinking into depression when she couldn’t find a job. She ‘recovered’ from the ‘crisis’ after landing a job. The other stories were in the same vein, talking about how they felt depressed and directionless after losing their jobs from the economic crisis.

These aren’t examples of quarter-life crisis; these are upsetting realities of life that you live through and will live through through the rest of your life. A quarter-life crisis has to involve the realisation that there’s more to life than a job; it has to involve a dilemma where you are uncertain of the paths to take in life and its consequences. It has to involve the realisation that beyond your twenties, you will be too old to pursue certain ideals that you have grown up believing in. It has to involve the realisation that in your twenties, you are already too old to pursue certain ideals you have grown up believing in.

On an related note, here’s a magazine scan from two years ago that I found REALLY funny that a friend dredged up recently.

Click on it for a larger version. We do get very strange articles around here.

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Last week, I sent in an order for an acrylic contact ball and some other practice PVC balls. Contact juggling has always quite fascinated me but learning with tennis balls is very frustrating. I’ve moved on to using lacrosse balls for some time but a lack of community and people to learn from made me move on to other more interesting stuff fast. I think I’lll want to learn it proper this time and I have 2 friends who’d be doing the same. I’ve said I’d teach them the basics and I think it’d be fun, considering I know very little right now.

Not a lot of people know this but I’m a left-handed juggler. I can be considered ambidextrous I guess – I can write slowly with my left, I can sign checks with my left but ultimately, I use my right for most things. I juggle better with my left and I can’t do the Butterfly or a penguin catch with my right. Contact should be right up my alley I guess. I’m a very “soft-touch” juggler and I like very flowy moves. Will update when the balls arrive.

On a related note,

Okotanpe is my favorite contact juggler of all time.

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This is possibly the most movies I’ve caught in a week. I’m just back from Alice in Wonderland (in 3D!) and caught Up in the Air and A Serious Man over this past week.

Of the three, I have to say I enjoyed this the most because it is plain wicked. We were meant to catch A Serious Man but the theatre wasn’t showing it so this was the next alternative. The casting of George Clooney as a commitment phobe is very ironic of course and he definitely oozes charisma, fitting into the role very well. I actually found the first half of the show bland, cookie-cut and predictable but it picks up after that and messes with your head while continuing to charm with a healthy dose of humor. I don’t really know what to make of the story, to be honest. It definitely wasn’t a story per se but a slice of life. There’s no high moral to be learnt. Well, maybe there is but who knows? This is about as good as satires of romantic comedies go. It’s cheesy at points but generally, it’s a good movie.

I’d watch the Coen brothers. Burn After Reading was genius; Fargo and The Big Lebowski were hilarious; I haven’t got to catch No Country for Old Men yet. This show’s about a very messed up Jewish family, centering around a devout husband, father and worker who’s trying his best to live a righteous life. You feel almost guilty for being gleeful at the plight of the poor guy. Like all of the Coen brothers’ shows, the characters are very distinct caricatures and scenes are often outrageous. It’s a good tale, the sort you’d want to watch on a Saturday afternoon.

This is somewhat disappointing. I’ve been waiting for this show sincei t’s announced and Tim Burton sounds like a great fit as director, on paper. After all, weren’t Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride very similar in style to what Alice is about? Like NBC, this is not typical Disney and the story doesn’t follow exactly the events of the Lewis Carroll books. That probably explains where it went wrong. Johnny Depp reprises his role again as the Willy Wonka-ish character, the Mad Hatter, only the 234728th time he’s played such a role. I’m usually pretty favorable of Johnny Depp in shows but he’s rather unimpressive in this one. The visuals were definitely pretty since we watched this in 3D but the story was only about ok throughout until the ending which was horrid. The ending was so glib and convenient, it’s almost like they ran out of film and had to wrap up filming fast. I don’t understand the ending or what relation the ending had to the rest of the story. All in all, the most disappointing Tim Burton show in memory.

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The bikescapade started like this:

I was checking out the OCBC Cycle Singapore website, looked through last year’s results and thought that the fastest riders were actually pretty slow. The top five in my age group in the 40k distance I believe clocked about 1:10-1:20 and I mused to Shaun that it was very doable. Of course, I didn’t have a bike nor could i ride well. I’ve never rode more than 10km on a bike in my life and even that was 8 years ago but that’s just logistics. It was totally doable. Shaun didn’t share my beliefs

There was a few other reasons to race the OCBC event too -

1. Proving that I’m a competent cyclist would mean more credibility when launching into unicycling vs cycling debates (will do this in a later post)
2. Getting a good position can lead to seeding.
3. I do want to be good enough to raise the profile of unicycling eventually.
4. Being good means prize money, no?

The initial plan was to borrow a Cervelo tri bike (read: carbon frame, light, expensive) and convert it into a road bike. After thinking about my knack for clumsiness though, I went with an old beginner Giant bike instead and swapped out the clipless pedals for a metal pair with broken bearings that I can’t use anymore on my unicycle.

As all good ideas are wont to start, I learnt to ride the bike 2 weeks before the event and clocked a grand total of 3 rides.

The First Ride

Total Distance: 10km

The friend who rode with me asked more than once if I’d like to swap with her hybrid bike which didn’t have scary dropbars; that was about how competent I looked. I walked up and down curbs because I’ve never gone down a curb on a bike in my life, stopped to turn corners on my feet and caught back on jumping off my bike on more than one occasion. It took about 20 minutes to get used to riding. I must have averaged about 15kph because going faster than 20kph actually felt scary and wobbly. My butt hurt so I didn’t want to ride the next day.

The Second Ride

Total Distance: 30+km

I tried to adjust the seat to be more of my height but broke 2 allen keys in the attempt. The derailleur made noises mid-ride and fell off about 10km into the ride. I did an impromptu temporary fix (how would I know that bicycles have this many parts???) and couldn’t change gears thereafter. It took 3 hours to get home. It takes me 4 hours to ride 45km on a unicycle with breaks in between and I feel less worn out at the end of it all.

The Third Ride

Total Distance: 55km

This was meant to be a 45km ride but I got lost repeatedly. I read a bit on bicycle mechanics and fixed the derailleur and tightened the brake. I also did a bit of fitting with the seat with a makeshift plumb line and level. Mid-ride, I bought new tires too because the old ones were cracked and I didn’t want another face accident. This was a good ride. I didn’t feel as tired, I was getting the hang of changing gears and starting off smoothly and I felt faster too. Still, it took about 3 hours because of the multiple pedestrian crossings, the crowd walking on the cycling paths, the overhead bridges and whatnots.

Ride 3.5

Total Distance: 1km

The new tires felt pretty decent so I wanted a last training ride. Stupidity happened (see previous post) and my wheel got busted.Took me twice as long to walk it back home.

Ride 4 and That OCBC Ride

I got my wheel back the day before and woke up early to fix it. I actually rode the whole 5km or so to Bedok MRT for the shuttle bus which counts as the first time I’ve rode on the road. I didn’t bring any water with me either because I don’t know how to consume water while riding. The idea was to hold on to the drop bars for dear life and ride it like I would a unicycle – ie. pedal fast, pedal non-stop. It’s a little ridiculous. I’d have to slow down to about 20kph to round corners, slow down on speed stripes to save my ass and I’d be the first to accelerate out of corners, up hills and over bumps because that’s what you’d do on a unicycle anyway.

I finished in 1:14, about 16 minutes off the pace of the top person and am in 19th / 231 in my age group.I went a lot faster over the second half after getting used to the speeds, cycling with a crowd and getting past the bottlenecked roads. I think I’d actually do a lot better over a half-Ironman distance because I can probably keep at that cadence for another hour or two at least.

Anyone needs a team member for the half-Ironman?

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Ridiculously stupid.

One of the biggest differences between riding a bike and a unicycle is that you jump off to bail on a uni but you put your foot down while grabbing the handlebar to remain in control on a bike.  Well this didn’t register on my muscle reflex.

THEY DON’T EVEN LOOK LIKE LEGS ANYMORE.

For the record, for those of you who still believe that uncycling is dangerous, I’ve got the worst, most permanent injuries from the few times I rode a stupid bicycle. I wasn’t even riding fast when this happened – in fact, I’ve managed to brake and slow my speed to just under 5kph when this happened. My rear wheel got trapped in a crevice that’s the same width so I ground to a stop. My first instinct was to jump off and the moment I launched, I had one of those Wile E. Coyote “Uh Oh” moments. The ankles hit the frame first (it’s bruised on both but the other one’s not showing up yet), then a knee rammed into the handlebar. Bike collapsed, I lost my balance and scraped both knees.

The bruise on my left knee measures 20cm long and looks like I’ve a rare strain of disease.

Now my rear wheel is crooked. Very incredulous chain of events. Last week, my deraileur came off and I ended up learning to fix it (and it’s now in better shape than before! Hurrah!) and now I’ve to get a spoke key to attempt to straighten my wheel. Most stupid.

I will post again on learning to ride a bike in a while.

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This is such a strangely toy camera-ish photo I thought I should share it.

That’s my favorite shirt to do sports in. It also blends in well with my wall.

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I’m proud to announce that I think I got my mom addicted to videogames.

All those times I was told as a kid that videogames are bad and addictive, heeheehee.

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Must watch.

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I dozed off at Japanese class today. Specifically, I dozed off in the middle of writing an assignment and my hand kept going on. The teacher went around trying to spot mistakes and stopped at mine. Being Japanese and polite, she tells me nicely that a certain phrase is wrong. That’s about when I regained consciousness and realised I wrote half a line of random characters.

She points out the erroneous phrase.

I had to reread the entire paragraph because I don’t know what I just wrote. It’s comedy at its finest.

It happened thrice in one hour.

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The writer spent $7000 on braces to get straight teeth. That's why you're looking at them now.

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Will-Do

• Century ride on a uni
• Another marathon. In 4 hours.
• Buy NZ airtix

Has-Done

• Ride the Lobster
• A marathon. In 6 hours. Half of it on one leg. Fun.
• Unicycled Macau.
• Asia-Pacific Unicycle Competition 09
• Unicycled Kota Kinabalu