January, 2017 - cushtie.com - Page 2

Month: January 2017

  • Millions of cascading plastic discs

    We went to the National Gallery today to renew our membership and give the girls another exposure to art, in the hope in inspires aesthetic judgment later in their lives. (Well, in the morning we went back to Tiong Bahru Park to get sunburn and then croissants at the bakery, but if that of which […]

  • A Woman Of Bangkok

    Today I read A Woman Of Bangkok, the story of a young Englishman in Thailand, fresh off the boat and all too soon obsessed by a bar girl. It’s 61 years old, which is the most disconcerting thing; there’s not much in it that wouldn’t withstand a trip to the 21st century. 

  • Getting out of Bangkok again

    I had two beers last night, woke up today feeling dreadful. Maybe I should lay off the booze until after the marathon. The Westin in Bangkok is admirably soulless, so I had a vaguely disappointing, transactional breakfast (when the doughnuts aren’t a source of infinite joy, something is very slightly wrong with the world and […]

  • Late night ruminations in the Westin

    “I hope you have a nice holiday.” “He’s not on holiday, he’s at work. ” “Ooooh… I hope you have a nice holiday at work.” Such was the message I got from La Serpiente tonight. Just as my wife believes all I do at work is drink coffee and read the newspaper, so my child […]

  • Further travels

    I took a flight to Bangkok this afternoon. Our office in Singapore is only 15 minutes’ drive from the airport, so you can leave pretty late and still catch the flight. I’m staying at the Westin and that’s also close to the airport, just 12 miles away down the freeway. Which would be a nice […]

  • Feeding the Beast

    La Serpiente continues her happy-one-day, sad-the-next journeys to school. Today she was in tears because we took the A lift to the ground floor, rather than the B lift (for unfathomable reasons, the B lift is her favourite and the A a very poor substitute) and the forlornly walked to the bus stop, complaining constantly […]

  • Marathon training – week 4 of 14 (taking it easy)

    This was my first easy week, although it’s hard to consider it that way, after the day I’ve just had, and my aching feet. For three days this week I just had to run my bread-and-butter 40 minute easy run; on Tuesday I did a power test at the track that was really just a […]

  • Two Hours

    Two Hours, a book about marathons, was something I only found out about via a circuitous chain of hyperlinks. DC Rainmaker’s blog linked to a Tracksmith-sponsored piece of photojournalism, where they took pictures of the 3rd and 4th place athletes at the US Olympic trials. (Third place goes to the Olympics, fourth place goes home.) […]

  • Lactate testing

    Today I went over the road from my office to a sports testing clinic, and tried to find out what my lactate threshold is.* There are various other tests of fitness you can do, including VO2max, which allegedly has a testing protocol similar to “Do things as hard as you possibly can, until you vomit […]

  • Fish is Fish

    Fish is Fish is the slightly melancholy, cautionary tale of what happens if you have too much confidence and curiousity, and friends from a different species. As such, I’m not sure of its suitability for bedtime stories.  The book begins with two friends, a minnow and a tadpole, sadly driven apart as the tadpole begins […]