Just saw Canuf's Portugal photojournal. His pictures, as always, are so wonderful. You can always trust a trained architect to take good pictures and know what makes a good frame.
On a separate note, I figured my week ahead is now ruined. Sleeping at 5am and waking up at 11am is so upsetting my biological system. I am in this sorry state because the smart alecky me decided that it's time to live and feel young again. That was Thursday evening, when the five of us met at 9pm and did a half round-island ride that consisted of riding and eating and eating.
The road traffic from KAP to Mandai was pretty heavy, but this did not make us slow down. From the get-go, I could feel a wave of excitement as we thrusted forward alongside unruly vehicles far mightier than us. At a traffic light junction along Woodlands road, Eugene smiled and asked jokingly from the back: 'Are we chasing the last train?' I shouted the message down to the rest as the traffic light turned green and Jon was starting to move forward: "Eugene said, 'ARE WE CHASING THE LAST TRAIN?'" The startling traffic rumbled and my voice was drowned out. We carried on cycling, chasing the mysterious and elusive last train.
I had dubbed this the undergraduate ride - 'We can all feel undergraduate again, including K' - for we've not done something like this since those days when we were still young and brazen with a lot more free time to spare (or rather, time we had chosen to spend cycling instead of mugging). Back then, way before I started cycling in Malaysia as regularly as I do now, I rode mostly on Friday nights. Those were Friday casual rides - i was still on knobby tyres - and the highlight was invariably the food stops. We met to ride but were just as eager to ride to eat. Energy was not expended on chasing last trains, but was used to maintain chatting with other riders whilst pedaling on at a comfortable pace.
That was then. Nowadays, night cycling is rare. Asked when was the last time he cycled at night, Eugene said unhesitatingly: 'Six years ago, i think'. So it was a good change to do a night makan ride. We were after all undergraduates and garung night riders once.
About 98km of cycling that night saw me reaching home at 3.30am, but not before stopping at Jalan Kayu for prata at 11+pm, then at 12+am at a kopitiam in Tampines Ave 10 for carrot cake that we waited for quite long, followed by superbly good chilled beancurd/grass jelly at Balestier at 1plus to 2am. Somehow, we found ourselves rejuvenated after the delicious cold snack (which we searched for quite earnestly) and even settled down on the road pavement to chat after finishing our food. (We didn't want to impose on the young Chinese lad who kindly allowed us to buy our food even though he was preparing to close the shop when we arrived.)
It was a good night journey round the island on our two wheels. But feeling undergraduate is one thing, not being young anymore is another. For when I woke up the next day and felt the effect of the late night in my (old) bones, I thought: it would be quite tough for me to survive more nights like this.
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