The starting time for the 15 KM category was same as the 10 KM category – 7 AM, which was just as the sun rises. Most participants, like myself, probably won’t make it within one hour; but strong sun shines came after 8 AM, there wasn’t much trees to provide shade along the route at Putrajaya either. The view is nicer compared to last year’s (at Dataran Merdeka) but it does not worth the heat. Hopefully the organiser will consider starting at 6 AM or earlier for 15 KM on future events.

While the tiger strips Team Malaysia T-shirt that I like still look as unique as ever, the finisher medal feels a little over-designed compared to last year’s. The matter of design can be very subjective but the ribbon bar is definitely worse; the three colours stripes has been replaced with logos of Telekom Malaysia and the hook is gone. I am glad that I joined last year, the medal is still one of my favourite medals. Hopefully there will be improvements for next year’s.

I did mention I was a little disappointed with myself – I thought I could handle this one better after started running almost a year but I did much worse compared to last year’s 21 KM half marathon – I walked most of the time after the first 9

It must not have been easy for him – an English speaker to act as a conservative father that couldn’t understand English well in the film; not to mention it was his first movie. He made it anyway and become a rising local actor in his 70s.

In case if you are not aware, The Journey (一路有你) is currently the highest grossing Malaysian film; it’s a film that Malaysians can easily relate to and one that non-Malaysians might find the multi-cultural scenes interesting.

For the running part, the first 10 KM felt quite okay, just a little bit out of breath. Things get tough after I stopped for a while near 13th KM, to continue running after a rest was painful so it was just walk-run afterwards. Took me close to 3 hours to finish even though there was very little elevations (around 30 metres, it was a bridge after all).

As for the event as a whole, I read a lot of complaints about “human jam” at the finishing line and insufficient medals to give away because most full marathon and 10 KM runners completed their runs around the same time. I could only imagine how frustrating and demotivating it is to experience those problems right after finishing a long distance run. Lucky for me and probably most of the 21 KM runners that we did not had those issues. Regardless, the organizer needs to have better planning for events of this scale (over 60,000 participants this year) if they ever going to do this again next year.

As mentioned, I paused on my way to 13th KM, the reason being I got an ear bud stuck inside my right ear as the in-ear type earphone that I was wearing fell out. I said it during the run but I really need to say thanks again to the St. John volunteers who helped to get it out, if you are

The event hold at Dataran Merdeka, Kuala Lumpur also served as the launching of the Fit Malaysia programme which aims to encourage active lifestyle among Malaysians. I would say the presence of Y.B. Khairy Jamaluddin – Minister of Youth and Sports at the event was a good catalyst, just look at the crowd when he went on stage.

I was also glad that I get to meet one of the biggest fans of Team Malaysia – Tok Mo from Famemas Malaysia Supporters Club. He was there with his signature Malaysian flag outfit and of course I would not miss the chance to take a photograph with him.

There were plenty of activities after the run but I did not stay because, well, I just wanted to go get some rest after the run. It was a great event and I will definitely join again if there is a chance. Last but not the least, all the best to all Malaysian athletes in the 17th Incheon Asian Games! Go Team Malaysia!

Before I continue to write, let me just say it was a really nice event. One great thing about the hackathon was that it gathered software developers from different platforms because the competition was not limited to any mobile platform; apps can be built with Android, iOS, Blackberry, Windows Phone or HTML5, there was even a participant who developed on Nokia Asha. The demonstration session was a great showcase of current popular mobile platforms where you could see ideas being implemented on different systems and it was very exciting to see how the apps were made to utilize technology found on modern smartphones like Near Field Communication (NFC), accelerometer and gyro-sensor.

The hackathon was not all about coding, designing or free food (okay, maybe more or less about the free food), there were video games (Kinect and steering wheel included), basketballs, table tennis, futsal and the gym was open to everyone. Not to mention there was an amazing internet connection provided with speed up to 150Mbps which the network team challenged the participants to bring it down. That of course did not happen; perhaps everyone was too busy hacking their apps. There were talks by various speakers from different industries throughout the hackathon and I really enjoyed the great late-night chat with some of the cool guys there about recruitment, software developments, video games and everything in between. Oh, there was a brief detour of the headquarters too and it seems like a really nice place to work.