What's in a hug?

Badly needed a hug this few days...not the online type but a real physical one.

I believe that hugging has certain soothing effect on people. It makes you feel good and needed. If you hugged an worried or agitated person, you might be able to calm the person down faster when you are loss for words.

Unfortunately, this action does not appear to be widely practise in Asia where Asian lives in a relatively conservative society. Hugging seems to be deemed as intimate action between lovers. Family members may give one another hug but that may also be limited to ladies. Men tend to hold back on such action, perhaps for fear of appearing 'weak'.

I recalled that an ex-colleague of mine who got married and she got so emotional on the wedding dinner that she hugged almost half the guest that were there (including me, haha) !

New Year is approaching, people will be partying. Perhaps during the New Year celebration you could spare a few seconds to open up your arm and give your family members/friends/colleagues a big hug!

Anyone wanna give me a hug? ;-)

Sudoku

Stumble upon a Sudoku website today. It has a lot of Sodoku puzzles. Was quite delighted to find it. A friend of mine had a book full of such puzzle. I was hooked to it at once when I tried it. Tried almost all the puzzle, from easy to difficult. I must say its a very addictive game.

For those who don't know, Sudoku is a logic-based placement puzzle. The rules are simple: each small grid should contain the numbers 1-9 and each row and column should contain the numbers 1-9.

Some numbers are removed from the 9 grid box (each has a 3-by-3 subgrid). The purpose is to fill the numbers without violating the rules. I usually start with the numbers that are without doubt. Those are key to solving the puzzle.

This is the one I solved today:The website have an archive of past puzzles they publised. Guess I will be trying each and everyone of them :P.

StanChart Marathon 2005: My Result

Finally got my result from the Standchart website. Did slightly better than I expected - 1 hr 15 min :P

I was in the 2,506th position in the 10KM run:
Bird's eye view of race when I crossed the finishing line:
My location when the 10KM champ (Takanori Sagawa) crossed the finished line:

He finished it within 32 minutes! Amazing fellow. Incidentally, it was a Kenyan who got the full marathon champion (2hr 15 min). No surprise there I guess.

Now should I try the half-marathon next year?.....

StanChart Marathon 2005

Yes. I have done it! I have completed my 10KM run. Waited for KC to finish his marathon. Took longer than I expected. He finally came in before noon. It was bloody hot. So its still admirable that he manage to complete it.

My own stopwatch said i did it within one hour 16 min. Will have to wait for standchart to publise the actual results.

In the meantime, some photos which I took after the run are here.