obc: s08: one of the circuit sessions
Oh boy… Last week I skipped all of my Original BootCamp Malaysia sessions because I was lazy for reasons I shall not go into here. Almost forgot how fun, intense, difficult yet satisfying it can be until this morning when I managed to drag my sorry, lazy arse out to Astaka field.
After our warm up, Sergeant Sim gave us 10 grunts for a couple of late comers and another 10 for not counting the first 10 out loud. Then he led us to the circuit where we’d be doing our exercises that morning. Since blog posts with too many words and no images can be zzz, I have in my unselfishness drawn out a fantastic portrayal of this morning’s circuit.
In general, 6 recruits per stretch of cone. From the cones in the middle on top, you run to the 1st station focusing on cardio and lower body workout. After 30 seconds, bear crawl (1st set) / run (2nd and 3rd sets) to the next station where you workout with sandbags. 3rd station was upper arm/ body workout. Last station was a massive rope where all 6 recruits hold on to the rope and workout. Then run to the opposite direction where the exercises were the same, a mirror image. Each set lasts for 10 minutes.
First set:
1st station: Mountain climbers
2nd station: Deep squats with sandbag
3rd station: Military push-ups
4th station: Squats with rope
Second set:
1st station: Cross country
2nd station: Arm lift with sandbag
3rd station: King Kong push-ups
4th station: Thrusters with rope
Third set:
1st station: Frog jumps
2nd station: Get ups with sandbag
3rd station: Diamond push-ups
4th station: Jack knives with rope
Then a short jog before warming down. KennyBaby(TM) reckons it was about 400m, I’m not sure.
Felt great, I feel almost back into the groove now, though my arms are really sore at the moment. Oh well it’s all good. OBC Bring A Friend Day is this Saturday, 20 March 2010. My session is from 7-8am at Padang Astaka, PJ (near Cobra club). Anyone interested? Let me know, I’ll tell you how to sign up!
say hi to my car without a number plate
On Friday evening, I headed for Jaya33 to meet some people. It started raining as soon as I left my office building. The easiest route was to go through SS2, go pass the Rothmans roundabout towards Jalan Semangat.
At the end of the SS2 road going towards the roundabout, a couple of cars stopped and held up a bit of traffic. Needless to say, I cursed at them as I zoomed past their cars, thinking to myself, ‘what bloody idiots, raining so heavily of course must get to wherever you want to ASAP lah!’ Then much to my detriment, I found out that I was the idiot for the short distance between that turn-off and the roundabout was filled with lots water. I managed to stay on the higher end of the road without much difficulty.
As per the awesome print screen of a map + some brush tool editing, a line of cars were stalled at the EFFED side. I wondered why… then I found out why. The rain was very heavy and part of the road was flooded. In fact, please refer to the awesome map print screen above again — the part from EFFED to SAFE was filled with water. Quite a distance, eh? A couple of trucks went across it and we could see that the middle of the road was slightly lower. Scary stuff.
So I parked by the higher side of the road feeling damn scared and panicky and thought I’d wait it out. However it continued to rain Flintstones and dinosaurs. I could see the water level rapidly rising as well. After about 5 unsettling minutes, two Kancils zoomed past us (there was a major traffic hold up) and took their chances.
To stay put and risk the water getting into my car engine, or to go through the water and follow the Kancils to safe ground? ARGH OKAY LAH JUST GO LAH DABEDEWTEEEEFFED!!
My Dad once told me that if I ever get caught in a situation like that, I should always use low gear and never lift my foot from the pedal. Something about preventing the water from getting into your exhaust pipe, keep it revving, will help in NOT getting a stalled engine. That kept running in my mind, as well as the cold sober fact that I skipped on flood insurance on my car, heh.
Well, I’m still here and my car still works. There are a couple of strange sounds that my mechanic should check out, but I doubt there are any major problems. It was not until after I got home that I noticed that…
Strong waters, eh? I have absolutely no idea how it fell out. It was scary lah, my heart was beating so fast, my head was spinning and I’ll try to never use that road again when it rains.
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meet the face of determination – rahman mansor
Just thought I’d write a bit about my fellow Original BootCamp Malaysia recruit, RJ Rahman Mansor.
Though RJ is a fellow Petaling Jaya recruit, we’d never properly met because he is in PJ Alpha, the 5.45am session. Well at times the number of recruits are just too many that you don’t know everyone in your own platoon, let alone those in other platoons.
Our paths first crossed at the OBC Platoon VS Platoon @ Kepong Metropolitan Park a couple of months ago. I was impressed with RJ’s team spirit, attitude and his gungho-ness. You know how some people are just so inspiring that you cannot help but to follow their lead and share their enthusiasm? Well I felt that RJ is one of those people and I was most happy to make his acquaintance.
So RJ signed up for the Putrajaya Night Marathon that went on in early February 2010. RJ being RJ put down his name for the full 42km marathon. It was his first one and I’m positive there will be more to come.
I would like to share with you the first-hand account of RJ’s experience. The day after he completed the marathon, he wrote a long-arse touching post on his Facebook on what he went through, how he felt etc. It is now published on Hooha.Asia, titled: Rahman Mansor: His dreams, drama and achievement. A Putrajaya Night Marathon story. Here’s a short pick of his account:
By the next 2 km with 5km to go, these marshals where becoming noisy…they blared their horns and screamed encouragement to me…”Come on! You can do it!…We will wait for you!!!’ … now that just tugs my heart…my dream to ever completing a marathon is about to become reality, I have people behind me willing to wait past their time to see it happen…by this time it was 3:10am…way past the 2am mark…one marshal got off his car and in his slippers ran with me…pushing me!…cramps in between made me stop and go and stop again and go again!…they were there…ALL of them…they all wanted to see this victory!…its not a victory to be the first!…this is a victory to finish…i think this is just amazing…every corner and at every 100 meter mark, they blared their horns again and passed water to keep me hydrated…3:30am and I only have less than 1km to go…more marshals got off their cars and ran with me!…the boulevard was an air of carnival even with just a few people left and this lone old man who won’t give in.
Hooha.Asia also uploaded a short video covering RJ’s last few kilometres.
Well RJ, you’re an inspiration. Thank you for sharing this, as well as your kind words throughout our (so far) short acquaintance. When I grow up, I want to be just like you! 
the biggest loser asia s01
How upset were you that Carlo lost to David in the first season of The Biggest Loser Asia? I know most of you don’t give a flying hoot, but I (somewhat) do. I was excited when the season began but I lost interest after the 4th or so episode. Sorry to say but at that point, it was not compelling enough for me to sacrifice my 9-10pm on Tuesdays. For contestants who got this lucky, lucky break in life by being handed almost all the equipment they need to lose weight and be healthier and fitter, some of them just didn’t seem to put in the expected effort.
Maybe I am being harsh. After all, the whole show was held in what, 3 months? Perhaps the contestants had a culture shock, didn’t mentally prepare themselves, didn’t know it would be so tough, etc etc etc. Or maybe the editing of the show was skewed to make us feel a certain way towards certain participants. I don’t know and I suppose at this point, it doesn’t matter.
Of course I’m not putting down the hard work and effort that some of them do put in. It couldn’t have been easy, doing all this in front of Asia’s brutal eyes. All the reps that Carlo said he did after leaving the show, well I’ll be honest and confess that I myself do not have the stamina to do that. I admire their passion and continued dedication to improving themselves.
That’s the draw of reality shows. The human drama, emotions on blatant display, dirty tricks and what-not, improvement or otherwise… those are reasons that keep us coming back for more. It is fun to watch somebody else transform on our TV sets week after week while we sit on our comfortable couches making snide remarks about what they did, or give suggestions to nobody in particular about what they should have done. In short, we celebrate human accomplishments as much as train wrecks. We are creepy that way.
But last night’s season finale left me with much thoughts, most of which I have already… errr, coherently expressed on Facebook, heh. David Gurnani from Indonesia beat Carlo Miguel from Philippines to clinch the title of Asia’s first ever Biggest Loser. How did he do it? Apparently he quit working for 2 months and worked out in the gym everyday for 8 hours before the final unveiling. Carlo on the other hand slipped in his exercising at the gym in between his full-time job as an executive chef and caring for his pregnant wife. Below are two photos of the two men’s transformations, nicked from TBLA’s Facebook fan page.
Perhaps the photos are insufficient to describe what went on last night so I’ll tell you. Carlo looked fit, healthy and full of life. David on the other hand looked weak, haggard, disoriented and dehydrated. You may argue that hey, it’s fair game, it’s a show, you do whatever you can to win that USD100k. It’s a lot of money, you know. Of course and David did win the competition. But did he win in life? Well, that’s open for debate. If you’d look at forums and what-not, you’d see everyone wanting to feed David a
It’s not just about losing weight, it’s about getting a whole new lease on life.
Okay lah it’s a TV show, etc etc etc. But these are real people’s lives involved here, not to mention the influencing factors of the The Biggest Loser franchise. Well, I wish the contestants good luck in life, and I’ll chip in $2 for David to buy a sandwich.
p/s: Gary rocked!
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a random encounter
Me: Hello.
Him: Hi I’m Ah Ron.
Me: Har?
Him: Ah Ron. Ahhhhh Ron.
Me: How do you spell your name ar?
Him: A-A-R-O-N.
Me: Oh Ayyy-ren is it…
Him: Yah.. Aaaa Ronnn.
Later when I told Sotong about it, she commented, “Damn fail lah. Even Chinese ahbeng must know who Aaron Kwok is, and Aaron Kwok doesn’t call himself AHHHH RONNNN.”
Heheh.