k r i s a n d r o

It’s week 2 of my training and things are going smooth so far. I’ve clocked 30km so far with a good mix of interval training, quick and long runs. I also managed to keep quite strictly to the schedule without affecting my social life. Or maybe the schedule didn’t affect it because I wasn’t having a social life anyway. Haha!

I did face a little obstacle last Friday on the day for my 8km long run. I made a brisk 10min walk to the stadium beside Yio Chu Kang MRT from KuKuNehNeh’s place and to my horror, the stadium was closed for a rugby event. Not wanting to spend another 10-15 mins walking to Bishan Park for the run, I unwillingly spent $1 for a towel and $2.50 for entry to the nearby gym. And for those who knew that I nearly blacked out from a treadmill last year, it took a lot of desperation for me to decide to run on the ‘belt of doom’.

I had already planned to run a 6min/km pace and programmed it on the treadmill to only find it weird that I am exerting more effort than a 5min/km pace on the roads/tracks. Not sure whether to listen to my body or the treadmill, I decide to stick to the latter and continued jogging while I sped away. Another thing I hate about the treadmill is that while the display indicates that I am running pretty far away, I am still seeing the reflections of the same few guys admiring their muscles as they pump iron in the gym. So much for having good scenery during runs and clearing my mind.

As I approached the 3km mark according to the display, I really felt that the treadmill was vastly inaccurate as I am panting and losing energy faster than I should for a 6min/km pace. I eventually broke down mentally and ended the session after 26mins of running with no correct indication of how far I actually ran. Only fact is that I definitely did not meet my 8km goal and it was both frustrating and tiring at the same time.

Treadmills are seriously not my thing. It is troublesome to change the pace constantly. It is uncomfortable to run in an air-conditioned environment. The stationary view screws the brain up as I jog. The inaccuracy of the treadmill. The vast difference of feel on the belt and on the track/road.

[Image by zebra.paperclip]

I am swearing off treadmills for good.

I left the office at 6 yesterday and since I wasn’t meeting anyone, I strolled out to the lift lobby. Usually, I would maximise my full 1.77 metre frame and stride my way out as though my ass is on fire and the nearest water source is at the MRT. There was already two men waiting at the lobby, right in front of the lift buttons, talking animatedly with their arms flailing around and showing that they were deep in conversation.

Using my great ability of ASSumption, I ASSumed that these men were heading down and I mentally tuned the sounds of their non-stop talking down to a little buzz while I whip out my handphone and do what I always do when waiting. Surf pR0n the Internet. Now, there are 3 passenger lifts that service my office building and they go ‘DING!’ whenever they stop at any floor and the sound of that will be heard even if the lift stops a few floors up or below the level I am at, albeit a little muted. So as I stood there while getting my hourly dose of pR0n the Internet, I realized that I am hearing one too many “DING!”s and the lift hasn’t stopped at where we were at. I pried my eyes away from my handphone and looked at the LCDs on the lift doors and then at the buttons and realized…

THOSE IDIOTS DIDN’T EVEN PRESS THE BUTTON!

I calmly reached past the two men and pressed the button with the grace of person who is sitting down after being sodomised and the chatter of the two men IMMEDIATELY stopped as the button lit up upon being pressed.

A few more “DING!”s passed in total silence before the lift arrived and I bet it was one of the longest minutes of their lives waiting for a lift and a long ride in silence down the 5 floors.

I don’t know if anyone shares the same views as me on this one, but I generally find that male bloggers have it tough compared to female bloggers. Since there is such a wide range of blogging styles, let me tie the success of a blogger by his/her traffic. Of course there are other factors that can determine the success of a particular blogger but let’s face it…

NO TRAFFIC NO TALK!

If someone on the street asks you, “Name me 3 top bloggers in Singapore.” How many of you people will actually name 3 guys or even 2? I think there will be some of you who won’t even name one.

[Image from here]

Why is it so? Are women better bloggers than men? What defines ‘better’?

What brings in the traffic? Someone who writes insightful posts in perfect English or a looker who post pictures and cannot write for nuts?

Go look at the blogs that you guys bookmarked or subscribed and tell me if it isn’t female dominated. If you have nuffnang polls, look at it and tell me if it isn’t female dominated readers.

First, let’s define success of a blog again. It’s largely based on popularity and popularity = traffic. And high traffic does NOT MEAN that a blogger writes well. In fact, I feel that there is a misconception in some people that blogging = writing. So to these people, they feel sick to their toes when they see female blogs full of camwhore-d pictures and little writing and these bloggers have enormous amounts of traffic. Many of these bloggers who enjoy relatively high traffic are often ridiculed by people but the amazing thing is…

Most people who dislike popular female blogs still visit them.

Do people who dislike popular male blogs still visit? Yes! But not as much as the former.

Let me just quote an example. I visit Dawn Yang’s blog often even though I think little of her writing. If you ask me to list a blog post that she wrote about, I really cannot remember anything she wrote. I only visit her blog to look at her pictures. My eyes automatically disregards all the text in her entries. I know many who dislikes her but still visits her.

Why oh why? It’s because the measure of a ‘popular’ blog is not by one’s writing.

It’s measured by how ‘interesting’ it is. And it doesn’t matter if you are an life, insightful, entertainment, food, pRon, LINKster(bloggers who scours the internet for links) or camwhore blogger. Whatever genre you are in, if you are interesting, traffic will come.

Now, let me paint you guys a situation. Let’s compare two imaginary bloggers.

1. Blogger A – Male, plain looking, writes about his mundane life.
2. Blogger B – Female, plain looking, writes about her mundane life.

If you had to choose between the two, who would you visit more often? I can name another 10 examples and most people will choose to read the female blog.

In reality, regardless of gender, people in general just like to visit female blogs more. It’s just the way it is. There are always exceptions but you simply can’t deny the fact that female bloggers tend to get a bigger chunk of the traffic.

Female bloggers are more interesting and hence more popular and there is nothing wrong with it!

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ACCEPT IT!

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And guys suck at camwhoring by the way.

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…Like me…

[Image from flickr]

After attending a wedding on Saturday, discussing about love on a friend’s car and reading about Xinyun’s post here and Limetouch’s post here, I decided to bring up this theory of mine that I once blogged about in my old website.

First of all, I will to define the meaning of “The One”. It might be different from what you have in mind but here it is anyway.

“‘The One’ is the one person who is perfectly suited for you. Humans are imperfect, just like jigsaw puzzles, made of protruding and intruding edges. ‘The One’ doesn’t have to be the most good looking, the most intelligent, the richest nor the kindest, but the very one who will fit on you like a perfect jigsaw piece. “

- krisandro

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[Image from flickr]

I am not saying that if you like to fart and ‘The One’ will like to smell lar, but you do get my definition don’t you?

Religious people, put aside your god for a few minutes as you read this post. You guys tend to believe that the dude “up there” has something in store for you and “The One” is destined to meet you in 7 months, 14 days, 33 mins and 20 secs later because it’s in god’s schedule. The both of you will then see each other and then god will like whisper in your head to tell you that he/she is the one. Of course twitter might get popular up there by that time and god might use that to tell you.

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To really get my theory across to you. Let’s just say that you are a 25 yr old straight male and assume the following which may very well be correct or close to the truth anyway.

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Every person in the whole world is unique.

There is currently 6,602,224,175 people in the world right now.

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The sexes are divided equally.

3,301,112,088 people are women.

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15% of women are lesbians (I am being optimistic here).

2,805,945,275 women are straight.

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Assuming everyone lives to a hundred and you only accept women who are your age or 3 years your senior or junior. 93% of the straight women are not within your age range.

196,416,170 straight women are within your accepted age range.

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Lets just assume that for every 1000 straight and correctly aged women you meet, only ONE is suitable to date. Suitability in this sense means that she meets the MINIMUM standards in the usual factors like looks, intelligence, wealth, personality, etc…)

0.1% of 196,416,170 = 1,964,162 women.

That is ONE MILLION, NINE HUNDRED AND SIXTY FOUR THOUSAND, ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY TWO women in the world who are straight, of your age range and meets your minimum requirements of what you look for in a woman.

And we all know that everyone needs to date a person for sometime before you can really tell if the both of you fit each other like gloves.

So, unless you have met and dated 1,964,162 women in your lifetime, you will NEVER find the one. Unless it’s by PURE LUCK.

So, what gives? I just feel that, at some point in time, you will have to see a person and say,

“Hey, she/he may not be the “The One”, but he/she is definitely good enough for me to love for the rest of my life and I am going to work at it to see that I increase the odds of it ever happening”