Singapore Marathon—Final Hours

Well, this is it, folks! Finally I'm all set for the 42km tomorrow morning beginning from 5:30am. It was such a pleasant experience at the race pack collection centre this afternoon. We went there directly from the airport. It took me merely 2 minutes to get my race pack. Amazing efficiency!

I kinda like the bib with my name printed on it. After collecting our race packs, we spent some time going through the many booths next door to see the many health products on sale. I ended up buying a race belt which I plan to run with tomorrow. In it I can store up to 6 power gels. I tried it on and it didn't feel like it's gonna bounce too much. Actually, it's not such a good idea to try something new immediately prior to the actual event. But I'll take my chances with this belt.

Maybe it's just me, but I somehow feel that I'm not sufficiently prepared for tomorrow's run. I'm still targeting to run 0:04:30, but even if I can't do it, I hope I will at least improve by a couple of minutes over the 0:04:40 I did in the Borneo International Marathon in October.

Well, I'll try to sleep early tonight. I doubt that I can fall asleep very early though. Actually, if I can get 4 - 5 hours of solid sleep, I'd be really happy. Somehow, the excitement is not easy to contain, you see.

There will be more to tell tomorrow, I'm sure. Praying for the marathon god to give me the best running condition. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Sex Out Of Wedlock

If I'm not mistaken, sex out of wedlock is a sin for most, if not all, religions. In Malaysia, it seems that Muslims who indulge in sex out of wedlock are liable for a fine, or jail term, or both under the Syariah Law of the country. I'm not sure if that law and its punishments are applicable to all the states in Malaysia, although I think they probably are. But even if they're not, my guess is that there is only very slight differences in the law, such as the amount of the fine or the duration of the jail term.

But we're all humans after all and not immune from making mistakes. In the heat of the overpowering passion, some of us may well fall prey to lust; and during that moment nothing else in the world would seem more important than acting on that lust. But later, when it's all over, then the regrets set in; and of course the fear of punishment and shame. Worse, there are other side effects such as getting pregnant.

What would you do in such a situation?

Some people would choose to abort. And again, if I'm not mistaken, abortion is also a big sin in all religions. Many people I've spoken to consider abortion the same as committing murder. Yet, because of the fear of punishment and shame, many people would take their chances with abortion. They can worry about dealing with God later—they have to deal with the immediate problems first.

Some people, being afraid of committing a second sin by going through an abortion, would opt to go into hiding for the duration of the pregnancy. And then after the delivery, the child is put up for adoption etc. No one else outside the family circle should know about the mistake.

But some people are brave to face the music. They may take a bit of time to think things over, but in the end would decide to get married, and hopefully remain married forever and become good parents to the child. Such was apparently the decision these couple made. Only trouble was that they took far too long to decide, and was only married barely 24 hours before the baby's delivery. Because of that, they have attracted the attention of the Religious Department. Accordingly, they can now be sentenced to a fine of RM30,000 or jail for 24 months or both if convicted.

If that is the law of this country, there is nothing much I can say about it. Pleading ignorance to the country's laws is not exactly a good defence. I'm sure I've read somewhere that a girl in another Islamic country who was guilty of having sex out of wedlock was stoned to death. So I suppose a fine and jail term are just like a slap at the back of the hand!

However, I'm attracted to this line in the news report:

"He said the woman’s family was aware of her pregnancy and still allowed the solemnisation of her marriage."

When I read the above sentence, I thought to myself, "Well, what else was the family supposed to do then?"

Would it have been a better choice if the family did not allow the marriage to proceed? Or is there anything in the Quran that is against pregnant women getting married?

I would be pleased if any of my Muslim readers would be so kind to enlighten me on this issue. If indeed the Quran is against pregnant women getting married, is there any reason(s) given for such rule?

Interrogation Time

Commenting on the recent High Court decision that the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) could only interrogate witnesses during office hours, the Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Musa Hassan said, inter alia, the following:

"Time is of the essence to us and not being able to question witnesses after a crime has occurred especially after office hours will result in the criminals escaping, destroying evidence or worse still, threatening or harming the witnesses. If certain people want the crime rate to go up, then by all means go ahead but do not blame the police for wanting to do their job." [The Star]

He also said that the police are well-versed with the law on the questioning of witnesses as well as on lock-up rules.

However, the IGP has forgotten that knowing the law well doesn't really guarantee anything if his men are not going to abide by them. That the police have the habit of abusing their powers is not exactly news to us.

We have too many people beaten up while in the legal custody of the police, and some of them died because of that. We have had police bringing in teenage girls for questioning, but ended up raping them instead. We have had in the past even the IGP himself beating up a prisoner. He did it in a most cowardly fashion too by instructing his men to blindfold the prisoner first. Not to mention policemen shooting an unarmed woman twice in the head before blowing her up into pieces with explosives.

Now this may come as a surprise to Tan Sri Musa, but many of us rakyat don't really have very high regard of the police force in Malaysia. In fact, some of us are afraid for our lives when dealing with them!

The IGP's excuse is a red herring. If indeed the police is afraid of suspects escaping, they can always arrest them first and can still do the interrogations during office hours. While in custody, these suspects won't be able to harrass their victims.

At any rate, I think the main concern for limiting the interrogations to office hours is mainly for the witnesses, not the crime suspects. The MACC has repeatedly said that the victim who died was not a suspect, but a witness. I can't see the urgency of the interrogation that it had to be done up to the wee hours of the morning. That is such an inhumane way to treat a witness. If that is their idea of performing their job well, no one would ever come forward to be witnesses.

But if it is indeed true that some of these witnesses prefer to be interrogated after office hours, then yes, the police should make themselves available to do their job.

I think it is wrong to say that if the police are not allowed to carry out interrogations after office hours, crime rate will rise. We should all seriously doubt the wisdom of the person who made such a statement.

I fully support the High Court decision to limit the MACC's interrogations to office hours, and I look forward to the day when the same order is made to the police force.

Seeing Is Believing; Believing Is Seeing

I was discussing and debating a religious issue in another blog. Maybe I asked too many questions up to the point that it became too hard to reason things out with this stubborn man. But as usually is the case with religious people, it boils down to faith. And I raised the question if one should simply accept what's contained in the holy books solely on faith, without seeking justifications for the teachings?

This was the reply I got from a fellow commenter in that blog:

"You're right Cornelius that justifications arent necessary coz I feel that Man will only feel justified only when he hears what he wants to hear. I also feel that we see only the things we want to see. And there will always be people who may/are/will not or do not want to be able to see certain considerations. There's nothing much anyone can do really except pray that insyaallah, they will one day."

Actually, the above response is very true. In fact so true that it is equally applicable for the religious people too. When one believes in something, he will see only that something, and probably will be blind to all other things no matter how glaringly clear they are. But of course the person who gave that comment above probably does not realise that he, too, sees only what he wants to see.

I can still remember a trip up Mount Kinabalu many years ago with some religious friends. It was a beautiful day with only some patches of cloud in the sky that day. High on the mountain at Laban Rata, my friends gathered together and excitedly pointed to the sky. I was seated on a sofa, resting my legs, but couldn't control my curiosity to know what the commotion was all about. So I went out to join them.

Well, it turned out that they were excited because they saw "Mother Mary" in the sky.

I said, "Really?... Where?"

One of them pointed to a bunch of cloud in the sky that appeared—if seen from a certain angle—something like the shape of a woman. That then was "Mother Mary", the mother of Jesus Christ.

A couple of weeks ago, there was a news article about a man who thought he saw something which appeared like the image of Jesus on the window of his truck. He said he wasn't gonna wash his truck for a while. So that is a good excuse I could use one of these days. When I am lazy to get my car washed, I can say Jesus is on my window.

And today, I found yet another article about people seeing the image of Jesus, this time at the bottom of an electric iron. And because the image was there, it meant that the owner of that iron has reassured herself that "life is going to be good".

This is the photo of the famous electric iron.

Can you see Jesus there? Honestly, I can only see some dark-coloured residue at the bottom of the iron, but maybe some of my religious readers can see Jesus there.

But seriously, can anyone tell me what Jesus really looked like?

Singapore Marathon—Countdown

Well, it's less than a week to go to the Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon this Sunday. How time flies!

I did my last "long run" yesterday morning—a mere 13km. I arrived at the Likas track at almost 7am. By then the SMC doctors, Peter, Helen and Liaw, were almost done with their runs. Andrew Voon was also there. I started running a bit later then usual partly because I overslept, and partly because it's according to my plan. I sort of wanted to get my body accustomed to the morning heat, since we will be starting at 5:30am in Singapore. It is hard to imagine that we are gonna be able to escape the heat.

Oh! Judy was there at the track too. But she did only several laps. She said she had a good excuse because she just ran the Penang Bridge International Marathon recently. Yeah, that's quite a long run! I have a feeling that she'll beat me real bad in Singapore. But then again, I have an excuse since I'm running in the vateran category (smile).

Mia did not do her long run last Sunday. Instead she and her colleagues went to Mulu in Sarawak. Sounds like an interesting adventure, and I am now tempted to make a visit too. Well, I'll probably get our sports club to organise a trip next year.

I'm a bit worried that I still felt rather tired running that 13km; and my right knee has also been acting up right now. However, I'm reducing my distances even further this week leading to Sunday. Tomorrow I'll do a mild 5km. Then another two sessions of 3.5km each before Sunday. That, I hope, can help to rest my legs for the major challenge on Sunday.

We're all set to fly to Singapore on Saturday morning, and by the time we get to the race pack collection centre, there will probably be a very long queue. Time will be quite tight, as we should be in bed by 10pm at the latest, though I seriously doubt that we can fall asleep that early.

Although it doesn't seem to be very promising, I still want to try my best to conquer the 42km within 0:04:30. I hope to report some good news when we arrive home next Monday.

Ads In The Blog

It took me more than 2 years, but I finally spent the few minutes to actually work on adding advertisements in this blog!

I'm not very good with all these internet stuff, so adding something new to my blog is quite a big achievement, you know! I didn't think that I would make tons of money from the advertisements in this blog; and I still don't. Which also explains why I've been putting it at the bottom of my priority list all this while. Maybe I should start thinking of changing the template and insert a nice picture for the title of this blog; and perhaps add links of other blogs etc., so as to make this blog more "complete" and "professional-looking"? But the trouble is that I'm worried that I will mess things up to the extent that I'm unable to find my way back! Yes, that's one major problem I'm facing in spite of having been blogging for over 2 years now.

Over the last 2 years since this blog came into existence, I've had several of my loyal readers who suggested some modifications to this blog, e.g. adding advertisements, links to other blogs and some other fancy stuff like chatbox on my sidebar. Some have also suggested that I create my own paid website. But they have all since given up hope on me. It's not that I'm being unsporting; rather it's mainly due to the attitude of "playing safe". If only you knew that I spent several weeks just to figure out how to put that "Recent Comments" on my sidebar, then you'd know how hopeless I am with all these technical stuff! Ordinarily, I am not such a stupid person—I swear!

Incidentally, a friend of mine wrote to me recently, saying that I have now surpassed my 500th post. To be quite honest, I wasn't even counting. Maybe this calls for some sort of celebration, but I haven't thought of one yet. Perhaps after I'm done with the Singapore Marathon next Sunday; and after setting the ISM Hunt for January, then I will have some free time to think of something.

This reminds me of the new cellphone I bought a couple of weeks ago—the Nokia N97. Before this, I had a Nokia N70 which was a pretty good phone. I was using that N70 for a good 2 years until it started failing on me. I reckoned that repairs would've cost quite substantial, so I decided maybe this was a good excuse to buy a new one.

Anyway, to make the long story short, I bought the N97 and it's been serving me quite well so far. Except that I can't help thinking it is way beyond my ability to operate. With a 32G memory space, and an additional 2G memory card, 5 megapixel camera which I don't really need, and so many other features which I have no idea of their purposes, I don't know why I bought this particular phone. I suppose if I tried very hard to learn all the available features on the phone, maybe I would be able to cover about 10% in 6 months' time. But even that might be too ambitious. Later today, I'll be going to City Mall for my weekly foot massage. I will stop by Starbucks and try to surf the net via my phone. That is provided I can figure out the way how to do it to start with.

Coming back to this blog, I'm quite pleased with myself for having successfully put the ads on my sidebar and between the posts. But somehow they don't look very normal to me. Maybe I need to do something else to make it more "normal". So I would welcome suggestions from my readers who're also bloggers. After that, I should seriously start reading that part about how this thing can actually generate incomes!

Benefits Of Blog-Hopping

I've been spending quite a lot of time going blog-hopping over the last couple of days, and been discussing and debating on several interesting issues. One such discussion was on the subject of female circumcision—whether it is Islamic. I find it very rewarding to follow such discussions and debates because my curious mind can just feed on the mass of information found in these forums.

For example, I now know that it is possible to reconstruct a severed clitoris. Before this, I had no idea that this was possible at all. And it fits all too well with human nature too—it is so like us to destroy the things we have naturally; and then we'd go through so much trouble to get back those things we've destroyed.

Such discussions are not always possible in Malaysia because of several reasons. Firstly, female circumcision is considered a sensitive subject. The vast majority of Muslims in Malaysia still do it because it is considered a religious requirement. Most Muslim women went through it because there were told it is necessary by the scholars.

Secondly, in Malaysia many people won't dare to raise questions about religions, because the person raising those questions may find himself in hot soup for causing "confusion". Otherwise, the mere act of asking questions may be construed as blasphemy. Even the great Tun Dr Mahathir himself was criticised when he raised some interesting questions about Islam in his blog.

Finally, I don't believe that Malaysians are able to discuss these things honestly. Many of them are influenced by others, and their answers or opinions are always based on information they got from someone else. That said, however, some of them are honest in their answers, so at least that's a comfort.

Anyway, I found it interesting that someone suggested that female circumcision is done to ensure that the girl does not engage in pre-marital sex. I argued that the hymen is already doing the job of indicating virginity. I'm not going to repeat what transpired in that forum, but those of you who're keen to know, please follow the link above.

Speaking of the hymen, it's quite a coincidence that just a few days ago, it's been reported in The Star (quoting China Press) that Vietnamese women are opting for artificial hymen insertion in Johor before marrying Malaysian men. So heads up, guys, be careful with your virgin new brides from Vietnam. These days we have lots of fake merchandises in the market.

I want to share with my readers a strange coincidence while I was trying to post a comment about "hymen" in the other blog. All comments there are moderated and commenters would have to key in "WORD VERIFICATION" when commenting. Those words are mostly meaningless random letters in no particular order. But what I got for that particular comment was this:

Scary, huh?