this week has been so busy.
First the post race euphoria spilling into Sunday.
Monday, I slept in, but later that evening we went out for dinner with friends.
Tuesday, went for a 5km run, that felt good. In the evening went to a church prayer meeting.
Wednesday, Pump in the morning, J played soccer in the evening, I visited Mum & Dad's place, chatted to Mum for a while and ate their food.
Thursday, run in the morning. Watched The Italian Job in the evening, I liked it.
Friday, Pump in the morning, sitting in the office right now.
Saturday - who knows? I'll probably go for a run.
Then rinse and repeat. I usually get all gloomy at this point and ponder the futility of it all but today I just feel good. :-)

NB: I found out that Sixpence is calling it a day. :-(

more music. This time from Sarah Masen:

Tuesday
tuesday after a reckless and used day
i was running and running without a chance
to stop and chat at the sky

finally i stopped for a breath in the evening
suddenly. i was caught by the scenery
painting a picture of You

day set, scatters of clouds in the distance
they whitewash the backdrop of secrets
whispering shadows of blue
in more delicate hues

Read this! It'll take a good hour or so. But well worth it.
http://www.selfknowledge.org/whoweare/doubt.htm
It's a discussion of CS Lewis' "Mere Christianity." by a group called SKS.

"The Self Knowledge Symposium (SKS) is a resource for students engaged in the spiritual search. Asking the big questions—who am I? Why am I here? What can I do with my life that will be meaningful?—is an essential aspect of the successful college experience."

About 2/3 of the way down is a wonderful series of posts by Alicia Davis. Thanks Alicia, wherever you are.

Saturday was great! It was race day - we ran in the adidas Great Lake Relay, around Lake Taupo.

The whole weekend started off driving down to Taupo on Friday night. We got there just before the start at 11pm. Had a good nights sleep, then up at 5:30am to go with Andrew and Talia to the start of our leg. The weather was good for running, cloudy with a few light showers here and there, and no wind.
We got to the start of our leg around 9:30. I was pretty nervous beforehand, had the pre-race jitters. J started first, and then I started maybe 5 or 10 minutes later.
Our leg was rated "average" - it started off with some gentle undulating hills, and then went into a nice 2-3km downhill, and ended with maybe 8km of flat road.
I settled into a nice rhythm, trying not to push the pace too early.
Caught a couple of people, then just into the big downhill I caught up with J, said "hi" as I passed her.
I could hear the footsteps of someone right behind me. They were just matching my pace, and this continued for maybe 5 minutes. Then this guy in a white T-Shirt passed me, but he was going at my pace, so I slipped in behind him for the next couple of km's.

We made it to the flat, and I passed him once again. I was checking my watch a lot, I figured I'd take just under an hour to complete the run. So at 30 minutes, I was about half way, and I didn't want to burn out before the end.

Andrew and Talia gave me a lot of support along the way, giving me water and Horley's Replace.

Finally we came to the last part of the leg, a slight uphill rise. The white T-shirt guy passed me up the hill, but I stayed maybe 20-30m behind him.

We crested the hill, and I could see the cars parked along the side of the road, a sign that the finish was approaching. With about 100m to go, I increased the pace, and crossed the line simultaneously with the white t-shirt guy. It was a great feeling, and an awesome finish, to come in at the same time as this guy who I'd been running with for the last 40 minutes.

When I checked my watch, it showed 48 minutes, well under my expected 55 or so.
I attribute this to actual race-day adrenaline and the big downhill at the beginning.

J came in a few minutes later, her time was about 1:10.

We spent the rest of the day supporting our team, giving them water etc.
Overall it was just an awesome social event. My legs are still a little stiff today, but I'm pretty sure I'll be back again next year.

Place Time
54 16:33:50 Gosling Chapman Gurus Auckland 247 (J's team)
66 16:43:36 Spring Beans Auckland 248 (My team)

I forgot to mention - the race is tomorrow! We run 10km of the relay round Lake Taupo. It hasn't been a great week for training, but hopefully the effort of the past few months will pay off. I'm not sure what conditions will be like so I'm packing heaps of running gear, covering rain, wind and sun. Our leg is supposed to be at 9:30am, which is almost an ideal time (early enough that if it's sunny it won't be too scorching, but late enough that if it's cold and rainy, the day should still have warmed up a bit). I'm hoping for dry, mild temperatures and slightly cloudy. With a gentle breeze.

Ironically, Phil Goff is my MP. Although he's not really representing my views. I'm not actually sure who's views he is representing. I sometimes despair that the electorate doesn't really see much further than their own wallet, or else they just continue with the status quo for the sake of it. (Although of course I'm biased here; I should really give people the benefit of the doubt, and assume they have thought about it and made an informed, rational, intelligent decision on who to vote for.)

time for a political post. Quoting from Maxim's Real Issues #98:

How should we swear to do our duty?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Justice Minister Phil Goff wants to change the oaths and affirmations made
by public office holders, some state employees and immigrants when they
become new citizens. He says it's nearly 50 years since the last
full review, and we need to check whether the oaths express the values and
beliefs of our national values today, or reflect a sense of
independent nationhood.

Mr Goff is worried that the oaths swear allegiance to the Queen rather than
to New Zealand. He points out that most other Commonwealth countries -
even England - are making similar changes.

Some interesting conundrums are posed by Mr Goff's review. Who will decide
what our "national values" are? And what does it actually mean if we pledge
loyalty "to New Zealand and the people of New Zealand" (the kind of wording
that Mr Goff seems to favour)? Does it mean that we pledge loyalty to
the government? What if the government and the people are in serious
disagreement over an issue? The abolition of appeals to the Privy Council
would be a case in point.

Making an oath once meant that we acknowledged a higher power was
witnessing our statement, and stood ready to call us to account. An oath
cannot be legitimately broken. That is implicit in an oath to the Crown.
So understood, oaths are a necessary component of democratic freedom
because they reinforce trust. It would appear that the highest power we
believe in now is the government, or an ill-defined national identity.
That is not encouraging.

oh man! this blog-web thing is contagious. I started at Dan's Online Diary, made my way to Aaron's, and then onto Twenty Commandments for Culture-Changers.
Interesting...

Last night, I went collecting for IHC. IHC is a NZ charity that helps intellectually disabled people - they provide support for the parents of IH kids, and help IH people to live in the community.

I was collecting in a particularly poor road in Mt Roskill. Along one side are a motley collection of abandoned warehouses, and cheap commercial buildings, and along the otherside is ex-state housing, interspersed with some major roadworks for a new motorway. The houses are mostly in a pretty bad state, unkempt lawns and some are just badly in need of new paint. Realistically, nobody I know would want to live in this street.

Amongst all this, are an interesting collection of people just trying to get along. I found it interesting because although I drive along this street every week, I didn't really know what sort of people lived there. There's a mix of Asian students, presumably renting a cheap old house, Indian immigrants, and older retired people, and just some poor folk on the benefit. Every so often I would go up a driveway and see a well-kept garden or rose bush, and it struck me that the garden makes a big impression on how "welcoming" a house is. I wonder how my house appears to people walking up to the front door.

I was a little surprised at the generosity of these people. Most gave a donation even if it was only some loose change. It made me think, here I live only a block away from these people, in my "nice neighbourhood" and living my nice middle-class life. Do I give as generously as these people who pretty much have nothing? I also thought back to when I worked at an inner-city CA firm. I did tax returns for some high net worth individuals, and only very rarely did I come across someone who had enclosed tax rebates for donations with their tax info. Either the rich people don't bother with getting their rebate, or else they just don't give to charities.

Anyway, it was a surprisingly fulfilling evening, in that I felt I was able to give a little time and effort to help others, I got to speak with a few people I would never have otherwise, and just take a little peek into their lives (which is always interesting). It was also refreshing just to take my mind off my own life and focus on others for a while.

ok, timeout. Just to be like everyone else, I'll mention a cd I've been listening to lately.
Check out "Brooke Fraser - What to do with daylight"
She's a 20 yr old NZer, and has pretty much exploded on the pop music scene here.

no time for this diary nonsense. Too busy fixing freaking computer problems ... **tears hair out**

today i have nothing to say. Except:

- as a diary sort of thing: J's dad has been staying a couple of nights. For some probably unconnected reason, we have been staying up late and consequently we're tired. yeah, i know, story of my life.

- go read this guys blog: Cameron Lawrence
He's describing a lot of experiences that I identify with, only he says it a whole lot better than I ever would have.

Today's run was ok. We did the 5km's to my parents. J was pretty exhausted by the end of it, because I had been talking about interval training. So, after 2 minutes of warm up, she sped right up, and I was having to run faster than my normal pace to keep up. We maintained this for about a minute, then slowed to a jog for a minute and a half. Then we were back up and running hard for another 60 seconds.
Later I found out that J thought the "run" part of interval training meant you had to sprint. She was running like it was a 400m race!
Next time I will have to emphasise that the "run" part is just a bit faster than normal. Not full on sprinting!

We had a holiday this past weekend, Waitangi Day. A national day for New Zealand. Except that it's not really a day for New Zealand patriotism, rather it's a day for a few Maori radicals and protesters to thumb their noses at the rest of New Zealand. Perhaps that's why we treat the day with complete indifference.

Anyway, we went to a wedding up north - we've moved on from the 21st and engagement party stage in life to weddings and babies.

And we also squeezed in a training run before leaving Auckland. Once again ran from Mission Bay to Mikano's and back. This time I ran at pretty much full pace, and clocked it at 50 minutes. J took 1:15, and she was a little disappointed that she hadn't run any faster than last week, but I said not to worry, because we'll focus on some speed work this week.
Apparently, running for longer (time or distance) doesn't make you any faster - you have to train your body to run faster by (guess what) going faster. The way you do this is interval training, ie run, jog, run, jog etc etc. You effectively run for a short period at a faster than normal pace, and only then does your body start to get used to the idea that it can go faster.
I will try all this out tomorrow morning (assuming we wake up in time).

I can't remember the last time J & I went out to a restaurant, just the two of us.
I should really remedy this situation as soon as possible and it's quite opportune that V-day is next week.
But every month I look at my bank balance and think about how I should really be saving, paying off the mortgage, living within my means. Married life is more expensive than you'd think. My advice to all those single people with good incomes is feel free to splash out every now and then on treats, cause it's a lot harder to do so when you're married with a mortgage.

But getting back to it, there are a few memories that are highlights, and not just for the food either.
The best memories were probably the nights spent at Safran in Newmarket.
We were wandering around one Sunday night, looking for a place to have a cup of coffee. A tall eastern european man was standing outside the door, and he beckoned to us.

"Come on in, we have a table for you" he said.

How can you go past this? We followed him off the footpath into the cafe. It was dark but cheerful inside, and there was the warm sound of happy chatter. We walked on hardwood floors, squeezing past the old wooden tables and chairs to a table on the side. The walls were covered with posters from another era, advertising old movies, faded and worn as if we were in a real Mediterranean cafe on the Greek coast. An ancient chandelier stood stately, covered in wax from the countless candles of years gone by.

There's a bench that runs along the wall, with a number of small tables dotted along side, just big enough for two. Our waitress lit the candle on the table, and filled our glasses with water.

It's a place of intimacy and friendship, warm and relaxed. The hours passed by as we talked and laughed.
We played with melted wax, filling the grooves worn into the table, smoothing them over, and tracing the lines.

We talked about our past, our families, and found the similarities, the shared understandings of our experiences in life. Found out that underneath the surface of a couple of Auckland accountants, our values and interests overlapped and intertwined. Began to explore memories and things unsaid to so many for so long.

At last, we slipped off into the night, the end of an enchanted evening.

Potential - look at a life. any life. in my case i'm looking at mine in particular.
In 7th form, I peaked as far as my studies went. I even came first in NZ in one subject in the NZEST Scholarship exams. The world was my oyster.
And what did I do with it?

Nothing - pretty much just went with the flow. Which in my case was go to Auckland uni, graduate with a BSc in Computer Science and a BCom in Accounting. And even that was the result of procrastinating - something along the lines of "what shall i do? Accounting or Computers?"

"I know - i'll do both so i don't have to make a decision here and now."

I read the story of Charles Goodyear, the guy who pretty much discovered the process of rubber vulcanisation. Countless setbacks, massive debt and perpetual destitution were unable to dent Goodyear's faith in rubber. He died a poor man, but he had a dream and he pursued it and saw it right through to the end.

What i want to know is where's my dream.

Right now it's 10am Monday morning and I'm stoked on running. Yup, I still remember when I was 18 and dead against running anywhere. Why run when you can ride? I was into mountain-biking back then and running seemed like such a huge waste of time and energy. I mean can you think of anything more inefficient?

Fast forward a decade or so, and now, after a few months of it, I really enjoy running. J & I got into it for the sake of keeping fit, and I didn't really enjoy it at first. But now, it's actually fun.

We did a big run on Saturday, 8am at Mission Bay. Ran to Mikano's which is exactly 4.9km according to the tripmeter in the car. So that's a 9.8km round trip (let's just say 10km). Together we did it in 1:13. It was good to get that under our belts, just to know that we CAN physically do it.

And then this morning I did a 6km circuit from our house, which encompasses a fairly big hill climb, and that took 29min. Yay, 5-6 min faster than I've ever done it before.

So yeah, funny that I can get so excited about something I used to hate, but then I guess the only thing constant in this life is change. Learn to live with it and you might even enjoy it.