Reading is sexy.

I'm a big fan of reading. When I grew up, my dad used to take me to the library once a week, and even after he stopped bringing us, I continued to go by myself; fat, primary 5 me commuting to borrow some books at the old National Library near Fort Canning. I wasn't a very active boy, on account of me being chubby and rounded, so I took to books very quickly.

I managed to sustain the habit up to this point, where I'm reading (at least trying to) about one book per week. So yeah, I'm pretty much one of the most well-read people you know.

When I saw my friend post a note on facebook about reading, a sort of survey on how bookish you are, I jumped on it.

Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.

Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Bold those books you've read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read an excerpt. Tag other book nerds.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

23 The Chronicles of Prydain - Lloyd Alexander

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma -Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Inferno - Dante

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Finished - 21

Started on - 14

I read 21 books where a normal person has only read 6 books. I feel like some sort of...reading jock hahaha. I've read 3.5 times more of BBC's "quality" books than a normal person. Perhaps it's because I have 3.5 times more free time than a normal person. Hmm.

Anyway, I haven't updated in a long time, but after a little bird told me that people have visited this blog of late (rubythesnowman), I felt like I just had to.

Pray.

OK, so I logged on to Facebook yesterday night and was faced with an onslaught of friends who changed their profile pictures to cartoon characters. And some accompanied their change with the following update:

Change your facebook profile picture to a cartoon from your childhood and invite your friends to do the same. Until Monday, there should be no human faces on facebook, but an invasion of memories. This is for violence against children.

WTF. Reading this statement sends alarm bells ringing at the back of my mind. Something's not right here. If you want to make a statement against violence on children, I'm pretty sure this isn't the way to do it.

Ok, I can see how changing your profile picture will take us back to the good old days of our childhood. Some people change their profile picture, say "Oooh, I liked this cartoon,", and then look at their friends profile picture and say "Ooh, cool, he/she liked that cartoon," and whatever. But that's not really the point of this exercise, right?

Most people are just taking this time to show off what "cool" or "funky" or "cute" cartoons they liked when they were younger, and they think that through that, they're fighting violence against children, taking a stand for violence against children, but that's fuckshit. You're not doing anything!

This changing of profile picture is just a facebook FAD. You're not furthering a cause, you're showing your friends what cartoon you liked as a kid and THAT'S ALL.

If you really want to do something, there are other more meaningful ways, you know? Through facebook, you can post links, information and videos. Or, you can change your profile picture to a picture of you donating to charity, and encourage your friends to do the same! More action please!

Justin Bieber is doing more than you, that's for sure.

You're not that awesome.

So I went to my friend Jonathan's house for a swim today. It's part of my Standard Chartered preparations...I'm supposed to be resting my legs, so instead of running, I took a dip in the pool.

And as with all times you go swimming with a friend, sooner or later, one of you will challenge the other to see who can hold their breath under water longer. I've always lost this, but what the heck, you know? I'm not even good at swimming (which is something I'm hoping to correct by February next year so that I can do a duathalon...)

So anyway, he said go, and we took deep breaths and dived in. 10seconds, 20seconds, and 30seconds, and he's out. What about me? I'm still inside, cool as a cucumber, wet as a fish. I surface and I'm like, "Why you come up so fast?" and he's like "Dude, my lungs are bursting, how come you can hold your breath for so long?"

So we did it again. He surfaces in 30-odd seconds, and 1min20seconds later, I'm still down there. I surface again, and you know, why not try for 1min30seconds, and I tried, and I succeeded. Ownage. I thought I was awesome.

Which brings me to right now. I was going to go on facebook and post something like..."Just when I thought I couldn't get anymore awesome, I find out that I can hold my breath for a really really really long time!" To not feel foolish, I google "average time a person can hold his breath underwater".

The result according to a Time article is...2 minutes.

Turns out I'm not that awesome. I managed to avoid looking foolish on facebook, but I can't help feeling foolish anyway. Sigh, such is life!

The Rain Will Kill You

I woke up early this morning to go for a run, but the rain stopped me. So I postponed it to the afternoon, and then it's raining again. Damn, I already canceled my afternoon plans just so I could go for a nice 12km run, but then it just had to rain. Am I supposed to cancel my evening plans too?

The thing is, I've done my hardest to prepare for this coming Sunday's 42km...up to a point, and that point was last week. There's this part of marathon training called "tapering", and man, I fucked that up big time, I think. I've rested too much, the weather hasn't been on my side...and now I'm not sure whether I can live up to my expectations.

I got complacent, after running 35km...I thought the hard part was over, but it wasn't. Sigh. Let's just hope for the best. Gonna run my own race.

Katana Umbrella

I want this for Christmas. I want this so badly I'm willing to buy it for myself. It's on ThinkGeek. After an hour or so of browsing around the site, looking for other things I can by, I was ready to check-out, but gasp, horror of horrors, they don't ship to Singapore.

Sigh! How can you ship to fucking Swaziland and not ship to Singapore? I can not comprehend this, I want my Katana Umbrella.

Kanye West is fuckin' ridiculous.

I've been listening to Kanye's new album a lot of late. It's one of the best albums I've heard, full-stop. I downloaded all his work a few years back, and I thought, "This guy's not bad". But his latest album, My Dark Beautiful Twisted Fantasy is on a whole new level. I'd compare it to the Beatles, if I could, and I am comparing it to The Beatles, it's awesome.

"What's a white Beatle? A cockroach," - Kanye West.

He's the best lah. He's a superstar for our day and age. He makes gaffes, like that time with Taylor Swift, but at least he's honest. He plays it straight, stays true to himself.

Go download his album, and buy it. If you have the time, watch the video of Runaway on youtube, which is 34minutes long, a video accompaniment to his album. And check out this interview of his with Rihanna:

Kanye: So what inspired you to have that pink tank on your last tour? That was amazing, when you were sitting on top of the army tank.
Rihanna: I love to combine femininity with a kind of extreme masculine egde, and I felt like the tank is just not a typical thing that you think of when you think of a girl — or in any kind of relation to a girl. Then we made it hot pink. We just added that touch.
Kanye: I mean, people really need to see a photograph — the entire tank was pink. That was a great piece of commercial pop art. Was the idea of that to kind of portray an American Dream — like the fantasy of a this hot black girl sitting on a top of a pink tank?
Rihanna: I never actually thought of it like that.
Kanye: How does it feel to know that you could have any man in the world. Or woman. How does it feel to know that you can turn straight women gay?
Rihanna: Is that a real question?
Kanye: Yeah.
Rihanna: Well … Thank you. I don’t know how to feel about that. I guess that’s flattering.
Kanye: But just to have that level of power. How do deal with it? No one woman should have that much power.

Vampires Suck.

I wish the following images are fake. With all my heart, I thought to myself, let these be bad photoshops. But they're not. They're real, and if you go to this link, you'll see proof.
http://browseinside.harperteen.com/index.aspx?isbn13=9780061962257






































































These association with Twilight kinda cheapens the classics, know? I'm sure the authors would be somersaulting in their graves if they knew their works are being promoted by Twilight, of all things. Twilight barely qualifies as literature, to me. I don't mean to take away anything from Stephanie Mayer and I respect the fact that she was able to produce 4 books. Writing is no mean feat.

I respect her, but I hate her books, so there. Cliched, bordering on fanfiction, with cookie-cutter characters. Oh, it reinforces this idea of girls=damsel, which I'm against, because I'm a male feminist. I'm cool like that.

Me VS 42km

I just finished yet another long run! And this one was the longest. Close to 35km, my god! The thing that really made this long run special is that...I didn't walk. Not for one bit. My previous long runs reduced me to a walking casualty around the 30km mark, but not this one. I was fully prepared.

I have this sort of ritual I do before I go for my long runs. It includes all the following items, without exception:

-Emptying my bowels off whatever's in there. Which means sitting on the pooper. As I sit there, I'll read whatever issue of Runner's World or Triathlete I have, for inspiration. The athletes in there do way more grueling stuff than me, and I take refuge in the fact that whatever I'm going through, they're going through worse.

-Peeing twice. Once just before I take a dump. And another time just before I leave the house.

-Drinking coffee! Caffeine really helps in the long run. Heh.

-Applying plasters on my nipples. Nipple abrasion is a real killer! I've seen photos where nipples are literally bleeding through some runner's singlet, and it's not pretty.

-Tying my shoe laces three times. My laces are really long, so I do it once, then another, and then another just to be safe.

-Eating two bananas. This will be done within the one hour preceding my run. The bananas are a real life saver, especially if you're going for more than two hours.

-Checking to make sure my running gels are ready. Running gels really help. For anything more than 21km, they are a life saver. They give you a real boost. It's like those video games, whereby you're out of health, and you need a health pack. Those running gels are like your health pack. They work, trust me.

-Making sure that my 100plus is ready in the fridge. After my long runs, I'm really really thirsty.

-Ice-pack in the fridge, ready. Again, for the aftermath of a long run. Icing and massaging saves your legs.

Hmm, that's all I can think of for now. I'm sure there's more stuff I do. All this takes like...45minutes? And after the run, I've a sort-of ritual too, but that's for another time.

I'm on a runner's high :)

Hard life?

Finally, the photos for the New Balance Real Run 2010 has been uploaded online! OK, for runs, the organizers usually hire companies to take photos of runners. The company takes a gajillion photos, and using some number recognition system, they can send you photos of yourself as you're running.

For the New Balance Real Run, the photos have been uploaded here: http://sportsphotox.com/. You need to register, so take note. And even when you do register, there's a watermark. You need to pay for the version without watermark.

This is my photo. I look like crap, but with running, you don't go for glamour. You go for glory!


















Heading for the Anime Festival Asia later. Why? Because it sounds like an experience? Have a good Sunday!

Smelly Feet, Smelly Feet

I went to my friend Jonathan's house today, and together with our classmate, Moses, we worked out at the gym. In my bag was my clothes, plastic bag, towel, protein powder, etc. I was carrying my shoe bag too, which contained the smelliest pair of shoes in the world.

If you've read my post yesterday, you'd know that I went for a damn long run. And that I go for runs almost everyday. How often do you think I get to wash my shoes? And how often do you think I wash my shoes? Zero times. Through rain, puddles, wind, sand, the best and the worst of the elements, I ran through them, and with me, my shoes.

And they're damn smelly. I'm standing on the train, reading my book (this time, it's Kazuo Ishiguro's When We Were Orphans, which is getting good), with my shoe bag between my legs, and I can smell the condition of my shoes. If my shoe was a mammal, it'd be a skunk. If my shoe was a pokemon, it'll be that skunk pokemon whose name I can't recall.

So my thoughts of Pokemon and smelly shoes led to thoughts about evolution and our feet. What if...we evolved into our upright position...just to escape our stinky feet? Us, Human Beings, are the only creatures on this planet which are bipedal. Our ancestors walked, or scurried, on all fours. Then they thought, holy shit, our feet are smelly. And then they focused millions of years of evolution and ta-da, we're standing on two feet.

Nice theory, no? And that's a wrap!

If you can't French Toast, then how do you expect to French Kiss?

I ran for 3hours this morning. Holy shit, I felt like dying.

The Singapore Marathon is about 20+ days away from now. I've been training hard for it, trying to run 42km within 4hours. Why 4 hours? It just seems like a nice round number. I ran my previous marathon at a timing of 4h25mins. Trying to shave off 25minutes is no easy feat...but I'm trying my best.

I've been training hard, running at least 5 times a week. I do 2 easy runs of 8 to 10kms, one 21km run at marathon pace, one interval run for speed and finally, the worst part of the training. The long runs are the worst. I started off at 1hr30min, and I add 10min with every passing week.

What's running to me? It started off as a way to lose weight. Now that I've shed the weight, why do I still run? It's primal, in that I think it satisfies an innate need to cover large distances...before modern transport, that's how we moved after all, with our foot. It's also spiritual, in that through running, I find time to reflect, and think, as well as clear my mind, and be at peace.

And it's mine. Nobody can take my runs away from me, you know?

With that said, this will probably be my last marathon. I'm not quitting running! I'm just quitting this distance. I'll do half-marathons, because that's more manageable. Seeing as how I'll be working during the Adidas Sundown period, and I'll be studying during next year's Standard Chartered period, I doubt I'll be able to find the time to run as often, and as much.

Oh, and I don't want to subject my body to such fatigue again, hahaha. It's satisfying, but...I can be satisfied at 21km too.

Route for this year's 42km, for your viewing :)

This would be a better place if I was the President.

You know something that really really annoys me? People who stand on the right side of the escalator, that's who.

We take escalators everyday. They're god-sent; automatic stairs which bring you up heights of 10metres upwards. You don't have to break a sweat because this machine is literally lifting your lazy ass! Of course, the magic of escalators is that you can use it as stairs at the same time, shortening your journey even further.

Escalators are everywhere. Let's take my journey to camp for example, and count how many escalators I have to ride.

At Tanah Merah Station, I take one down to the underground, and then another to the control station and finally another to the platform. That's THREE.

I would ride said train all the way to Paya Lebar. At Paya Lebar interchange, I take THREE escalators just to get to the Circle Line Platform. This brings our total to SIX.

I would take the Circle Line to Bishan, and from Bishan, I would take the Red Line to Ang Mo Kio, but before that, I've to make my way on foot to the Red Line platform. To get there, I take TWO escalators, bringing our total to EIGHT.

I finally alight at Ang Mo Kio Station. To get to the control station, I take an escalator down, then I take another to get to the underpass, and then another up to the bus interchange where I would take 169.

What's our grand total? If you've been keeping count, it's freaking ELEVEN. And if I have to go back and forth camp that day, it'll be TWENTY-TWO ESCALATORS.

Most of the time, the ride up the escalator is a pleasant journey. If you're lucky, there'll be a girl wearing a short skirt riding slightly above you! If you're lucky there'll be girls on the other side who are gorgeous. If you're unlucky, you'd be rushing up/down the escalator, and some dumbass would be blocking your way.

I hate to cite anything from stomp, but here's a picture to illustrate my point better:














It's damn irritating! When the train is right there, but some gay is blocking your way....oh, it makes my blood boil. Most of the time, I'd just say excuse me, but what if the person blocking the way is several steps in front? Nothing you can do but suck thumb.

Here's what they should do: Install tasers on the right side of the escalator. If you stand there for too long, electric shocks would be sent through the handle, or the platform, and you'll know you're doing something bad. Deceptively simple, yet shockingly effective.



Or they can color the handrails a different colour. It'll be a visual stimulant. It can be red, and they'll think danger, and they won't stay there for an extended period of time.

Simple right? Riding up/down those 22 escalators would be orgasmic if I was the President.

Cheapskate Inception

I had a conversation with a friend whoORD-ed only recently and he told me my blog was a little gay. And after reading my previous two posts, I'm inclined to agree.

Bet let's take a step back and consider the fact that I'm just starting out, and that I've been rotting in army for 2 years, and in fairness, the "gay" tone is to be expected. So just give me sometime, and eventually, I'll find my rhythm.

I'm not even sure of what this blog is supposed to be about. I envision a sort of outlet for random stuff that I do, but that's not enough is it? Or maybe a wall where I put up all sorts of things I find on the net? Like I said, I'll find my rhythm.

And here it is: Cheapskate Inception!

Don't rain on my parade.

Doesn't the Vivocity logo look like a penis? Oh wait, I just googled Vivocity, and apparently it's VivoCity! Who knew?

Anyway, to get back to the subject I raised earlier (penis), the VivoCity logo is most certainly phallic. There was a time when I was in JC when I took a bus to VivoCity to take another bus to AC. Inadvertently, as I wait for my bus, my eyes would fall upon this logo. And the thing about the VivoCity logo is that it changes color. This color change thing is what drew my attention to it, not it's penis-resemblance.

"Oh, look at the way that logo changes color. How nice. Oohh, penis! It's a penis!"

Here are some images for your reference:










































And here's a picture of a real penis for comparison:

































Nah, I'm not gonna post obscene image. Unless that's what you want, and if so, I got a gajillion. It's the "O" man, the "O" is a phallic-head.

So now, whenever you're at VivoCity, you've got something interesting you can point out to your friends. At the risk of sounding like someone who has "penis" in their minds too much of the time...

Which brings me to something I'd like to clarify: This post by no means sets the tone for my blog. This penis post will be a one time thing. Hard as it may be, I'll strive to keep my posts strictly on matters above the belt.

PS:This update was supposed to have been made yesterday. I was supposed to leave camp at about 2 and then make an update, but I ended up staying until about 6. So I shifted the intended update to yesterday night, but I ended up meeting my cousins to hang around and then some JC friends to play LAN, and reached home only at 12. So I shifted the intended update to today, after my planned run. But it's raining, so here I am, instead.

See you babes.

If this isn't nice, then what is?

Hello everybody, I'm back!

I was an avid blogger a few years back. My blog (raymond-angelo.blogspot.com) was all the rage in my secondary school, and in JC, some people read it and so on and so forth. I was hot shit. But then I went off to serve my country, and this resulted in infrequent postings and an eventual lost of interest.

Seeing as how my two years of NS are coming to an uneventful conclusion, involving me clearing weeks of off and leave, I'm here right now trying to regain some sort of my former glory. First the facebooksphere, then blogosphere, then the twittersphere and then the World.


Let me tell you a little bit about me. I can take the conventional route and blabber on (which I fully can, I can talk about myself non-stop, I swear)...but I'll let you know more about me through...SONG. And by song, I mean Facebook profile pictures.

I was born in 1990 in a shitty (I'm assuming) hospital in the Philippines. I grew up, and I grew big, on a diet of rice, cheese and milo. My childhood was straightforward enough. I spent my days running around, playing catching, playing Playstation, watching anime and things like that. Raised by my grandparents a province in Philippines, I grew up kinda sheltered and kinda spoilt, and fat. In the picture below, I'm the swell looking guy on the left.


















On the year 1998, my family made the move to Singapore. Hmm, it was difficult at first trying to adjust. Suddenly, speaking tagalog wasn't possible. Even speaking english (because of my accent) wasn't easy! My classmates didn't make fun of me per se, but they still found it strange. I got used to it, though. I went through primary school with OK grades, which could have been excellent if it had not been for my Malay results.

I went on to Queenstown Secondary School, where I spent my formative years, made many friends, found love (?) and lost weight. I don't have a profile picture of me in Queenstown Secondary, because everybody was still on the Titanic that was Friendster back then, but I had the time of my life over there. I was in the best class, had good friends, and I didn't go through it without achieving some stuff. Our debate team was champs, I got valedictorian, oh and I made out with O-level results which got me to...

ACJC. Things were different in AC, but still fun! My studies didn't do so well, but I think I had a great time, anyway. I joined council, debate, the school magazine, made lots of friends and farted around. Here's a picture of me talking shit during Orientation. Knowing me, I was probably telling a penis joke, or a knock-knock joke.


















And then NS came, and suddenly, I'm in green. I can't say much about this, so I'll just...put these three pictures, you figure out everything else from there.








































What do I do besides NS? Hmm, I hang out with my friends and try all sorts of things. Rock climbing, tennis, swimming, LAN, cross-stitch, gym, cooking, guitar...I dabble in a little bit of everything. But amongst all the things I do, there are two things which you can say I love. Firstly, reading, and secondly, running.

I'm into all sorts of fiction, but I prefer funny books. I read Kurt Vonnegut, John Irving, Franz Kafka, Haruki Murakami, Kazuo Ishiguro...yeap, those from the top of my head.

As for running, I like to run 5 times a week, at least. It's a spiritual experience for me. It's healthy, and it clears your mind. It allows you to push yourself, and exceed yourself. Oh, and you can never lose. Below is a picture of me finishing my first marathon in 4h25min!
















I've embarked on this quest to find a girlfriend. I made a resolution at the beginning of the year to find one by the end of this year. If you refer to your calendar, you'd see that I don't have much time. So ladies, feel free to feel me.












Yeap, so that's about me. I'm finishing my NS in a month's time. I'll try to update here at least once a day. Routine is something I'm able to follow quite strictly, so you won't be disappointed.

Oh, and I'm random and that's a good thing, right?