running in the trail

Running in the transcanada trail on Burnaby Mountain park.

I went running this morning in Burnaby Mountain park. Running in the trail is much better than on the road, I realized just today. No cars, only trees. The trail is paved very well. All leaves have been cleaned and the small rubbles gave your feet a good cushion. The fog and mist everywhere in the park. I felt like running in the cloud. The view was fantastic in the Barnet inlet. I run up and down in the park for about 1 hour. One loop is about 1.6 km. I then run up all the way from the park to the UniverCity and run from UniverCity to residence. In total I did 15k in 1:40. After I run in the park, the loop slope up to the mountain seemed more easier than ever.

The weather was nice today, warm and humid, not cold at all. It's a perfect running day today. I just hope we could have more days like today before the snow comes. I may go running in other parks, as I feel running in the park is really fun, with today's experience.

United Way

This noon, the United Way pledge campaign finished with a hilarious RockBand competition among teams. This campaign is a tradition of our company and this year is the fourth time for me.

The campaign starts with a company sponsored BBQ in last Friday. There are couple of activities in this week to encourage people's participation.

A traditional tower building is one of the must-go. The game rule is changed this year. Instead of building a high tower with spaghetti and marshmallow, we should build a tower using about 20 newspaper and a 2-m scotch tape. This tower should be able to support an empty coke can. Haha, our team won this game by building the highest tower, which reaches the ceil and support an empty coke can. That's a very good engineered paper tower. We use three sticks as the tripod, each was made from rolled newspaper. On top of the tripod, we stick a needle, a thin needle by rolling the newspaper together. One smart design is to insert the needle inside of the hole of the empty pop can. In this case, we don't need to find support of the can. Our design is not original, but our engineering skill is the best, so that we can make the strongest and highest tower.

This lunch time, we have the RockBand competition. I am of course one of the player in our band. We dress up a little bit, with all black shirt and sunglasses. Some other bands dressed with long wig and interesting hats. That's really funny seeing people are really into this game. Although we are not good at playing the guitar or drum, everyone seems have a lot of fun by watching, laughing, applauding, and screaming. One of the important measurement of the performance is the costume. The loudness of the applaud is also counted as score, which is actually measured by a professional noise detector, our lab equipment. :-)

For a company with 80 percent more engineers, our games and competitions are geeky and engineering centric.

I had won a bottle of premium tequila by throwing toonie to reach the bottle from about 4 meters away. The closest win the bottle. I exchanged 5 toonies and just wanna test my luck. I had never thought I could be the winner. Fortunately, in the 3rd one, I throw the toonie very close to the bottle, like in 5 cm. That's cool.

The one week long campaign wrapped up with 24,000+ donation. That's not bad for around 115 people in the office. It's one of my favorite events every year.

court experience

I went to court for a hearing of my traffic ticket this afternoon. The first time experience in my life. Just another first time.

We arrived in the NW court at 1:00pm, half an hour earlier than the hearing time. People were gathering outside of the court room and two police officers arrived as well. All the hearing for this court today are traffic tickets. Bearing some uncertain feeling when I entered the court. I'm not feeling guilty at all and I had prepared a true and strong explanation. The judge, a woman, looks very kind. The previous several hearings went well. Two acknowledged guilty but their fines are reduced to as little as $10, with a valid/understandable reason for the violation. That's a good sign for today. :-). My heart was pounding heavily when the judge called my name and I was standing in front of the judge.

Unfortunately, the officer wasn't present. (Fortunate to me) All my preparations are useless. My strongest word "No, I'm not guilty!" ended my first hearing. The debate, explanation that I was anticipating didn't happen at all. Then I won my first court hearing in my life. :-)

From this experience, I learned two things. First of all, dispute all the traffic tickets. Even though you were guilty with clear evidence, such as speeding, red light violation, your reasons or valid excuse presented to the judge may ended up with a much smaller fine for you. You may also win the dispute when the officer is not present and that's the case in a lot of circumstance. Second. as Canada is a lawful society, going to the court sometimes may be a good solution to conflicts. The second thought comes from my friend's experience of suing her landlord to get her deposit back. One more thing, to support the second thought, don't leave evidence to others just in case any dispute may happen later on, such as in your working place. ....

This topic is worth of discussing. It may be interesting to cover it later on.

Hyperion

I finished the reading of the magnificent "Hyperion" and "The fall of Hyperion". This sci-fiction was written by Dan Simmons in early 1990s and had won the Hugo award for the best novel of 1989. The story happens in the future when humankind had colonized thousands of world in the universe. Before the outbreak of war between humankind and outster, seven people were chosen to the last pilgrim of Shrike to Hyperion, a mystery colonial star with time tomb. The first book talks about the story of the seven pilgrims and second one reveals the plot behind the war and the fate of the pilgrims. I won't cover the details of the story here. What impress me most in this book is the rich poem embedded in this scifi book. I've read a lot of scifi, in English and Chinese. This is the first of the kind with poems, literature, and poet in the story. Actually, the name of "Hyperion" was coming from the unfinished epic poem of John Keats. John Keats also serve an important role in the book. The story is a sort of mixture between fantasy and scifi. Dan had created a world spanning thousands of years, mingling space and time. It is my first experience of reading scifi book like reading traditional literature, even English poem. I've learned a lot and I have to say that the world is fascinating. I love reading long space sagas. This one is definitely on the top of my favorite. I'll try to read the Chinese translation later, as the English is full of poem and literature, religions, etc. I bought other books by this author and will read them later.

I am now reading another scifi book, "Spin", by Robert Charles Wilson. This one is also an award winner.

a not so long "long run"

I did a not so long "long run" this afternoon. It's about 14k including warm up and warm down. I was so anxious to go out for running as today may be the last shining day this week. I still feel that I may not fully recovered from last Friday's fartlek running on Burnaby mountain. Anyway, I was running alone this afternoon. To run together with other coworker may be more fun, like this Monday's easy run. But I feel that I have to run along as I want to run longer time with longer distance today.

In King George Park, I did 6 loops (10k) in 50min. I am confident now that I can finish the next Sun Run in 50 minutes. The first 2 loops seems easy. I feel a bit sore with the leg in the 3rd loop. However, I feel pace is faster in the 4th and 5th loop. The 6th loop is much easier as I know I gonna finish it.

I don't what kind of training it is for today, maybe tempo. Whatever, it is run for fun. That's enough. To prepare for the marathon, I apparently need more long run training.

The pace of this afternoon is about 5m/k. So, I feel 6m/k would be quite suitable for my long run.

100K Road Running Race Relay

I've made my 1st relay road race last Saturday. I get up at 4:00am and start running at 6:00am. The race is 100Km and we were a team of 8. I was the 1st leg and made 9.5km. Overall, we had a great team and was the 5th among our division (Recreational group) and 37th overall.
Thanks to Kenneth, who was the 13th in his tough leg. He improved our overall performance.

http://www.raceheadquarters.com/results/2008/run/H2H2008Overall.html

I was the 64th in my leg and it's not too bad. But I should be able to put a bit harder if there are more signs there. Anyhow, I started when it was still dark. I run into water accumulated on the road in the middle. When I finished and got home, Linda hadn't get up yet. :-)

I have registered for the Vancouver Marathon 2009. Hopefully, I can made it.

I love running.

A Saturday

I was waiting for Linda in a starbucks store in UBC. It is my first experience. A sense of leisure in a lovely Saturday morning. The store is getting busier around 12:45pm.

I was reading today's Vancouver Sun. Without Internet access, you feel it is not very convenient. However, it is a sprout of a leisure mood with the music hovering around in the air.

I start to understand why people are so used to this kind of living. It is a bit bourgeois.

Had dinner at Phoebe's place.
Discussed about the realty market with Steve, who is really pessimistic about the realty market in Vancouver. One thing he mentioned that his brother was an engineer working on usb device, software/hardware. So, he may be a good candidate for an internal referral. Let's see.

The dinner was quite good. It's a potluck and buffet style. It won't be too much trouble for hosts to cook. I think that we should adopt this kind of dinner for party later on. At any rate, we have party for fun, not just for food.

We played Texas Hold'em after the dinner. I won at the end. Haven't played for a while and it is fun to pick it up again.