This got my attention immediately and I continued to read with great interest about how young people in 6 different global cities around the world would love their dreams  to be. After reading their stories and aspirations, it was enlightening and an eye opener on my generation’s and younger generation’s desires, views and dreams, such as “To make an impact” , “Fulfilment first” and “Not for the money”.

You see things; and you say, “Why?” But I dream things that never were; and I say, “Why not?” – George Bernard Shaw

Taking 1 day back into the papers, how about Singapore ?

“The Great (unreachable?) S’pore Dream” The Straits Times 17th April 2010

The above heading, kind of hit the jackpot, SPOT ON too. Continuing reading, it was started by a freelance photographer Charles Lim who spent the last 10 years recording Singaporeans’ dreams by getting them to pose with the dreams written down in chalk. The 5 Cs as commonly known among Singaporeans

- Car , Condominium , Credit Cards , Cash and a County Club Membership

How many of us are constantly chasing the 5 Cs ?

Question : How much of chasing the above 5 Cs eroded our values and causing us to be less polite, rude, violent, angry, dependent on foreign domestic workers ? Is the quest for materialism causing us more harm instead ?

Therefore, I ask myself again, What is my Dream ? What is your Dream ?

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens. – Carl Jung

Looking inside my heart, I used to dream having a few of the 5 Cs mentioned, namely Car & Cash and till date, it’s still Car & Cash. With varying life harrowing experiences that could have resulted in me no longer on Mother Earth, things and life experiences had changed over the past 10 years especially, with 2 major accidents that shook myself and my world upside down. There was also an inner voice …

I want to be financially independent with minimum liabilities, generating varying sources of revenues through my entrepreneurship networks. With my assets and wealth, I want to help people in other countries that are less well off and make a difference in their life, helping them to get off the poverty viscous cycle.

I want to take on the role of mentorship to people, from personal development, leadership, scouting skills, life skills and photography skills.

I want to bring my photography and travel writing to the level of National Geographic Magazine, through my photoblog and travel editorial.

Dreams are only Dreams, if you choose to Dream and No Action.

As I write finished this small chapter, the journey had already started a few years ago and it was never easy, every day is challenging, the journey of an entrepreneur and I am still moving in the direction that I undertook.

Dear readers, “What is your Dream ?”

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

It never occur to me that during the past one month and still counting, I am a patient at the other end of rehabilitation, physiotherapy and occupational therapy. With fractures to my left hip and left shoulder, not your usual areas of injuries happening together, I undergo an intensive rehabilitation program, with physiotherapy and occupational therapy, to take on the route of recovery, learning from scratch – how to walk again soon.

Physiotherapy – “is concerned with identifying and maximizing quality of life and movement potential within the spheres of promotion, prevention, treatment/intervention, habilitation and rehabilitation.” – via Wikipedia. Without the rehabilitation and physiotherapy and occupational therapy program, my one month of recovery might not take place as fast and smooth that I would like and want to be. Occupational therapy helps me in the activities of daily living conditions again and how to adapt in my current medical conditions. Therefore, I am very grateful to the team of physiotherapist, assistant physiotherapists and occupational therapist for my recovery till date.

My injuries sustained belong to the orthopaedic segment, in the post-orthopaedic procedure and fractures. The program gets my flexibility, range of movement, strength back in stages, without rushing, working hand in hand with my doctors and specialist. The program is not designed to rush me back into shape, thus the pace of rehabilitation can be pretty slow compared to the mad rat race society pace. Nevertheless, the period of rest does me well too in the rehabilitation program

- Learning to take life in perspective

- Realigning my goals and objectives in life and career

- Personal reflection

- Rest from work, business and rat race

- Appreciating the finer things in life

While I am currently still undergoing rehabilitation, physiotherapy and occupation therapy programs, the importance of healthy and active living strikes an even bigger than ever importance to me because I see for myself how these 3 areas affect different people of different age groups and medical conditions. I would share this in another post soon, keep a lookout !

Moving forward, how would these 3 programs help me in my quest to learn more about sports science and its application to professional sports, team sports, recreational competitive sports ?

Before everything else, I am back to continue my rehabilitation, physiotherapy and occupational therapy program. The route to recovery continues ………..

Life sometimes can be so unpredictable, looking back, at about 1 month ago, I slipped on a oily & wet surface and landed very badly and awkwardly, landed left sided, fracturing my left hip and left shoulder, resulting in an operation to repair and patch my left hip. I never thought how a nasty fall could result in such an injury, reflecting, it was probably the direction and impact of my fall, as well as landing on the hard iron surface that could have resulted in such an injury, I personally find how I landed and injured myself freakish.

An operation to repair my hip bone, spend about a week in an acute hospital before transferring to a community hospital for rehabilitation and physiotherapy. It was a very tough journey, threw all my goals and planning for 2010 off the track, with 2-3 months expected out of action and full recovery might likely be 6 months to 1 year. All my major running have to be postponed and my marathon running for 2010 comes to a halt for a full rehabilitation and recovery program. My businesses and work took a back seat, it’s difficult to concentrate and focus on businesses and work during this period of time, as time progresses, I would slowly ease myself back to life again.

There were great moral support from family, relatives, cousins, nieces, friends, colleagues during the past 1 month, I don’t know what words could help describe them here for all your support. During this time, many thoughts, inspired by readings, learning by doing rehabilitation and physiotherapy.

In life, we are always learning and improving, these 2-3 months will be another BIG learning lesson and life experiences for me, giving me the experiences to help and guide people in crisis next time. Therefore, I would be sharing as much as I could to help and inspire people to get back on track.

I will be back soon, keep a lookout

What were the deep thoughts going through my mind ?

Photoblog ~ A makeover is in the plans, for the template and theme, metamorphosis from a photoblog into a photography and travel blog, professional magazine style, elegant and attractive. Still thinking which is more suitable, Solostream vs Woo Themes.

Running ~ I have finally kick start my training program and it would be shared in greater details at a later post. My short term running goals would be Passion Run 2010 and Sundown Marathon 2010 and I will look forward to improve my timing.

Goals ~ The Year of the Tiger presents different challenges, opportunities will be there and they will start to reappear again, opportunities in many different areas. With my different goal settings, I am setting Short Term, Medium Term and Long Term Goals. Short Term = Monthly, Medium Term = Quarterly , Half Yearly and Long Term = Year End. With each successfully completed Goal, I would reward myself my own Small Goal, Medium Goal and Long Term Goal.

My Sharing on Twitter “Small goal every mth, small reward every mth for completing my goal, medium term & long term goals too.”

Therefore, I am thinking, planning, strategising and executing my Short, Medium & Long Term Goals and their rewards.

Travel Writing ~ Such opportunities don’t come easily and when I was invited to write for other blog as one of their co-authors/writers, it was an honour and even though I haven’t started anything, I promise that this would start very soon. Besides, I am looking at working together with another travel blogger for their E-Mag, details yet to be finalised and I hope something can be worked out together in the best interests for both parties, Think Win-Win !!

Working Hard / Fighting Hard ~ I promised to strive hard, work hard and fight hard in everything I do, for all the opportunities that presents itself along the way.

A quote from Hills of Africa on Twitter “Make today the best day yet, dream big, make it huge, share your beautiful self with the world, make a difference”

Lastly , my own personal quote !

A New Lunar Year,

A New Hope,

A New Beginning,

A New Journey,

A New Challenge

These wise words came from Bill Gates, a person that needs no further introduction, somebody who had helped to change the world that we live in today over the past 20-30 years. How does this line of wisdom impacted me ? Well, simply, as I started moving into the arena of teaching and mentoring, with the confidence, skills and experiences in the field, it would be an easy trap into

~ “We think We Know Everything, in fact, We Don’t” ~

Does success make us so much better than the rest that we don’t seek to continuously improve our current skills and knowledge ? Do we think too smart of ourselves ? Have we grown too complacent ?

2010 has been earmarked as my year of mentoring friends and in 1 field of my skill and expertise, I took up the challenge with pride and honour, accepting students in photography, from a National Youth Achievement Award candidate to friends who recently entered into DSLR. Till date, I would have 4 students However, that does not mean that I know everything in photography yet, now I am exploring lomography, studio lighting and portraiture photography. Besides that, I have helped out with junior photographers that just entered the industry.

What other areas have I been involved in mentoring ?

- Blogs setup and advisory , SEO, Social Media

- Blog shop setup and advisory, internet marketing

When I stepped into this arena, it’s not daunting, it’s like a pilgrimage, a journey of an entrepreneur, Pay It Forward, Helping and teaching people, sharing the skills and knowledge. By transferring, teaching, guiding and mentoring, I will bring my current skills and knowledge to the next higher level too !

Looking for Jack Lan and he asked me to go Power Physical Training (PT) Running first with Brian Lam and catch up after that. Since it had been a long time since I went through Power PT and quite some time since I went running, I thought, why not ? Returning from work, packing up some stuff and went off to meet the runners to Telok Blangah Hill Park.

Power PT Running today was running the uphill road followed by downhill road, a loop around the summit of Telok Blangah Hill Park. The time target was 2min 30s for every loop with rest time of 3 minutes, repeating over 5 times. Being an unfit person as of now & a slight age gap, I think my timing was between 3 mins to 3mins 22s for every run.

Whether I am training for sprints, short distance, medium distance or long distance running, Power PT Running does have its place in a physical training regime and must be part of any sports training regime. Reflecting back the time when I learned the techniques of Power PT, the training runs were like 4 rounds of 100m run and 4 rounds of 400m run, within a stipulated time frame, aerobic training and anaerobic training.

A return of (Mini) Power PT Running, I used to be a much fitter person, as age catches up, we have to train harder to maintain the level of fitness that we desire when we were younger. I confess that I have to train more and harder than my younger counterparts, I will push myself, improve my own fitness and I run my own race !

My training philosophy is to train together for a common target – Run Your Own Race and I am NOT here to race against people.

Let this be a start of my regular training runs towards my May 2010 running goal !

~ Goal Settings for Consultancy Business ~

- Still fine tuning my goals, directions and breaking down into smaller bits and pieces that would be more easily “digested” for my goal setting and achievement.

~ New Business Opportunities ~

- Helping a good friend in blogging and online blog shop setup, guiding them through and would be a good reference and testimonial for my future projects in blogging.

- Invited to join my friends in building up their business network and expansion.

- Travel writing for travel websites and tourism bodies, opportunities arising from there.

~ Running ~

- A serious need to start kick off my running for 2010, enhancements needed to my training regime or else my improvements would not be great compared to last year.

~ Mentoring ~

- Got about 5 people of different age groups, coming under me to learn photography, how well I do here would help me to improve my expertise level of photography too. Need to learn how to teach people and transfer my knowledge across to them.

~ Social Media Networking ~

- I am a slow and late starter in social media networking, the world today has embarked on revolutionary growth and changes in media and communications. Social Media Networking would be a very powerful channel and I must make sure that I learn as much as possible and apply them to my blogging and bring my blogs to a higher level.

~ Pay It Forward / Giving / Community Work / Charity Work ~

- As our society advances, in terms of prosperity and wealth, not everybody was able to ride on the waves and rise up high to enjoy the growth and prosperity. I do not know whether is it me, there seems to be more old and elderly people selling tissue papers, collecting junk, living off food scraps. How can I help ? How can I make a difference ? For now, I may not have the answer yet. Nevertheless, I would think of ways to give back.

Taking a step forward

First thing first, my sports and running goal settings for the year 2010. I haven’t finalised my running events for the year 2010, due to the non-availability of the final running dates by the various organisers. Nevertheless, the runs that I would be looking at to run for the year 2010 would be

- Passion Run

- Sundown Marathon

- Army Half Marathon

- New Balance Real Run

- Nike Real Run

- Singapore Marathon

Besides running, I pledge myself to make a return to make up for my failure to complete my number 6th full marathon in 2009 Singapore Standard Chartered Marathon – I will continue to run and finish marathons. Therefore, I am looking at my training schedule, to be finalised at a later time, whereby I would set myself a schedule to train myself in a more consistent and disciplined manner and program, achieving and improving personal best running times.

Beyond Running – Embarking New Arenas

Triathlon – Moving beyond running, I am planning to enter Triathlon, to challenge myself further, personally, physically, mentally and emotionally. For a start, it would in the sprint category, from then on, I would decide how I would advance or explore in this field. Before everything, I would likely go for a medical checkup to ensure I am able to participate in a Triathlon.

North Face 100 – From my roots in scouting and outdoor activities, the North Face 100 had been beckoning me all these few years and I didn’t enter. Finally, I managed to convince another old mate of mine from my fellow batch scout to embark on this North Face 100. Trail running, enjoying the outdoors and it would be tough, tiring and demanding yet fun !

Overseas Marathon – Had my fair share of local marathons and I would like to go abroad and experience how marathons are like and different from us, experiencing different cultures too. That’s many marathons around the region, would take a look and decide to embark on at least 1 overseas marathon in 2010.

Beach Volleyball – This sports had never really caught my interest due to my staunch support for football, basketball, rugby league and rugby union. My friend is a volleyball coach and is running volleyball and beach volleyball classes, and it does gives me a new sports to try out and learn.

Sports Science / Management – Studying and staying in Australia for 4 years during my undergraduate days, I had first hand of how fanatics the Aussies are in sports and the emphasis of sports science and sports management. Till today, I still had strong interest in the field of sports and sports science, if time schedule allows, I might go for a basic sports coach certification.

Cycling – Loved cycling when I was young, somehow or another, didn’t sustain the interest and recently, would like to add on cycling to compliment my current sports training and addition of a new sports/hobby too. This would also help to prepare me for the triathlon eventually, something that I have been looking forward to. Looking ahead, I am looking at a 2nd hand road bike and 2nd hand mountain bike too.

The above goals had pretty much been split into smaller categories, however, each sub-set goal would need more thorough planning and strategy and I look forward to share my training, experiences and knowledge along the sports and fitness journey in 2010 !

Wishing all of you a Healthy and Sporty lifestyle 2010 !

Taking the shuttle service early in the morning at 0400 hrs from Clementi Stadium along with Brian, we reached there pretty early around 0430 hrs. I started unpacking and preparing for the run to start and there was about 15,000 to 17,000 runners in the 42.195km category and it was a massive group consisting of competitive, regular, fun and 1st timers. The crowd builds up and at 0530 hrs, we were flagged off for the full marathon !

Even though the crowds were pretty big, the route and roads were able to hold the massive marathon numbers. The supporters along the way were awesome and I would like to say

Thank You Singapore Marathon Supporters !!

There was a carnival at East Coast Park, with music and arts performance display, a live band performance by Jack & Rai too ! This really gives us something to distract ourselves from the running ! The supporters at the drinks stations were great and fun, making the efforts to motivate and cheer the runners ! However, I felt there should be more drinks stations to allow us runners to hydrate more especially along the East Coast Park Service Road from the Fort Road side.

My misadventure started around the 15km mark, my abdominal started to feel painful and it just built up over the distances, thought it was gastric and attempts to eat power gel at 21km mark and bananas at 31.5km mark was to no impact/effect on my stomach. Close to the 34km mark, the pain was bad enough for me to seek medical attention and see what could be done. The 3 nice first aiders near the Kallang Riverside Park drinks station were very helpful and friendly while they attended to me before I was given a lift back to National Stadium First Aid Post and checked upon.

The medical staff were very friendly and nice, after checking my pressure and heart rate, all was ok and it was diagnosed to be abdominal cramps instead of gastric pain. After resting, I thought of continuing, however, I was advised by the medical staff not to exert any further with my running. I can’t hide my disappointment because I wasn’t able to finish my 6th Full Marathon, yet I made a decision to seek treatment if necessary and live to “fight another day” a.k.a there’s always full marathons in Singapore or around the region that I can embark on.

There were a group of runners there who also had to seek treatment due to various injuries or aliments, took the bus from the Kallang Stadium to F1 Pit Stop Building, allowing us to complete the final 3km to finishing point. Therefore, I only completed 37km out of 42km. Reaching the finishing point with a cramped up abdominal is not fun and running with with abdominal cramps can hurt and hinder your running.

I would be doing an analysis of my running, routine and food intake to draw out possible causes of abdominal cramps, with the power of google, I found some interesting and informative posts that I was able to relate with regards to my misadventure in Singapore Marathon 2009. Stayed tuned for the post.

Crossing the finishing line, it was a subdued feeling, only 37km out of 42km, my 6th full marathon was a very big disappointment for me. I will let the disappointment not to get into me, learn from my mistakes or running routine, flow that could cause this situation to arise. Running a marathon, like in your life, sometimes things happens for a reason and we must learn to grow, develop and improve further.

“Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall”-Confucius

I would like to take this opportunity to say a Big Thank You to New Balance for giving us a chance to run (walk) back to finishing line thus allowing to collect our finisher tee and medal.

Since I didn’t finish the race, I don’t deserve to get the medal and finisher tee. However, I am really very grateful that they still allow us to collect the finisher tee and medal as a gift

Thank You New Balance and Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon !

I will take full responsibility for my actions and will not lay blame on any of the points nor everything else, for the those mentioned above – that I wasn’t able to fulfill my training commitments. Heading into tomorrow Singapore Marathon 2009, I would adopt a strategy of maintaining my running speed and pace for my 10km and 15km runs, at least for the distance up to 30km and from 30km onwards to the finishing mark, I will push and motivate myself to Run My Own Race and Finish with a Bang !!!

With a new sponsor New Balance coming on board Singapore Marathon 2009 and for the next 2 years, their marketing and advertisements on the buses and signboards are pretty good, showcasing faces of runners and supporters.

However, their race pack is VERY DISAPPOINTING.

A drawstring bag – save cost ? save the environment ? Acts as a laundry bag for me instead.

Singlet – Still alright, no issues, quality not too bad.

Other stuff inside the drawstring bag – nothing much to talk about.

Nevertheless, I am looking forward to the race day itself, in less than 24 hours away. I hope my disappointments in my race pack will be changed with the race event, atmosphere and carnival itself and thoroughly enjoy myself tomorrow and bring myself to an improved level of marathon running and finishing.

For all Marathon runners going for Singapore Marathon 2009, whether this is your maiden marathon run or you are a seasoned or veteran marathon runner -

GOOD LUCK !! Run Your Own Race !!