Through the Swim for a cause fundraising drive and my own Aviva Ironman 70.3 Singapore swim, we managed to raise a total of S$3,083.88!

In under a month, we exceeded our target amount of S$2,000 by 54%, which is pretty impressive. Here is the breakdown of where the proceeds will be going:

• UN High Commission for Refugees: $2,312.91
• Asian Women’s Welfare Association: $770.97

To all those who donated, you can give yourself a pat on the back. Here’s a special mention for you:

• Marios Kallis
• Joeri Gianotten
• Fiveyuan Sun
• Jenny Ang
• Valerie Goh
• Andrew Mason
• Stef Sng
• Joanna Ash
• Anouk van der Ros
• Alynn Teo
• Kerstin Strolz
• Chen Feng Yue
• Greg Chu
• Jaclyn Aw
• Reyhan Suryaditama
• Daren Goh
• Lee Huey Tan
• Lin Koh
• Chris Leo
• Debra Devied-Clayton
• Yvonne Yeo
• My parents
• My parents neighbours in Holland…
• … and a couple of you who wanted to remain anonymous!

Thank you to all of you and whether your donation was big or small, it has made a difference to people who need it.

So how did my swim go? I have mixed feelings about my result this year. I made my cardinal mistake that betrays my sprint tendencies and enthusiastic over-confidence took me in the lead pack at the start². This was not where I wanted to be as a breaststroke swimmer. In my training, I had been keeping a wide berth from crawl swimmers since I had no wish to injure them but this courtesy meant that I hadn’t actually trained to be in the centre of the pack. So I started to panic as I needed to be at the side of the pack and when I couldn’t get there, my OCD tendencies began to come out – my swim cap wasn’t on properly, my goggles began to fog up, the Aviva-branded top became too constricting.

All these things culminated in my nearly bailing out after the first leg of the race. I lost my rhythm and I could feel myself involuntarily hyperventilating. I managed to pull to one side and surface swim with my head above water for a few meters. I saw a lifeguard move towards another competitor that was close to me, who was doing backstroke. Was he bailing? My mind started to also rationalise that same decision, even though I had not made it yet. There’s no shame in knowing your limits. Even the best athletes call in no-joy every now and then. I’m a mere mortal, what can I hope to achieve? I was going to tap out and enjoy a nice ride to the safety of the beach.

I realised that a great deal of the panic came from the pressure I was under too. My colleagues had been training hard and there was a strong air of competitiveness about the proceedings. My girlfriend was stood on the beach watching. There were people watching her watch me. My whole team was watching, both race team mates and work team mates – two folks from another department that I had egged on to turn up to watch the swim. My entire social circle was watching as I’ve not been shy about sharing the details of my training or this swim. And whats more, people had actually committed donations to my cause because of their faith in me. Not a good day to be letting anyone down.

For some reason, panic turned to action. I wouldn’t take the option that was all too easy to take and quit. I was determined to make it through and started to find my rhythm again that reduced my breathing from short staccato breaths to long drawn out ones, increasing the oxygen to my brain. I could think again outside of the blind haze of panic. I was embarrassed and shamed by the episode but I stripped out all those things and focused what I needed to do and swim the distance in the best possible time I could do. That’s not to say the all the support (and pressure) wasn’t there to drive me – I think it helped as a catalyst to bring me out of the state of inaction that I was in. But so many people were relying on me to deliver what I said I would do.

It was tough though. The panic attack had cost me energy, determination and more importantly, time. I went at a pace that I felt would last me the distance. The markers were so far away it made me hesitant to burn out my energy stocks too soon. But I was struggling as I started to feel a stitch on the second long straight on the first lap of two. I blamed my own lack of fitness and sufficient training for that stitch and the doubts almost came again. Instead, I powered on ahead despite trailing back from the pack.

People asked me later whether this year was tougher than last year as I looked knackered as I came out of the water each time. My panic incident hadn’t gone unnoticed and my fellow colleagues swimmers were way ahead of me. What I found out later, to my delight, was that it was tougher this year as I was going out like the clappers – when I exited the water I clocked a time of 46′ 12″, and my officially logged race time was 47’03″. Either way, I was chuffed as I had beaten my personal best from last year’s Ironman 70.3 and also in my lap pool training of 48′. Unfortunately, I had placed amongst the lowest for the Aviva teams taking part – one colleague was behind me and another had pulled out after the first lap.

Thankfully, my team mates who did the cycle and the run helped to make up the time. We won first place in the Corporate Challenge Mixed category and won glory for Aviva. Of course, it helps if you are competing in a small category made up of your own company but nonetheless it is a small victory.

What the swim, and even the Aviva Ironman 70.3 Singapore teaches me, is that you’ll keep pushing yourself to be better and rise to the challenge. Was I satisfied with my result? Satisfied, yes but not content. I think that with these things you’ll keep pushing yourself to stay out of being just content with your performance and satisfied is the best you are ever going to get. I look forward to next year’s attempt.

Lastly, for you pledgers or those who want to get a last minute donation in, please visit my swim for a cause. Donations are being accepted until the 26 March. If you are having any problems with the payment on the donating platform, please contact me.

1. Apparently the organisers follow local superstition and have a virgin plant chilli padis on the race course to ensure good weather. I think they either put too much chilli padi or they used extra virgin oil!
2. my Nike 10k run suffered the same error

Today I’ve taken it easy and I have been feeling a little under the weather with the sudden changes in climate. Plenty of rest, water and fruits to help me load up, in my opinion, on complex sugars that will build up my energy reserves. Of course, this is probably preparation for doing marathons and actual triathlons but I figured I would take any help that I can get.

I’m a little stressed as Mrs. Eshin can attest to. I spent a good thirty minutes running around the apartment trying to figure out where I put my jar of Vaseline. It was where it was supposed to be but I just missed it each time I looked which was about 15 times. That, or we have ghost in our residences. Aside from ethereal friends hiding my gear, more of a worry is the interesting statistic my PR agency told me about the Ironman – out of 15 triathlon deaths, 13 have been in the swim portion. Something to think about before taking on the challenge of an open-sea swim. Having said that I am confident and competent enough, so I doubt anything will happen. One hopes that the jellyfish will stay away that early in the morning.

Thankfully, the flag-off session for teams is the last heat at 7.40am. This means I won’t have to deal with the individual competitors that are trying to overtake me with freestyle. I’m quite confident about my breast stroke and hopefully I can keep up with the rest of my colleagues who have been training fanatically over the last months.

A little disappointed that I haven’t managed to reach my swim for a cause target of S$2,000. I’m about 20% shy of the target amount and so I am hoping that this is going to be made up on pledges. The charity drive for the UNHCR and AWWA ends on March 26, 2010 to allow for pledge donations. I’ll be posting up my times once I have them up via twitter no doubt. If you want to get a last minute donation in regardless, please visit Swim for a cause. Ironically, I’ll be swimming in UN blue cap as this is the colour coding for the Team category.

Right, off to bed to rest. Wish me luck everyone!

I will get around to thanking all of you who I know personally for your help. For those anonymous donations, I’m not able to see who you are but I respect your reasons for being a private benefactor. Thank you anyway!

Last weekend I took part in an open water sea preparation clinic organised by Yellowfish training and sponsored by my company, Aviva. Unfortunately, someone died in swim portion of the Osim triathlon last year. What was surprising was that he was super fit but it served as a reminder that we need to respect open sea swimming, and the inherent dangers with water.

Apparently on the 2km simulation, I beat my time of 48mins by coming in at 42mins. I have my doubts as I don’t think that I would have had such an improvement on my time just because of current and bouyancy. Regardless, I enjoyed the experience as it gave me a feeling of race conditions – the hussle, the competitiveness and the camaraderie.

It’s all a matter of psychology as well. The distances are sometimes hard to chew (yet, I seem to do plenty of swallowing of sea water!). It sounds corny, but it was a real help with having all of your support behind me. Last year, I was doing this to prove to myself that I could do this. This year, the danger was me turning complacent as I had already proved that to myself. When you think you are crazy for being out there, it did help me tremendously that there were people out there expecting me to do my best through their donations and what it represented.

I have to keep going the distance. It’s the final hurdle after months of preparation. I’m keeping the pace up for D-day. All I ask is that you keep the donations coming!

Donate now for Swim for a cause.

With less than 2 weeks to go to my swim at the Aviva Ironman 70.3 Singapore 2010, all of you have helped raise over 50% of the target amount of S$2,000 for the UN High Commission for Refugees and the Asian Women’s Welfare Association. I certainly feel a sense of accomplishment already without even having heard a starting horn!

But the race is not yet finished, and we still have 48.5% of the target amount to go! Any amount that you can donate is appreciated, even if it is a small one. Remember, small drops can eventually fill a bucket.

So get on over to Swim for a cause and donate today.

Actually, it also requires a training programme to explain why I’ve qualified to suffer Singapore with my physique. Given that the last two days saw me recuperating after my fastest pace on Friday, I doubt my routine would be of interest to anyone.

My colleagues, bless ‘em, can rest easy now.

Quite proud of myself to be honest.

On Friday, I ran 11km without stopping. That’s probably the longest distance I’ve managed ever. Not one for being a slouch, I decided to do a 9km run on Sunday during the daylight hours. Not my favourite time of the day to run but then I’m helping Comic Boy with his preparation for the Corporate Challenge at next years Aviva Ironman 70.3 Singapore. He’s doing the half marathon run while I’m doing the 1.9km swim.

At least I have the stamina to hold out… Now to improve my speed. My team mates want me to knock 10 mins off my time from 2009.

A challenge but doable…

While the light was still red, he false started his bike forward with much gusto and appropriateness of looking hasty though his bike never moved one bit forward. Lo and behold, the BMW actually took the bait and accelerated forward before the light had turned. The rider was clever in that he had timed it perfectly so that the driver would have had to stop, take stock, feel embarrassed and start forwad again before the light changed to green.

It was quite amusing to watch.

Regular readers (all 36 of them¹) of this blog will know that I’ve been on a bit of a break since the beginning of summer, so my training hasn’t been all that consistent. Last week I managed to get into the swing of things by swimming at least 3 times, which isn’t all that impressive. On Monday, I did manage a 3.23km run in the morning. With this in mind, I wanted to know how well I do swimming approximately a kilometer non-stop to set my benchmark. Previously, I had been swimming about 1 km in about 38 minutes using breast stroke.

I was a little disappointed to learn that I’m a little slower. Not really surprising given my inactivity, and although respectable, it was no where near my timing for the actual swim I did earlier this year at the Ironman in March. Of course, it was breaststroke so I’m not going to beat myself up too badly over it. I’ll have to start swimming front crawl soon though. One thing I am pleasantly getting reacquainted with is my monumental appetite, which I fear will continue until the event. It also means I crash pretty quickly at night too.

1. Incidentally, to my 36 readers, do feel free to give the occasional comment. If we keep meeting like this, I’ll start getting paranoid.

Advise on pushing through to get past the Step 2 barrier? Commit that exercise appointment to your partner or training buddy. You’ll be less inclined to bail out. Two months with hardly any exercise and it definitely made me lose a lot of what I built up².

1. According to my Polar FT-60
2. No, not my paunch.

With the release of 3.0, I’m quite a happy bunny as I can now upload in fire-and-forget mode and am comforted that I don’t have to wait and supervise the upload of my images to backup. Unfortunately my MacBook fell ill and I’m not sure if I’ll be able to recover two memory card worth of photos. Luckily I have the high quality JPEGs but it is still upsetting to lose the RAW files.

Now, I no longer have to wonder about whether the 300-400 photos, constituting approximately 1 GB made it to Flickr. And, I’m up to date now as I have all my photos on Flickr³.

1. Approximately 3-4 MB in size each
2. To be fair, it could have been my Macs but both being unable to sustain an upload? I don’t think so.
3. Yes, yes, I will make some more public eventually.

So, being early 30′s, I decided to face my biggest fear¹ which is actually my fear of heights.

Like most people, I am fine on aircraft and looking down. However, it is slightly a different matter when the distances are so much nearer and more real like standing at the railings at the shopping mall.

The combination of my girlfriend² and my company³ put me in a position where climbing seemed like the natural choice. So deciding that climbing up a small wall wasn’t so bad, I went for my SNCS Sport Climbing Course Level 1 at Climb Asia.

Actually, it’s not as hard as you might thinking (or impressive). In fact, you get a simple induction into the belaying system, the equipment involved and how to communicate effectively with your partner as the climber and belayer.

I was actually quite proud of myself as I had managed to reach the top of the wall, this being significantly higher than the one that I was forced to climb at work. I went again with the better half and I managed to be get up to the top twice. I recommend to any couple in need of resolving trust issues that you try climbing. I must say that having to lean back of a wall knowing that your loved one is going to be safely lowering you to the ground is definitely one to push the envelope.

Decided to get a pair of climbing shoes for my own as in most sports, getting familiar with your own equipment is probably better than having to rely on rentals where the configuration changes. And since we’re talking about bare feet, it’s probably a good hygiene factor too.

Ended up buying a pair of recommended Rock Pillars Zeals. Apparently good for beginners and something to grow into. Here they are in all their glory.

Must recommend this to one and all as it is quite an adrenaline rush. Of course, once that’s worn off, it’s quite physically demanding along with being required to think on your toes (excuse the pun, for you climbers out there). I think twice or three times a week will give you an excellent upper body workout.

1. Okay, it’s probably rated my third, after cockroaches and something else that sneaks up on you
2. She loves to climb, that one.
3. My company decided it would be nice to use climbing walls as part of their corporate training – woohoo!

However, I must say though that perhaps its not a bad thing that I did. After my Lowepro Slingshot 200 AW purchase, one thing that was still bothering me about my setup was the strap. I have a c-strap to give me extra-stability and the support gives me peace of mind, but the main strap was still not quite what was working for me.

Apart from the big, yellow Nikon lettering that marked me out as an amateur photographer, when I strapped my camera around my neck, it made me look a little dorky. Crossing the chest so that it sat on my left shoulder while the camera hung over my right hip didn’t work as well as it should since the camera jossled around too much. In order to have enough play to get the camera into a good shooting position meant that I would have to lengthen the strap too much, resulting in aforementioned jossling become downright unmanageable.

In fact, what I needed was a sling setup that wasn’t too dissimilar to my army cadet days where the sling would hold the weapon close to your body while you were doing other stuff but when the action was supposed to hit, you had a quick release mechanism that gave you a lot of play to be flexible with the weapon. This I needed for a different type of shot.

Letting the shill at the photo store do his work, he talked me into looking at a promotional video about the BlackRapid R-Strap RS-1. This ingenious strap pretty much does what I was talking about above except without a quick release mechanism. It secures the camera to the body using a cross-chest strap, but the camera itself sits on a guide to allow you to bring it up to appropriate eye-level in a snap. When once it returns to its resting position, it does so at your hip and by the magic of some widgetry, it puts the camera with the lens pointing behind you. Perhaps a video might make it more clear – Intro to the R-Strap.

I’ve tired it out this weekend and I must say that I am impressed with the concept. It really does make carrying the camera a lot easier and more accessible. There are going to be times when I just want to leave the Lowepro Slingshot behind and be alone with my camera. The only thing is that it interferes with the pouches I have on the front of Slingshot but it still works. A little pricey but it works better than a regular strap setup. The only drawback (aside from price) is that the attachment used to connect it to your camera makes it a little bigger and resting the camera right-way up, forces it into a position that puts weight on the lens.

I’ve picked up some books specifically on black and white photography². I’m also back to my 28-80 kit lens from my old N80, shooting it at 35mm with the lowest aperture I can use, which is 3.5. I like grain, so I set the ISO at 1600 for black and whites. At least where possible. I’m trying to develop a discipline with my shooting but it’s hard with so many goodies on the D90 that you just want to play.

Here are some results of my early forays into black and white³ (forgive the lack of post-production⁴ ):

1. While his term entered into the photographic lexicon, he later did say that the pre- was perhaps a little superfluous.
2. Or grayscale photography, since this is probably a more accurate term.
3. Not a complete selection mind, since I’m still trying to establish the workflow. A little hard since my computers are in two different flats.
4. Although, you should really be able to get the photo right without the post-production.

Perhaps it was the same bird of Devilite fame¹?

1. Devilite played chicken it seems with a rather stubborn pigeon it seems – Pigeons Nowadays

I did manage to knock myself out as I nearly landed my wake-to-wake toe-side¹. Nearly landed it but not quite. I hesitated when I landed it and as result, the tip of the board caught in the wake, propelling my nicely into a faceplant.

It bloody winded me like nothing else in the right of my chest, so I think my next wakeboard purchase will be a nice impact vest. I went straight back into it there and then because I didn’t want the fear to set in. I think I got a few good toesides, just shy of the second wake. Enough to know that I’ve eliminated my fear.

Some photos from recent sessions (featuring Board Boy, Azumi and myself):

1. Board Boy tells me that by seeing red and white it is technically a knockout.

Not bad for me since I snagged one this evening at a photographic store in Peninsula Plaza¹. This is an ideal bag for the mobile photographer² and a biker all rolled into one.

So the features?

• Unique design rotates from front to back for easy access to camera equipment. Essentially this means you can swing your bag from your back to your front, open up the camera storage and whip out your camera without the need to rummage through your bag or have things fall out on you. It even serves as a stabilizer where you can rest your elbows to steady yourself. For a biker, the swing action is invaluable as well without the need to disentangle yourself from two straps.
• Ergonomic sling strap and tuck-away stability strap distribute weight comfortably. Nice idea but lets see that in practice after two weeks usage.
• Zip-stop buckles control zipper opening to protect camera and accessories. So when you slide the bag to your front, when you open the camera compartment these nifty buckles just stop you from opening it entirely and have your precious lenses fall out.
• Patented All Weather Cover protects against weather, sand and dust. This is a nice idea and what sold me on the Slingshot versus other Lowepro’s. Tucked away at the bottom of the bag is a small compartment storing a silver waterproof cover. Essentially, this works in conjunction with the bags waterproof nylon making the bag itself waterproof. However, the inner padding facing your back is still not water resistant and I haven’t tried it on a bike during rain storm where the tensile strength might be compromised.
• Customizable padded main compartment with adjustable dividers and 180 degree access provides excellent protection. Sort of a given for any photographic bag.
• Reversed zippers with silent zipper pulls resist sand and dirt. The zippers are designed to be sand and dirt resistance but silent? Don’t think so.
• Hypalon Sliplock loops expand carrying capacity.
• Large outer compartments organize accessories

Not so large in my opinion but good enough for a days serious shooting.

• Built-in micro fiber LCD cloth protects against nicks and scratches. Although I have a cover already, this feature is a useful cleaning aid for your lens.
• Built-in memory card pocket manages multiple memory cards You get about 8 compartments for this as well.

All in all, the Lowepro strikes me as an ideal bag for the mobile photographer. I perhaps should have gotten a bigger one which could fit my laptop but I felt it wasn’t really willing to buy a bag and have to lug my laptop around the whole day while on shooting. The 200 is probably the better pack to go with since it allows a little more room to put non-photography related items but not much.

1. No, not Cathay Photo as it was shut.
2. Of course, most photographers are mobile…

Quite right as now I am finally trying to pull off grabs and 180 wake jumps. Thankfully El Revez was in town to shoot some good shots of me pulling off something a little more spectacular than bunny hops. I am a little gutted that the Wakeboard World Cup² is taking place in Singapore this coming weekend and I’ve agreed to help my old company with their event. Not only am I missing out on some excellent displays of waterbourne aerial acrobatics but also a prime photo opportunity.

Gutted, gutted, gutted.

1. Bobby Mah, Lauch Wakeboard at www.launch2002.com
2. Wakeboard World Cup in Singapore.

I found three articles online that have helped me with my initial thinking although in practice it remains to be seen how well it works.

For a little bit of history into digital workflows, I found it useful to read about how Sports Illustrated handled digital photos for the Superbowl back when digital photography was new in the mainstream. Rob Galbraith’s article on Sports Illustrated’s Digital Workflow was useful in identifying work process and the software utilized by the professionals. Software has moved on so some of the applications have incremented in version number since the article but it’s also useful to look for a particular feature (and why you need to) in a software applications that you might be considering.

The article also give you a good understanding of what format you could consider shooting in. Do you pick RAW or JPEG, or a combination of both in RAW+JPEG? From this, I liked the idea that you want to shoot dual RAW+JPEG, downloading both but working with the JPEG to view, manipulate and play around with. The RAW is archived until such time you want to adjust for publication either in print or online.

The second useful article is My Digital Workflow by Adam Tow. This provides a nice overview on how to break down your workflow into manageable chunks and is a good primer to begin your thinking. What I liked was the system of renaming your photos to something logical (e.g. year_month_day_time_XYZ) and why you would rename them as such. It also provides a good list of criteria you might want to consider when you come to annotating or tagging your photos. At the end of the article is another list of the software packages he uses.

The last article worth reading is Fraser Speir’s My Photo Editing Workflow. The first part of the article is perhaps not as strong in terms of importation methodology but provides a good suggested workflow for those using Aperture’s stacks. However, the most useful part of the article was Speir’s method of rating the photos to get to a good selection that you actually want to publish. He provides a useful set of questions to ask yourself when you are evaluating photos for a particular project.

Having digested some of these tips, I’ve got a rudimentary workflow in the making. Right now, I’m using the tools that were provided from Nikon. So far I’ve used Nikon Transfer and CaptureNX and which gets me to the third stage in Pier’s suggested evaluation process. I did however invest in a 500 GB external hard drive since both of my Macs are at less than 15 GB free space and shooting at RAW+JPEG is going to eat up 8 GB SD cards like no tomorrow.

I’m importing photos from my SD cards onto my Mac using the Nikon Transfer. This is a basic import utility and it can rename the files to something more useful rather than the default naming by the camera. It seems to pair up NEFs (Nikon’s native RAW) with the right JPEGs although it is hard to tell since Nikon Transfer needs to be upgraded to view the D90′s RAW files. I was a little annoyed that the date/time taken on the camera doesn’t factor into how Nikon Transfer transfers and sequences the renamed photos. This means that I’ve found photos to be all over the place from one batch of film.

Capture NX is strong and helps to organize photos and edit them. I haven’t used the editing features yet but rather used it as a method to evaluate my photos. Last night I successfully whittled 300 photos to 48 good 2-star shows which was fun. Hopefully tonight I can play some more with the features. So far what I saw was a handful of tools such as the noise reduction and the horizontal straitening too ((With lots of shots on wakeboard boats, the horizon is always at an angle.

These are some initial thoughts. I’ll post up more about this when I have had a chance to understand and work a little with my workflow.

1. I spent so much time just scanning in photos that I eventually decided to have them scanned onto CD which just added to my cost that made it additionally prohibitive.
2. Admittedly, this did have an F1 event included in this timeline

1. Pulling Off the 2-Wake Jump.
2. Read:”Clear the second wake”
3. And secretly thought I perhaps should take up golf…