The Holstee Manifesto Lifecycle Video from Holstee on Vimeo.

Let this video encourages you to make a difference in your life ahead, let this also encourages you to make a difference to other peoples life too, leaving them a positive and long term impact, to make them change and inspired for the better! Even though this video is based through cycling, it can also be applied to your life too, the journey and traveling, the people, friends and strangers you meet along the way.

It’s a celebration, of many different wonderful things in life, diversity and uniqueness of life, experiences that are both personal and shared among us, celebrating gatherings, friendships of old and new, experiencing the new life ahead that you choose to start! Let this video be the ignition that you need to kickstart 2012 !

Do drop by to Siloso Beach, Sentosa for 2 days of hot octane sporting beach volleyball action from 9am to 6pm! Relax and enjoy the sporting fun too! It’s going to be a day of sports photography for me and enjoying the sports spectatorship of the beach volleyball game! Come down in your cool sporty beach gear and enjoy the sun sand sea & of course beach volleyball!

Have a beach volleyball weekend folks!

The urge to run was getting more intense as time passed by, wanting to relieve my physically active and sporting days. I was planning to run my full marathon at the end of 2011, keeping my fingers crossed that my physical conditioning and recovery would enable me to embark on my full marathon target at the end of 2011. However, as much as I plan ahead, I would not go against my specialist’s advice or my physiotherapist’s advice if they feel I am not deem to do my full marathon in 2011, besides, if I feel my body and recovery is not up to the required fitness and training level, I would not go for the full marathon and aim for the half-marathon instead.

During the run, I was feeling great! The rush and adrenaline inside me was pushing me on even though my legs were wobbly and jelly like due to my 1 year of inactiveness from exercise and running. Stretching before and after the run was absolutely important, to prevent any muscle damage and for me to personally assess my injury and whether I am comfortable and did I feel any pain at all on my injured body sections.

Overall, it was just muscle ache and a happy tired face. This is my Comeback Run! It’s the Return of Me, into the world of running and marathons!

Habitat-Barclays Bare Your Sole 2011

It is organised by Habitat for Humanity and Barclays is the title sponsor for this upcoming event on Saturday 18th June 2011, it would be held at the picturesque Gardens by the Bay East, Tanjong Rhu, with a scheduled start time 0f 9.00am. Do check out their website Bare Your Sole 2011 for more information!

Online registration is now open at their website!! All the funds raised would be for local and overseas beneficiaries. The route would be Gardens by the Bay East, Tanjong Rhu and the venue will definitely offer a beautiful and tranquil environment for the walk which will be 2.5km or 4km long.

Let’s all Bare Our Soles for Charity!!

10th January – added 1 year more to my age band and received many well wishes and birthday wishes via Facebook wall, Twitter, SMS and personal greetings. Very grateful for those friends who sent me their birthday well wishes and small little birthday gifts too. On my birthday, always great to remind myself again and again of my blessings, count my blessings and be grateful.

11th January – 11 / 01 / 2011 at 11:11 , a beautiful number structure that will only last once in the lifetime. This is a time for me to write and pen down my planning and goal setting for 2010.

Business Operations & Development

- Structuring and strategising for 2011

- Improve marketing activities and breakthrough in new clients acquisition

- Improve Customer Relationship Management with existing clients

Blogging

- Increasing my posts with quality, diverse and interesting topics to attract more readers and followers

- Revamping my personal blog

- Improving my affiliate marketing for my 2 blogs

Social Media Networking

- Engaging & meeting more new bloggers / twitter

- Understanding more on the psychology and engagements of social media networks and inter networking

- Applying the social media channels and networks to all my businesses

Physical Fitness & Running

- Getting back into my active lifestyle of sports and outdoor activities

- Cycling on a regular basis with my 2nd hand road bike

- Going to gym to build up muscle and strengthening

- Starting to run again, from short distances to middle distances and finally the full marathon

• 10km & 15km Distance Runs
• August 2011 – 21km Army Half Marathon
• December 2011 – 42km Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon

- Sprint Triathlon in the last quarter of 2011 (proposed)

Personal Development

- Consistently and constantly reading books to update and improve my personal self

• Personal Development & Growth
• Leadership
• Mentoring
• Financial Knowledge and Management

Mentoring

- To help my friends via mentoring with my knowledge and experiences from the fields of

• Photography
• Blogging / Social Media Networking
• Financial Management and Planning

Do check out my photography and travel planning for 2011 too !

Goal planning is only the start of my journey in 2011, as I started to embark on my new marathon, my new adventure for 2011, exciting times await ahead for me. Over the next few days, I will work on breaking my goals down into more detailed and smaller components that will build up, just like building the lego bricks together in order to produce the final product – my goals and destinations for 2011 !

“Standing on my feet and walking again”

Looking back, my freakish incident resulting in a hip fracture and left shoulder fracture, that resulted in an operation, hospitalisation for 2 months, not able to walk for 2 months, total 3 months of medical leave. I thought, I should be able to get back into action after 3 months of medical rest. However, it didn’t turn out ideally this way as I initially thought, instead, my recovery took longer due to my body adjusting back to normal routine life and my mind and emotional self have to manage and get back on track.

Businesses was affected, time lost, readjustments, it’s the life experiences that will serve me well in the future, providing guidance and encouragement for friends if they ever go through a crisis like me, to be there for them and able to empathise with them. In terms of personal growth, it only made me appreciate my life more than before, somehow I had less anger and frustrations inside me, learning to let go more of such negative thoughts than previously. Well, I still have room for improvements in these areas.

Not able to exercise, run and keep fit, active and healthy, it dawned upon me the importance of healthy and active sporting lifestyle. Slowly, I will start back my running and active sporting lifestyle, from Ground Zero up to my previous level and breaking through to higher level of fitness and well being. Looking forward to running and completing my full marathon again for the year 2011.

In the blogging and social media grounds, this had been another great year of bigger and wider networking of new friends, knowing more friends in interests such as photography, travel, food etc etc …. Have my blogs become more prominent and influential ? Maybe it has improved and nevertheless, that’s always room for improvement, growth and expansion. The belief and trust by my friends to help/assist and mentor them in setting up blogs, social bookmarking and social media networking, it’s a big growth and the rise in my speciality towards the role of being a consultant and entrepreneur.

Moving into year 2011, I will start planning, strategising and writing down my steps/directions for execution and completion of my small and big goals and objectives, short term, medium term and long term goals and objectives.

I stumbled, I failed, I am judged, I climbed myself up again and again, continuing my journey and quest, my own marathon, my own race, my own destiny.

First and foremost, I would highlight some of the key specifications of the Sony W Series MP3 Walkman NWZ-W252 -

• 2 GB capacity
• New & Improved Water Resistant
• New ZAPPIN™ and Folder Skip Functions
• 11 Hours Battery Life (Quick charge : 3 minutes charge 90 minutes play back)
• Weight : 43 grams
• Number of songs : Approximate 470
• Continuous Playback Time : Approximate 11 hours (128 kbps)
• 5 different colours available : Green, Limited Edition Camouflage, Pink, Black & White

Full specifications details of the Sony W Series MP3 Walkman NWZ-W252 can be found here !

Therefore, how’s the performance of the Sony W Series MP3 Walkman NWZ-W252 ? After using it for a few days and listening to the MP3 player while I am commuting from places to places, these are my tech reviewer personal opinions -

Pro

- Sound quality ~ It’s great, loud and clear.

- Not too heavy, even for daily walking from place to place with the MP3 player on my head and ears.

- Firm construction, solid body and well-built up, no flimsy and weak cables/wires.

- Ease of drag and pull songs from your computer to the MP3 Player (for both Windows OS & Mac OS)

- Long battery life, essential and important especially if you are on the road traveling or running marathons.

- Ease of use on the buttons and controls ~ once you get the hang of it and know which button and control is for which function, it’s simple and helpful.

- Catered for (targeted at) the sporty lifestyle, however, it also suits the leisure and working lifestyle too ! Just hang it around your neck !

- MP3 player stand + USB charger , 2 in 1 function, holds up the MP3 player in place while charging it at the same time, it’s great for display too !

- Magnet to connect the 2 sides of the MP3 player together.

- Voice instructions that inform you when you are playing the song, ZAPPIN (songs searching), skipping of folders

- ZAPPIN ~ enables you to “ZAP-in” to preview the chorus of the next track with a choice of either 4 or 15 seconds, making it easy to browse and find the track you want. Once you found your favourite song? Press the button again to “ZAP-out” to start playback from the beginning.

- A runner would usually select his/her songs for their runs (short distance, middle distance or marathons) and they would plan their folders and songs into less complicated structure, thus allowing them to listen to their flow of music selection and concentrate their running with the help of the music from their Sony MP3 Player.

- It might be a good alternative MP3 player for people already holding a smartphone, not wanting to burn out the battery life or separating the playing of MP3 from their smartphone, the Sony  W Series MP3 Walkman NWZ-W252 fits in perfectly (leisure, work and active sports)

- Using the Sony W Series MP3 Walkman NWZ-W252 player, you would not face the issue of messy headset wire/cables. No headphone wire/cable connecting your smartphone or MP3 portable player and getting tangled up with your arms, hands, bags or other people’s arms, hands and bags.

Cons

- If you have many folders and songs, without a panel on the player to look at the songs, it might be  difficult to search for your particular favourite song (especially if you have time on hand and wanted to search for a particular song)

- With such excellent construction (that’s an excellent point by the way), the MP3 player stand to connect the player to, is pretty tough and can be a little bit tricky at times to connect them together, due to its excellent construction, thus might cause some frustration at times.

- Some people might find 2GB disk space to be insufficient for their songs storage.

- The ear buds given is not too bad, nevertheless, for long distance running or long hours plugging in and listening to the MP3 player, maybe the ear buds could be of better quality, for comfort and listening too.

- No matter how good or light an MP3 player can be, if a person just want to have everything all-in-one squeeze inside a smartphone (including MP3 playing), this Sony MP3 player being light and powerful, would not suit this particular group of people.

From a technology user perspective, the Sony W Series MP3 Walkman NWZ-W252 is a pretty cool, trendy and multi-purpose MP3 player that can be adapted in active sporting lifestyle as well leisure and corporate lifestyle too!

Stay tuned for my upcoming a runner’s (that’s me ! ) review post on using the Sony W Series MP3 Walkman NWZ-W252 player when he/she is running, the feeling and comfort of the player !

This Sony W Series MP3 Walkman NWZ-W252 is kindly sponsored by Sony Singapore.

While I had not put on my physical training (PT) gear , put on my ASICS running shoes and hitting the running tracks in the parks and roads, I was longing to do it and my current business/work schedule was putting me off – this excuse shall be thrown out and I must not blame my lack of time and instead concentrate on my time management and desire to get back into fit and healthy lifestyle again. I promise to take responsibility for my running and healthy lifestyle actions ! I am looking forward to returning back to running full Marathons again !

In my previous post, on Thanksgiving and being Thankful, an early Christmas + Thanksgiving gift came into my life, fitting in perfectly to the Return of my Running. Dear readers, I would like to introduce and present to you

Sony W Series MP3 Walkman NWZ-W252

In the month ahead, I would bring you through my personal experiences with the Sony W Series MP3 Walkman NWZ-W252, from

- A technology reviewer perspective

- Runner and sporting lifestyle perspective and hands-on experiences

- Corporate and leisure lifestyle perspective and hands-on experiences

- Sharing with my fellow marathon runners

- Photojournalistic journey too !

Stay tuned to my upcoming posts on my experiences with the Sony W Series MP3 Walkman NWZ-W252 !

I would like to sincerely say a BIG THANK YOU to  Sony Singapore and Hill & Knowlton SEA Pte Ltd (Singapore) for this kind sponsorship of the Sony W Series MP3 Walkman NWZ-W252, along with an awesome and wonderful sharing opportunity with my fellow marathon runners and my readers !

The importance of health and fitness never fail to get the message across to me and with this accident and life experiences, it just got even stronger. This would be my mandate and resolution to share with my friends and readers. The inability to train and participate in physical activities and exercises due to doctor’s restrictions made me felt down and unfit, with the green light recently to return back into physical activities and exercises, it felt really really awesome and it’s a return to my normal lifestyle !

It was also a time to get myself back into the fields of personal development and reading, to handle myself, my challenges and difficulties when I was down and out for about 5 months. This would help myself to recover faster and to help inspire people to strive and get themselves out from the pit bottom and rise up again.

Business development goals and entrepreneurship goals, working on new fields, growing and developing new fields, a new hope and I would share about them soon.

Whenever we faced mountains of difficulties and challenges, I encouraged you to watch the above video. It’s about Love and Determination, overcoming obstacles and difficulties that seemed so daunting.

Let’s all run the final 2 months of 2010 and finish with a big bang with lots of fireworks !

“You were the Chosen One! It was said that you would destroy the Sith, not join them! Bring balance to the Force, not leave it in darkness!”

Obi-Wan-Kenobi to Darth Vader (a.k.a Anakin Skywalker)

No, don’t worry, this is not digging up Star Wars trilogy. The above segment was in relation to my article today, Mentor and Mentee, Obi-Wan-Kenobi in the Star Wars trilogy was a Mentor to Anakin Skywalker, his protege a.k.a known as the Mentee. In the later part of the trilogy, Obi-Wan-Kenobi continued Mentoring another Skywalker, he is Luke, son of Anakin Skywalker.

Bringing back to reality and real life, what is a Mentor ? what is a Mentee ? Is a Mentor your trusted friend, counsellor, teacher, experienced professionals, personal development coaches ? A Mentee on the other hand is a student of the Mentor, sometimes called a protege.

In today’s fast paced and constantly changing working environment, how are you facing up to the challenges of the current situation and future ? Are you ready for constant changes and new developments ? Are you ready to take them on – the new challenges ahead ? What are the area of concerns for you ? Career ? Personal Development ? Pay -It-Forward ? Professional upgrading education ? Networking ? Mentoring is present across different disciplines, careers, industries, that is how dynamic and wide scope it can reach out, yet it can be just as disciplined and focused in the field you are operating/working in.

~ Are you a professional with a rich wealth of experiences in your field of expertise and life ? Would you like to take on the role of a Mentor ? Are you ready to Pay-It-Forward ?

~ Are you a young professional that is still learning the ropes and gaining the work and life experiences ? Would you like to be a Mentee and learn from the highly experienced/experts who had been through that and done that ?