Terry Fox Run 2007
~ The Running I Can Do, even if I have to crawl every last mile ~ Terry Fox
I’m about the most active person alive and since my last attempt at running with the Pacesetters, I’ve never stepped foot into the gym again. I even lost my pathetic ancient running shoes which I used for the Pacesetters run, being too cheap to buy a new pair just for one run.
But when I surfed over to Kennysia’s blog today and saw his latest post on the coming Terry Fox run; the huffing, puffing and “close to dying” feeling I got from the last run strangely enough started to seem quite appealing again!
It has a lot to do as well with Terry Fox, the Canadian young man behind this run who ran 5,373 km for 143 consecutive days across Canada to raise funds for cancer research. I used to study in the Canadian Matriculation Pre-University Programme and I remember what a hype and hero this young 22-year-old was to all Canadians. Back then, I didn’t have means of getting to the run and I have to admit, was a whole lot lazier than I am now, if that was possible!
However, this year, in the name of cancer research which hopefully will help to save millions of lives one day, I’m turning up at the Lake Gardens on Sunday, 4th November 2007 at 8.30am to play my part in turning a young man’s single dream into a world of hope, even if I’ll have to crawl every last mile in my untrained and zero stamina state!
Read here for more information.
Will you be there too?
Eating Like a Prince
Eating is elevated to new heights in the Middle East.
On the day we arrived, we were treated to dinner after a long and exhausting day of meetings. I was really tired from not having slept much on the flight the night before and starving as I had to to run off early from a sumptuous Japanese lunch to collect some documents for our meeting that afternoon. So we were all really looking forward to dinner except for one small detail they didn’t tell us till much later - Dinner was at 9pm 
So we sat in the highly elaborate majlis or sitting room with its beautiful curtains, thick carpets, chandeliers and plush couches and waited…and waited…and waited. There were of course the non-stop intermittent bursts of activity when a server would come with a never ending round of cold drinks, water and the ubiquitous Arabic coffee.
Arabic coffee is in itself a culture. The minute we’re seated, a server would burst through the door looking really important with a sole urgent mission of serving us coffee. He’ll carry a silver teapot in one hand and a stack of little cups (similar to the little teacups Chinese drink tea from) and pour a teeny amount into the top cup. You then take it from the top of his stack while he does the same to the next guest. It has the colour and consistency of tea and tastes terribly bitter but does a fantastic job as a perk-me-up! If you want more, you hold out your cup but if you don’t, you shake your cup and he’ll collect it back from you, stacking it at the bottom of the stack! Quite an interesting thing to watch.
So we sat, waited and waited, fortified by many many cups of coffee to keep ourselves awake while our stomachs grumbled. A quick trip to a high-end mall in between didn’t do much to pacify its grumblings and I was very very close to running out to see if I could find a bun for my hunger pangs.
Finally, 9pm rolled around and when we were invited to the dining room, I had never felt happier! The door opened and lo and behold! Next to the main dining table was a long long table literally groaning under the weight of all the plates it held! There were salads, at least 4 different types of prawns, 5 different types of chicken, 3 types of beef/mutton, 3 types of fish and for the pièce de résistance, 3 huge plates of briyani at the end of the table, one of which was covered with a whole lamb! Unfortunately, by 9pm (2am our time), my starving stomach refused to cooperate so I couldn’t eat much of it at all though I did try about half of the spread. There were loads of desserts as well but most of them were really too sweet and I ended up eating strawberries the size of little plums.
It was a very long night and we were practically zombies by the time we got back to our room only to have a wake up call at 5am to catch another flight out to another state. It was a really unique experience and I do wish I could have enjoyed the food better.
But that’s the ironical part about business travel I’ve learnt. You stay in the best hotels that you don’t have the time to enjoy the facilities of and you eat lots of good food that you can’t enjoy either because you have to make small talk and look polite. Contrast that with the barbaric glee I tore into some salt baked chicken the minute I reached home with my family and you’ll get no prizes for guessing which meal I enjoyed much better! 
P/S That wasn’t a photo of the food we had but the closest I could find.
Arabian Nights
I used to grow up reading The Tales of the Arabian Nights. When you’re a kid, Moorish and Persian princes and heavily perfumed silken screens sound terribly romantic. So I had really wonderful notions in my head when I trotted off to the Middle East for the very first time in my life and was I disappointed? Not at all!
We were really lucky to be hosted by an important person which meant being met at the door of the airplane by a chauffeur driven car straight into the special airport lounge! For someone who has only ever traveled economy class, it was pure heaven, especially since I was very quickly relieved of my terribly heavy carry-on bag! What’s the airport lounge like? It’s all about plush couches (no hard Teak Chairs for you, no Sirree!) wonderfully cool air conditioning in the desert and a person who keeps coming round to serve you deliciously cold drinks! Ah…I could get used to this life! 
The Middle East is an amazing place. It’s very very rich from the oil, tourism and construction and the women there only ever wear and carry designer! I was really quite surprised at how glamorous they looked even though they are covered from head to toe in their black abaya. One of them secretly showed me what they wear underneath and it’s surprisingly sexy, lacy and tight! 
It was a really nice eye-opener trip and a little taste of how some people are really different from you and me. It made the crazy flight schedule (overnight on a plane), the long transit and the lady who fell sitting down on the escalator which made all of us tumble all over her like dominoes which resulted in a really painful cut on my colleague’s hand almost worth it!
More coming up soon…
I Am Back
I am back.
Am wrung out, exhausted and grappling with having lost my weekend due to a 12 hour delay where the plane was forced to make an unscheduled landing in Hat Yai due to technical problems.
But I’m back, alive (thank goodness) and in one piece.
It’s good to be home.
Now, just let me get my scrambled thoughts back into order!
