post 49. john landy

looking at the distance running clip reminded me of a clip i saw before (or did i only read about it and made it up in my head? pretty sure i saw it though).

it was an old clip of some big race ( the Australian mile championship at Olympic Park in March, 1956), black and white video of men running. suddenly, one man fell. the rest had no choice but to run around or jump over the fallen runner. suddenly, one of the lead runners stopped, turned back and ran back to extend a helping hand.

that man is john landy. what he did was amazing is because he was one of the favourites to win the race and for him to turn back and help a fallen competitor, while the rest of the field charged on ahead, well, that was stupid. stupid, chivalarous and beautiful.

amazingly, he did went on to chase the group and win the race; although he did sacrifice his chance of breaking the world record, his act of spontaneous sportsmanship has yet to be forgotten.

ps. would be grateful if someone can point me in the direction of the clip ( or did i really make it up in my head?)

post 48. running

all the different meanings of running.

no doubt - running


free running


distance running

running record

time to run ~5.68 km: 30min 49 sec

tonight, the moon was a swollen galleon tossed in a sea of silver.

my mistake

a while back, i said it was good for go for a run while having a stuffy nose to help clear it.

can we all pretend that it was an idiot syaing that, and not me?

pls DO NOT EXERCISE if u have a fever or cold. it's bad and could lead to heart complications. sounds overblown? apparently ppl have died from running while having a cold.

i should get my facts better next time before i open my big mouth. >_<

post 47. rottnest: of quokkas and shipwrecks

went back to rottnest on 19th oct, friday. cos mr musa was leaving australia and he wanted to go back and he wouldn't stop sulking till we did so, off we went then. ^^

almost didn't make it cos i forgot to check the bus timetable. when arrived at perth train station, where we were supposed to meet up, the guys were not there. i figured that they had gone ahead so jumped on the train to freo. made it to the ferry terminal with ten minutes to spare. was quite touched to see that the strawberry-head was happy to see me. oh well, i know i am awesome. :P

so this was what we saw when we reached rottnest. a peacock and a peahen on the roof of the bike rental shop. (was going to say something about there being two cocks and a peahen in the picture, but that may be a bit unkind. :>)

so after the guys got their bikes (i brought my own), we set off with mr musa in the lead to try to do one whole round around the isle. squirrels, away! (yes, we have a terrible bike gang name, but the other one, f@*#nuts, was unprintable. we do have standards here, you know.)

government house lake

so there we were oohing and ahhing at the scenery, then, dead end. hah. turns out NO ONE was reading the map. i was trusting strawberry head to do it. lol. after checking the map turns out the road we were on was a dead end. so, time to head back to the start.

so rob and i were snapping pics of this tree when we heard a rustling behind us. turned away and rob was the first to see a liazrd in the bushes. was too ugly so didn't take any pics. but as were we getting on our bikes the second time, we saw something that was much cuter.


when u r cute u get more pics. ^^


finally in the correct direction


stopped for a pic break. as you can see, rob was a little frustrated cos we been stopping every 5 mins to pics like little old ladies.

here's kelvin. he needs to use a tripod to take his pics. spends 5 mins setting up and less than a min taking. hmmm.

anyway, after the quick break, on the bikes again. squirrels, away!


on the road again

pic of shipwreck. slightly chilling. them tides be nasty.

(to be continued in another post cos i am hungry now)

post 46. blogs of note: suntan eye

well, since i have been lax in updating my blog lately, thought i would divert the horde of traffic passing through this blog (eg. 3) to another more interesting site.

suntan eye. ah. a childhood friend, as in someone i only knew in my childhood, not a friend i knew since childhood. there's a diff. since she's more my sis's friend, when i entered late childhood, "the girls are yucky" syndrome did kick in so. but i did remember her cos she was the only perosn i knew who (used to) own a mountain, complete with waterfalls and snakes! how cool is that. ^^

anyway, if u like whimisical stories of stuffed animals this is the place to go. how many 20-odd year olds do u know write stories about their stuffed toys? they are pretty good too! go check it out. she takes pretty good pictures of baltimore as well (where she's living currently, i think).

oh, this is a bit presumptous of me since i didn't ask her if i could. oh well, if she gets pissed, she knows where to let me know (eg. here).

edit: the idiot who wrote this post forgot to link to the blog. clever huh? http://suntaneye.blogspot.com/

running record

time to run ~5.68 km: 29min 06.52 secs

went for a run last night in an attempt to get rid of stuffy nose and that phelgmey feeling. always found that exercise has helped in getting rid of colds and stuffy nose. well, obviously, don't go if u r too sick, but when it's just a gunky feeling in the nose that you just can't get rid of by blowing, i recommend some hearty perspiration and exertion. ^^

one thing though. since starting daily standing mediation, found that running style may have changed a bit. seem to use heel strike more last night, whereas i used to run in a more bouncy style off the ball of the foot. not sure if the standing mediation has anything to do with it, cos running with heel strike more does make me feel more "rooted" but, hmmm, when running, it seems to feel a bit too heavy for me. we'll see how it goes.

another thing. was taking it easy last night cos i strained my hammies in class again, doing high level hamstrings ex. lol. idiot me. was trying to do a eccentric hamstring exercise. here's a pic.
it's harder than it looks. the point is to lower yourself and come back up again while someone holds your ankles. i was able to lower self to a certain point, but felt a sudden intense cramp in the back of the thighs. felt like the hammies were bulging and popping under the skin, and i could the seperation between biceps femoris and semi-mem and semi-tend, that's how hard they were straining. luckily, a kind soul was helpful enough to extend two fingers to pluck my shirt and that little pull was enough to help me recover from that position.

anyways, yeah, so cut out the sprinting cos poor hammies probably wouldn't like it at all.

oh, and another thing about standing mediation though. did seem to increase body awarness, as in more aware of when muscles are working. cos the whole point of standing mediation is to stand and relax - so when relaxed, you'll be able to tell which muscles are firing up. make sense? you'll be pretty surprised how much muscle activity is going on even when just standing. found myself using quads a fair bit at the start to steady self, cos i have poor ankle propriception, but is getting better. ^^

anyway, all over the shop today, the point is that i seem to have an increased anterior pelvic tilt, resulting in increased lordosis and tight lower back muscles. that could be why i had the lower back pain previously. so during the run, was consciously trying to prevent that, and it did seem to help, even though it's strange because i never had that problem before.

current mood: awesome! ^^ really, seem to be in this perpetual state of low-level contented happiness since started daily mediatation. lol. and it's not even hard to get started. can be highly addictive though. (:

post 45. diaster

diaster struck sunday.

laptop went wonky. wouldn't start past blue screen of death. usual it does that every year or so but i was hoping...well, hoping it didn't. had to reformat. therefore, lost all pics and assignments cos been lazy in burning out stuff.

was that close to finish dl-ing "his and her circumstances" too...

anyways, i'll see what i can do, but i guess that means...the 3 months past brisbane update may be gone for good. >_<

running record

time to run ~5.68 km: 27min 30.25 sec

lots of snails out on the road after the rain. was careful not to crush any of them under my big clumsy feet. imagine being a snail. there you were, going slowly minding your own business, and out of the blue, splat, some clumsy oaf stepped on you. and you can't even run out of the way!

hey, it started raining right after i finished running. >_< i was hoping to run in the rain.

post 44. some pretty random pictures

just some pretty random pictures to pretty things up. lol. pretty random or pretty, random. just behind the apartment again. this was taken a few months ago, when it was still winter i think. ^^

post 43. hospital days

today, due to last minute scans (MRI friday at the hospital i guess) for some of my patients, i had some spare time in the morning. so ended up seeing another patient with my clinical supervisor and another fellow student.

the new patient we saw was a 50 odd year old male who had a stroke a few days ago. when we first saw him, he was lying in bed and was not able to express himself - he could not speak, although i think he could understand what we said, and his face was quite expressionless, almost a mask. i found it pretty hard to give instructions to him cos his face was just so expressionless and he just wasn't talking. try talking to a wall and you'll start to get the same sense of frustration. it's much harder when you know it's a person on the other end.

after doing some muscle assessment, our supervisor wanted us to stand him up and walk him. so that was what we did. stood him up from bed, and seeing that his balance was good, we decided to walk him a bit.

when we were just walking out of the room door, his daughter came walking around the corner. when she saw him walking, she started crying out, "Dad, Dad! You're walking!" and started crying at the same time. he walked up to her and she gave him this tight hug. then she turned around and called out, "Mom! Dad's walking!"

the man disengaged himself from his daughter and continued walking out of the doorway. just a short distance away from the room door was a pair of ladies, apparently just following behind the first daughter and got held up and was talking to his doctor. one was younger, obviously another daughter, and the other lady was his wife.

when he saw his wife, he let out this great wrenching sob, which really surprised me because i never expected him to be able to express anything, and stumbled to her. and this lady turned to him, and her face just crumpled up when she saw him walking towards her and she started crying. and they stood there hugging and crying.

it got emotional. he was crying, his wife was crying, his daughters were crying, his son showed up halfway, and they were all crying and hugging and were just so happy to see him walking. they kept repeating with this amazed, grateful joy, "You're walking! You're walking!" even my supervisor was tearing a bit. i must say though, it was pretty pretty emotional.

and because this was in the corridor, it kinda held up the flow of lunch-hour traffic, but nobody minded. not a single bit.

we walked him back to his bed and left him with his family. our supervisor was still tearing a bit, and one of the senior nurses teased her, saying she had been crying every single day she had been working with the patient. our supervisor said this was the rewarding thing about working in neuro and she still gets affected by it.

i can see why.

post 42. we did it mary!!^^

was on my own seeing four patients in the afternoon cos i switched my half day from wed to thursday. went around doing rounds and this lady, whom we shall call mary, was last on my list.

when i first saw mary, we needed 2 persons, almost 3 to transfer her from the wheelchair to the plinth, even using the slideboard with a slide sheet. this was due mainly to poor muscle activity in her trunk, and little function of her lower limbs; mary is wheelchair bound and when we first saw her, she was slumped and leaning to one side and couldn't even really sit on her own. mary, however, has been working hard, and we were down to 2 mod-min assist yesterday morning.

so when i was left on my own yesterday without supervision, i was told to perform passive movements, stretches and bed exercises for the patients, as most needed at least 2 persons to transfer. by the time i saw mary, i was feeling the need for something more challenging.

knowing that she only needed 2 min assist that morning, and really the front person was just guarding her knees, i was pretty confident i could transfer her on my own. so i asked mary if she felt up to going down to the gym with me and doing the transfer with just me. being mary, she said, "let's give it a go."

and we went down, and we did it!

it's amazing when you think about it's only been a week since i started working with mary and how much progress she has made. from being unable to balance in sitting without support to being able to mantain balance and weight shift to do a slideboard transfer with 1 mod assistance, it's just...awesome. ^^

we were so excited and happy!! but everyone was gone and there was no one around to witness our awesome achievement. >_<

we did it mary! ^____________^

post 41. rice

never realised how wonderful rice was. so warm, so fluffy, with a slight hint of sweetness. goes well with curries, gravy, or just on its own. truly wonderful.

running record

time to run ~5.68 km: 28 min 33.81 sec

in a blink of an eye, another month has passed without my realising it.

been running mostly at night. ppl think its dangerous to do so, especially in bentley, but like i said to simon, just run faster! at night, i am the king of the road! there are no cars on the roads at night. it's that quiet. ^^. well, not no cars, just very little. i am a generous king - i don't mind sharing.