1. Run a complete marathon
One day towards the end of September 2009, I happened to eat at McDonald's with my colleagues at one lunchtime. Next to the counter there was a pamphlet advertising the annual Bangkok Marathon, hosted by Standard Chartered Bank. That very day, while munching on my ultra fatty cheesy fries and bacon double cheeseburger (and swallowing it with a large Coke Zero), I decided to run the quarter-marathon hosted by Standard Chartered Bank on November 22, 2009. Some impulse decided simultaneously to send a bbm to one of my best friends, the Chicken Vet Spaniard, and ask him if he wanted to run the quarter-marathon with me. He agreed, and we registered online. Then after some separate training, we met 5 minutes after the race had started (very poor organization, couldn't find the bag drop off nor our own starting point AND they started 15 minutes earlier than the stated time). Due to our pre-race mishaps and combined with the fact that there were no clear markers for the 10km run (= minor detour during the actual race) our approximate time to finish was one hour and 19 minutes. This is me with my medal after the race!!
Cynics might say that I probably didn't run it at all and am merely posing with the Chicken Vet Spaniard's medal. Especially those who knew me in high school as the Captain of the Yellow Team aka Captain of Delegating Sports Tasks to Everyone Else but Myself.
Right after this race, the Chicken Vet Spaniard insisted that we had to do the 15km mini-marathon which was sponsored by the BTS Skytrain as part of its 10-year anniversary celebrations. (Does anyone else think that hosting a mini-marathon is NOT a celebration per se and is actually a sort of torture...? Hmmmm.) This was held on 7th December 2009, a national holiday given in lieu of the King's Birthday of December 5th, which fell on a Saturday. The weather was perfect: cool with a slight breeze.
*I completed the 15km in 1 hour, 55 minutes. RESULT!
Since the Chicken Vet Spaniard and I proved to ourselves that we could complete the 15km race, it only seemed natural to push ourselves further. Which for some odd reason I actually AGREED to and ended up committing myself to run the FULL MARATHON with him in 2010. 42.2km / 26.2 MILES?! Are you kidding me? That's like running from one end of Bangkok to the other, and back again (and Bangkok is a hugely sprawling city!!) I can't understand what happened - I must have been intoxicated when I agreed to this....
2. Eat at Bangkok's Best Restaurants as listed by Tatler, Thailand
My love of food and restaurants has been cultivated lovingly by my Dad since an early age. I assume it was a mix of his own love of food and fine dining, plus wanting to avoid fighting with my Mother inside the house.. One of my earliest memories was polishing off a whole lamb shank with couscous and roast vegetables inside Spasso, the mediterranean restaurant on top of a building in mid-town Bellevue, in the suburbs of Seattle, Washington, while my Dad was chatting away to one of his friends at the table. Mmm-mm! I can still taste the lamb and feel how tender it was on my tongue, as well as the grainy texture of the couscous.
Enough of tonguely sensations. The point is that I have always loved food and found food to be a great social activity, but I am also willing to dine alone if the food is good enough! One of my other favourite activities, aside from stuffing my mouth and savouring flavours, is reading about food (cookbooks and restaurants), and testing out food activities for myself (cooking when I have a kitchen and trying new places). This seems like a perfectly accomplishable goal, right? Luckily Bangkok is quite accessible and there's so many restaurants that I'm sure I will be able to reserve a table anywhere, fingers crossed!
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