Singing a QDL....

Hotel California

A totally nice rendition of this song. Hee, this is from me as a celebratory whoop for passing my Practical Driving Test for car just yesterday :) Yea man!!!

Some reflections about my journey of the Driving License: Signed up as a private candidate at the Ang Mo Kio Singapore Safety Driving Centre (SSDC). Self-studied, yet took the Basic Theory three times. Actually only once did I fail in the test. First time I overslept :(, then the second time failed with a record time of 18minutes. Passed the next time round with a reduced time of 16 minutes. However, the thing that allows you to pass is about the confidence you have in the answers to your test questions, not the time given.

Managed to complete the Final Theory about three weeks later, and got my provision to drive under a qualified instructor. I took the switch to School (and the more expensive) option, but still saved from the theory lesson fees. Learning to drive safely took another three months, lots of cramming for lessons inclusive of one plus month of waiting for the practical driving. This paid off with no safety errors or penalties during my "test drive" :)) It came with a price tag of about S$1.7k and 50 hours of spending my time for this climax. Nevertheless, Praise the Lord for all his provision ;)

Still remember when I waited in the Briefing Room, there was this poem that seemed to elude this sense of comfort. I wrote it down word for word, and may this inspire all who read it, as it inspired me.

LORD, Make me an instrument of Thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow Love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master, grant that I may not do much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we recieve;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
It is in dying that we are born into eternal life.

To all my friends also or peers taking the test as well, I wish you all the best, learn properly, and pass it soon without worries! To those who just cleared this as well, remember to enjoy your driving but do it safely as well! Wish we all, gambatte!

John 14:1 (King James Version)
Let not your heart be troubled. Ye believe in God, believe also in me.

John 14:27 (New International Version)
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

Just a thot...

What's weird? This is something I saw from my bus ride back to home. An open green grassy field, backdrop of the HDB flats. The surprising thing was that some people, of our unseen unsung heroes, setting up those colorful stringed flags in preparation for National Day. What struck me: We pay foreign workers to put up the national celebration decals, and flags for us?!

It seems that taxes are paid such that these things are provided for us, as I suppose a local committee decide on such things. Thoughtful. But I would like to suggest that would it be better to help lower income families, to engage them hand in hand and use the budget set aside for them to supplement their income.

Not to deny the work this year is in any way unacceptable. However the issue here is the 'bo-chap' attitude of the people. "National Day is a great public holiday, can rest and have show to watch. Sometimes can get freebies too!" Such is the general informal feedback about remembrance day of painful independence from the Federation Malaysia. Is this what the day is all about - to show the selfish side under the cover of parades, costumes, dance and song. This is good on the big scale, disappointedly a failure in the smaller unit. If this is really evident, It is really sad for the folks putting in so much effort for NDP 2009.

C'on... Couldn't we get back some community thing back? Is something as simple a putting up some decorations too degrading/bothersome? Or is this affirming the popular belief that many Singaporeans are drifting further apart by not interacting with our fellow neighbors? In this view, MM Lee is right in saying, "Are we a nation yet? I dun think so..."

Luke 14:28
For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost, to see if he has enough to complete it.

See Nothing

Chill.

Matthew 7:7-8
Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.

Swimming - a indepth study for high intensity swimming

Here’s what happens to those who stick with traditional, high-volume training:

The drawbacks of high volume training

High-volume training can severely compromise your competitive performance in two major ways:

• Depletion of glycogen muscle stores

• Fatigue and depletion of fast-twitch muscle fibres

Here are the facts, as laid out in Strength Training for Swimmers:

Glycogen: since glycogen is the only fuel available for sustained high-intensity muscle contractions, it is essential for good swim performance. If you want to achieve PB’s in competition, then your glycogen stores must be full. Continued high-volume training can compromise this, reducing the quality of your important high-intensity training workouts.

Fast twitch muscle fibres: periods of high-volume training reduce the force production in the fast-twitch muscle fibres, essential for the high muscle power required to produce the fastest swim speeds. Swimmers have a high proportion of fast-twitch fibres and high-volume training can change these into slow-twitch types.


You’ll learn how certain Olympic swimmers succeed by increases their distance per stroke rather than the stroke frequency during a competitive event, learning how to enhance power at race speeds by imitating the training of middle distance and long-sprint track athletes.

Next, you’ll maximise your anaerobic capacity by alternating easy lactate-threshold pace in the morning and very high-quality race-pace, and faster than race-pace, interval workouts in the evening.

Why this strength-training programme can really boost results

For maximum impact on results, the exercises contained in Strength Training for Swimmers replicate your movements in competition. Here, for example, are the exercises given for the front crawl:

Arm pull down exercises:
• Cable rotational front and back pulls: boosts forward propulsion by training the internal rotator cuff muscles by replicating the arm ‘pull down’ through the water.

• Rear pulls: promotes balanced strength around the shoulder joint by training the external muscles. This technique avoids shoulder injuries and helps train your core stability skills.

• Medicine ball single arm overhead throw: develops the power of the latissimus and pectoral muscles to improve the rate of force development in the shoulder by accelerating the arm hard. The focus is on producing the power from the shoulder and pulling across the body as you do in the crawl.

• Swiss ball body pulls: helps to develop core and shoulder strength. A closed kinetic chain movement where the moving limbs remain in contact with a fixed object, is regarded as particularly functional for sports performance. Uses the stomach muscles to support the spine, using a strong pull of the shoulder muscles to raise your body back to the parallel position.

Leg kick exercises
• Hip extension and flexion kick: each leg is worked independently to increase the specificity for swimming. Mimics the upward and downward phases of the swimmers kick action, where the glutes and hamstrings extend and the hip flexors flex the leg at the hip.

Dive start and push-off turn exercise
• Barbell squat jumps: improves vertical jump performance by involving dynamic extension of the ankle, knee and hip joints and trains the calf, quadriceps and gluteal muscles. Helps you generate peak power by adding weight to the squat, so when you perform the jump squat with body weight only, the jump will be very fast and high.

• The dive start and push off turn: involves dynamic ankle, knee and hip extension.

While the above exercises focus solely for the front crawl for illustrative purposes, you’ll read how to design your own strength training programme for your particular even, in terms of mechanics, positions and speed. You’ll learn how to focus only on exercises using the right muscles in a related mechanical movement to provide optimum training benefit.

Strokes
The efficiency of your swimming stroke is the key to success as a competing or training swimmer. An efficient stroke will significantly reduce wasted energy output through less drag in the water and a cleaner execution of hand and arm entry and recovery.

By holding the technique to the last tenth of a second, the result will be an overall faster time. We provide techniques for freestyle, backstroke, butterfly and breastroke.

What should be practiced...

Endurance: basic endurance; threshold endurance; overload endurance

Sprint: lactate tolerance; lactate production.

Proverbs 14:23
All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty.

James 2:17
In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

Douglas Wakiihuri

Yea man!!!

QUOTE OF THE MOMENT:

“The biggest buzz I get is from the people who like my music, appreciate what I’ve done in the marathon and understand the fact I’m coming from a new angle as a musician,” he explains. “I’m just a sportsman trying to do something different. If you can run, you can probably sing and I believe if I can do it, you can do it too."
- Kenya’s former World champion Douglas Wakiihuri

He is an INSPIRATION.

Link ->
http://www.spikesmag.com/features/frommarathontomicrophone.aspx

1 John 3:11
This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another.