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Of Putrajaya, Malaria and Drunken British soldiers!

15th October 2011 marked the 20th running race I partook. This time around, I just tagged a friend along who 'chickened out' (okay, he had a big mullah yielding project to complete) on the Seremban 21km. I competed in the Putrajaya 10km night run, sponsored by Bank Simpanan Nasional - the first bank that most of us who grew up in the 70's started with our first savings book and ATM (automated teller machine) card.
Appa, however, has the pride of working with the bank which came out with the electronic card in the country - Hongkong Bank with ETC (electronic telecard)!
BSN started off modestly as the Post Office Saving Bank. My sisters and I were one of the earlier account customers (A/C 3472, 3838) who used to save our recess money to buy stamps to fill up a savings card. When the card was filled, the accumulated amount would be transferred to the respective accounts. I kept my accounts all the way till 2000 when I started noticed that their counter personnel were very happy whenever the system was 'off line' and there were more 'off-line' often than 'on-line'! Anyway, they had only the basic banking facilities and we had outgrown them requiring other banking needs like current accounts and loans.
Coming back to the run....
This time around, only Raj, Jack and I participated. After a day of business as usual, we took a leisurely drive to Putrajaya and a casual warm-up 2km from the car park to the starting point. We had a good 2 hours to idle off before the flag off at 8.40pm. The 10km track was something we were familiar with. Raj had cycled there with cycling buddies. I had run two runs here. I was wary of aggravating the muscle cramp that I had sustained the weekend before. This time around I was armed with 'tonic-water' filled water in my drinking canister. Tonic water was introduced by the British for its officers in the tropics to combat malaria. It contains quinine, a natural anti-malarial, and is morbidly bitter. To sweeten the bitter medicine, gin was suggested to be added to it, resulting in many happy malarial-free wobbly British soldiers. Quinine is a muscle cramp de-buster and I picked it up from one of the on line forums in cyberspace.
The race proceeded smoothly with the immaculate organization and we all completed the run in one piece. Jack 1h1m, me 1h2m and Raj 1h8m.(unofficial)
The night ended after a late Chinese hawker stall noodle meal to replenish the depleted glycogen stores in our muscle fibres at a road side stall at midnight near our other running kaki, Suresh, who was working. He joined us there. People outside Malaysia can only imagine eating outside their homes late into the wee hours of the morning but Malaysia Boleh! Eat your hearts out!
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Comments

  1. Anonymous28 October 2011 at 21:40

    OMG you still remember my account number. Really superb

    ReplyDelete

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