Never expected this year to be so busy that there are days on which I don't even have time to update my blog. Partially, it's because I've been obsessing over NY conneX, spending every available waking moment looking out for possible stories to assign journalists to, getting story requests from people and groups, chasing up pix from whomever has a digi-cam, taking my own pix to supplement the photo pool, editing stories and now laying out pages for the PRINT edition scheduled for next week's release.

In all this mania, I'm glad that pretty much for once, I don't feel alone in my belief that I'm working on a good thing. The journalists are very supportive and have been faithfully collaborating with me in meeting their story deadlines and turning in coherent, quality writing; and now I've got them to help with the most tedious laying out of next week's print edition. With enough of such hands-on experience, they should soon be skillful enough to run the 'paper independently with enough passion to desire its continuity year after year.

In case I hadn't mentioned it earlier, Issue #10 is on-line for your perusal. Feel free!

Oh, and June's gone to Manila on business for the next couple of days. She just messaged to say that she's staying at the Shang and due to full occupancy of the suite she booked, they've given her a room upgrade. So now she's in this luxuriously large room full of everything she could possibly want, well, with the exception of me. No wonder she's still grouchy about this trip.

In other personal news...
Sunday evening: pot-luck dinner with paternal kinsfolk, June preparing bubur chacha for dessert and me putting down cash for some excellent take-away satay from Chim's Satay House.
Monday evening: Nothing exciting for dinner, no time for a good one, anyway.
Tuesday evening: Sakura Jap-Int'nl buffet, Toa Payoh. Amy's treat to Vince, HP and me in honour of her recent promotion. It's not exactly refined dining, but the food's generally quite good. Sashimi was fresh and though we focused on the salmon, the maguro and the swordfish were very tasty too. Made sure I had my fill of raw fish before attempting the other dishes in the 'international' section which was ok too. Thanks, Amy!
Today: Dinner at Punggol Nasi Lemak with Vince, Anthony and Wendy. Always good for deep fried chix wings and luncheon meat slices on fragrant rice anytime.

Great. Shouldn't be talking about food. Now I'm hungry again...

Warming up with the rest of ODAC. Bike check, skill check, safety check... you get the picture.

These 2 blur queens rode all the way to Esplanade Park feeling very uncomfortable on their bikes. They thought someone had switched bikes with them when they weren't looking. Then they realised that they had somehow traded bikes with each other at the starting point. Duh.

We're ready to set off on our night-cycling expedition. Starting point: Fort Road parking lot, East Coast Park. 

Ice-cream break. An unexpected bonus at our 1st rest stop, Labrador Park. 

On the pier in Labrador Park 

We're finally here! West Coast Park McD's, and it's past 0100 hrs, Sunday morning.

Our reward for completing our objective: a Happy Meal (TM) and a weird anime thing-on-a-string.

We abandoned ODAC here. ODAC would continue cycling till morning, looping round NTU then heading back to ECP, our starting point. We're amazed to even have made it this far, and caught a cab back to Fort Road to collect M2. We dropped JY off, then made our sleepy way home. Zzzzz...