RIFLE RANGE BOY

My body and mind went overdrive as things typically do while partaking in one of those age-defying mindless Sunday morning recreational run-cycle-run combo of Powerman Malaysia 2023 Edition. Staying mindful of the traffic flow of fellow madmen, the condition of the roads, my heart rate, race timing, the remaining distance to cover and gears, I had my hands figuratively full on top of everything else I was doing. Behind it all, buffering silently in the background, basking in the inebriation of all sanguineous perfusion of flurry vascular tributaries is the creative part of the brain. It wants to keep up with the rest of the body. It, too, tries its hand at neuroplasticity. It sprouts out dendrites to establish long-lost connexions. And it engages in its internal soliloquy. I just happened to be there eavesdropping the murmur.  Life is a battlefield. In modern times, the enemies we are supposed to fight are no longer the co-creations created in His image but the one in the mirror. T...

How to Win Friends & Influence People  Dale Carnegie (©1936) I must be exuding the aura of being a loner with very few friends that someone actually loaned me this book. He must have thought that it must be a sure way to end all my perceived 'woes'. Generally, I do not cherish books of this nature. To me, they appear like learning swimming by reading. Some things can be acquired only through practice, experience, and dents from the School of Hard Knocks. After reading through it, I find it to be more like a handbook for psychopaths. It tells its readers how to skew others' thinking and actions towards the readers' self-serving needs. The psychopath would slowly play mind games to influence his victims into thinking that they are doing something altruistic akin to how Piped Piper would rid the town all the mice for nothing (thank you very much). And how the children would be mesmerised to his enchanting flute music to march in like zombies in...

David Bowie - The Chameleon! The management gurus will always come in say that in order to stay in vogue with the ever changing times, we have to re-invent ourselves. To stay relevant, we have to re-brand, re-train and to stay afloat with the flow. Errr... It doesn't sound right of you are an accountant and you start getting creative in your accounting. What about your trusted medicine man who starts becoming imaginative with his treatment modality and decides to experiment with new treatment avenues just to be different, giving a new meaning to the name of his office - the practice. He gets creative to make you more sick than you really are! And when things go wrong, he would say, "Oops, I'm sorry" and carry on with his next client/patient/victim. Of course those in the artistic arena would benefit and survive from regular face lifts. Their clients are easily bored and forever yearn for something new and fresh. Bowie - still strong! 30yrs on Fresh face ...

Now that we have upped our marathon training to hyper-drive, the mileage have increased - just finished a 32km run. Just when you pat yourself on the back for a job well done through life, you get a smack at the back of the head (ala McGee getting a thud on the head from Gibbs in NCIS), which brings you down from your perch in cloud nine to ground earth! As you are cruising in the still of the 5am darkness at your heart rate pouncing at a steady rate of 150 beats per minute and a pace of 7 minute/km, swoosh like a zephyr overtakes a 74 year senior citizen with a perfect energy efficient posture and no lateral tilt in an almost robotic stance. Then you meet up a 66 year old  who confesses that he is finally going for his first marathon and was jittery about it. He also reiterated that it would have been easier if he were 40! Everyone thinks he had it bad. He had endure this to do this and strive hard to do that in spite of the adversities of life. We forget that there others wh...