I Bested My Run Time in the DODEA 5K

Finally! I ran the DODEA 5K yesterday in 28 minutes and 57 seconds so I came under 29 minutes in my year-long quest to run a sub-25:00 5K. It's so humbling to remember that at one time I used to run 6:15 splits....I just don't enjoy the pain (nor the dry heaving) at the finish line. Despite the conditioning runs I did in the week leading up to this race, I was fatigued for the rest of the day.

I was only passed by one jog stroller this time and, quite frankly, he would have crushed me easily without the jog stroller.

I have to tip my hat to Deb Bute, though. She caught up with me at the turn-around point at Alupang Beach Towers and I vowed I would not be passed by another jog stroller for the rest of the race. So I sprinted a little, then settled into a higher race groove. She caught up to me and I had to sprint once more. For sure, I thought I had her now because she was shoving the stroller ahead and trying to get some ease---ah, ha! weakness! Alas, a little later I heard her daughter cheering her on and looked back to see she was gaining on me again. No. More. Jog. Strollers. I sprinted for a while this time and finished ahead of her.

Richard A Lovett advised in the Jan/Feb 2008 issue of Running Times, "[W]hen you pass people, pass in a manner that indicates you expect them to remain passed." But he also recommended against starting out too fast. I actually started out faster than I normally run this race and that is because I knew I would have enough energy to finish---I needed to push myself and even if I slowed down, I would still be running faster than I would if I started out at my usual rate. This article from Runner's World explains my rationale and the research that supports it.

Drew was tired and didn't come near his personal best of 25:41. He was still satisfied. He's always a "glass-half-full" type kid and we are so blessed to have him. I am still trying to talk Anna into running with us and I might have her with this argument: "You don't play tennis to get in shape; you get in shape to play tennis."

JFK High School is sponsoring a 5K next weekend and it will probably be hilly. The Guam Running Club is sponsoring its Guam Hafa Marathon the same day. Decisions, decisions...do I run the tried-and-true 5K or push myself for the 13.1 miles? No problems deciding on races for the following weekend, though, because that is a flat course to support the American Red Cross.

We finished up the day with more activities: I supervised taking blood pressures at our health display at the NEX in support of American Heart Month. Anna and Drew went to tennis lessons, this time at the Tiyan Tennis Courts because of the ongoing competition at the Tennis Center, and we saw "We are the Pirates Who Don't Do Anything," at the base theatre. What a great movie! It started off slowly, though, and I was very concerned that this movie was not up to standards, but it completely redeemed itself after the slow start. We had a nice family discussion on the short car ride home.

Anna Finally Gets a Trophy

Anna has been very upset since Drew won his first trophy in the Pinewood Derby race. Well, now she has one as well.

In my earlier post below, I talk about her appearance at the Guam Islandwide Science Fair. She took 1st Place in Chemistry in her age group. On May 30th, Guam held the awards ceremony and Anna received her trophy.

So, you would think all would now be settled in the Parker household, wouldn't you? No such luck. Drew is now upset because Anna's trophy is bigger than his.

Everyone is Back!

This is a late post because it has been a very busy week. Gregg, Anna, and Drew got back from Tennessee on Friday, 27 July. They had a great time and I wished I could have gotten the time off from work. They had only a few days of early retiring and early awakening before adjusting to Guam time. Gregg was happy to find Miss Hobbs gone (and she is doing very well at Mom's place, although she was distressed to find other cats living there). Anna and Drew were very excited to learn that Mackenzie, Samantha, Emily, and John would be returning in a few days from New York.

I thought I would have accomplished more while they were gone, but after a week, I was ready for them to return. I felt aimless without them. I talked with Mike next door and we agreed that families give us a reason to come home.

"It's just like magic. When you live by yourself, all your annoying habits are gone!"

- Merrill Markoe, What the Dogs Have Taught Me

Surfing in the Rain

When it rains in Guam (and it does quite a bit), it can really come down. Harder than anything I've ever seen anywhere else. It is not unusual to get three or more inches in one hour.

The kids, of course, love it. They put on their bathing suits and play in the gutters as they overflow from the deluge. Check out Drew in our most recent downpour. (Click image for full size photo)

2007 Guam Islandwide Science Fair

Anna decided she wanted to enter the Guam Islandwide Science Fair in the Chemistry division about a month ago. I asked her what she wanted to do, and she said she wanted to recreate the Mentos-Diet Coke experiment we saw on TV and on the web.

Good choice, I guess. She ended up taking first place in Chemistry in the 3rd - 5th grade division! Not too bad, particularly since she's only in 3rd grade.

Click here to see a short video of her experiment. If you have small kids, you should try this at home because they will love it. Simply get a pack of Mentos (about 15 or so) and one 64 oz bottle of Diet Coke. Roll a piece of paper into a tube with a hole that is slightly larger than a Mentos and long enough to stack about 12 Mentos in a row. Place the Diet Coke on the ground and remove the lid, then place a 3 x 5 card over the mouth of the bottle. Put your tube on top of the 3 x 5 card and directly over the mouth. Stack your Mentos, get ready to run, then pull the 3 x 5 card to allow them to all enter the Diet Coke. Watch the video if you have any questions.

Going Home

Finished the Fiscal Law course I was attending today at Camp Zama and I am finally on my way back home. Still sitting in Tokyo Narita airport, taking advantage of their wireless connectivity. $5 for all day, not bad.

This was probably one of the better courses I have ever attended. Fiscal law is very important in the military, as you can imagine. It is also very complex. Guess who senior leaders turn to when they need it deciphered? Yep, JAG's.

The course was taught by three Majors from the Army's JAG school in Charlottesville, VA. Flew in just to teach this four-day course. They did an excellent job, in my opinion - well worth the trip.

I can now tell you the primary rule about spending money in the military - Purpose, Time, Amount. You can only spend money for the purpose congress intended it to be spent, only during the time that money is authorized (usually one fiscal year), and only for the amount congress authorized. Sound simple? If it was, I wouldn't have had to spend four days in the BASIC course. Truth is, one could dedicate their life to understanding the nuances of budgeting.

I picked up some gifts for Anna and Drew, as always. Also got a gift for Alana and her family, and one for Mark Arquette and his family. Hope they enjoy them - I am not the best shopper.

Off to Japan

On the road again

I am traveling to Camp Zama in Japan today to attend a fiscal law course. United States Army Japan (USARJ) is stationed at Camp Zama, 25 miles southwest of Tokyo. It is supposed to be a beautiful area - I am really looking forward to it.



Of course, the downside is I have to leave Mary alone with the kids during a particularly brutal week for her. She is scheduled to work 6 12-hour shifts over the next seven days. In other words, I couldn't have picked a worse time to travel. I would have turned down the course if I didn't need it for my professional development.

I really have to hand it to Mary. She bears the brunt of my travel. It wouldn't be so difficult for her if her job wasn't so demanding. She has to be at work at 7:00 am normally, but must be there even earlier when she stands a 12-hour shift. This makes it impossible to drop off the kids at school, since they can't arrive any earlier than 7:00 am. She has to rely on friends and babysitters to help her make everything work. Making matters worse, when she stands a 12-hour shift, she doesn't usually get home before 7:30 pm, but the kids have to be picked up from school before 5:30 pm. Again, she couldn't do it without the help of others. All this becomes a management nightmare, but she weathers it pretty well.

The fiscal law course at Camp Zama should be a real help. As I'm sure you can imagine, fiscal law and policies are a huge concern within the DoD. There are literally volumes of rules and regulations governing who can spend how much on what, and when. Many people devote their entire career to trying to master the subject. For me, I just keep those folks' phone numbers and email addresses handy.

I plan to do some video-taping and photography while in Japan. One of my life-long best friends, Mark Arquette, has a son Preston who really wants to visit Japan some day. I promised him some photos and video quite some time ago, but managed to lose everything I had in an unexpected hard drive failure. Ugh. Six months of pictures lost. Anyway, I should be able to get some good stuff on this trip that I can forward to Preston.

Pain Before Breakfast - Episode III

Revenge of the Ache

We ran our third family 5K race today. Anna sat this one out, instead reading a few pages from Abraham Lincoln's biography. More on that later.

The race was held by a new non-profit organization in Guam dedicated to environmental protection. Good cause, but new, so few participated. Worse yet, there were two other big races today as well, causing the number of runners to be even fewer. There were only 80 or so people in this race. But that was a good thing for Drew.

Once again, Drew ran the race from start to finish without stopping once. He cut his time from 35 minutes down to 29 minutes, 58 seconds, and managed to place 2nd in the youth bracket (12 and under). Very exciting for him. Drew was 2 minutes behind a 10 year old, and beat out an 8 year old for 2nd place by a minute. Not bad for a 6 year old on his third race. Must have been the new shoes be bought him.

I will scan the certificate he won when I get back from Japan. I'm traveling there tomorrow for a fiscal law course.

About Anna and the Abraham Lincoln book. She has been saying for the last two or three months that she wants to be president. I'll post about her quest at length later on. About two weeks ago, she found a biography of Abraham Lincoln I had on our book shelf and asked if she could read it. I said yes, of course, but expected her to put it down after getting bored with it. But she has been carrying it around for two weeks with her wherever we go. She hasn't read a lot so far, but she already is telling us things about Lincoln that she has read in the book. Very cool. She says he is her favorite president because he helped people. Wise words for a young scholar. I think the world would be a better place if she was our president. But, then again, I'm a little biased, as you can imagine.

Hong Kong Day 8

Heading Home

At last, we were heading home. But our flight didn't leave until 10:30 PM, so we had some time to kill after checking out of the hotel. This worked out pretty well, however.

We headed over to the Hong Kong side to give Mary one last chance to purchase some fabric. She had been shopping for fabric since we arrived, but couldn't find what she was looking for. So, we headed to Western Market, where we had been told there was a good restaurant and perhaps some fabric stores. We hit the jackpot. Mary found just the type of fabric she had wanted, and the restaurant turned out to be an excellent place to eat.

After finishing lunch, we headed back to Kowloon so Drew could visit the space museum. The museum was a big disappointment, unfortunately. We had set aside two hours to spend there, but walked through in less than an hour. Not much to see, and all the interactive exhibits were broken. Too bad.

We then stopped by a tailor Mary had ordered two dresses and some shorts from and picked up the merchandise. Then back to the hotel to pick up our bags and have dinner before heading to the airport.

The rest of the trip was uneventful. Five hour night flight, arriving in Guam at 5:00 am. Got home about 6:00. Not much time to sleep, though. Drew was due to race his Pinewood Derby car in the Guam championships at 10:00 am. See my next post.

Hong Kong Day 7

Shenzhen, China

We decided to take a day trip to Shenzhen, China, more out of curiousity than anything else. Many go to Shenzhen to shop - primarily for namebrand knockoffs. We, however, spent the day on a "cultural tour" of Shenzhen.

Our trip was part of a coordinated tour of Shenzhen, which is really the only practical way to go. Otherwise, we would have had to apply for visas on our own, which I'm told is a very difficult process. The tour was scheduled to last 10 hours, but did not start until noon. Which meant it was going to be a long day.

We started our tour on a fast ferry from Kowloon to Shenzhen, travel time about 1 hour. Drew loved it, of course.



During the transit, our tour guide filled us in on what we would be doing during the day, and warned us to be very careful of pickpockets and scam artists. After that, we all tried to take a nap to prepare for the rest of the day.

On arrival, we quickly passed through customs and immigration, then met our official tour guide, a Chinese government agent. That's right, China requires all tours be guided only by officially-designated agents. Hmmmm.

Our first stop was a shrine dedicated to some watery goddess holding a piece of broken sky, nothing spectacular. But, we had our first opportunity to speak with our official Chinese tour guide, Benny. He was nice enough, but the way in which he spoke and the things he said made it perfectly clear that Benny was reading from a prepared script written to mislead tourists.

That hotel over there? A five star hotel, the first of fifteen so-called five-star hotels in Shenzhen. The bus we were riding in? Why, it was a brand new bus designed and built by the people of China. The shopping centers and parks? All five star, of course. Benny then proceeded to tell us that China was a modern socialist republic, compared to Hong Kong's democracy. Not communist at all, no.

Everyone was happy, everything was clean. Shenzhen seemed to be the ideal place to live. Of course, the reality was dramatically different.

Everywhere I looked, I saw a people suffering from poverty and repression. Although the bus stayed carefully away from the poorer side of town, we did pass by one high rise housing unit that was so obvious Benny had to say something. That building, he told us, was where laborers from other parts of the country would stay while they were in town to work in the industrial plants. Which helped explain how the city grew from a population of 50,000 in the early 90's to over 10,000,000 today. People were coming in from all over China to work in probably the only semi-socialist (as opposed to communist) city in the country. But not to worry, Benny explained, everyone had a nice apartment elsewhere.

We visited a park along the way to the "cultural" spot we would visit. Here is a photo of Anna and Drew with Shenzhen in the background.



Along the way we stopped at what was called a mineral museum, which turned out to be a jewelry store with some jade sculptures out front. The place was pretty dismal, given that it was supposedly the official "Chinese Mineral Museum."

We finally arrived at the "cultural" spot on our tour, which turned out to be a garden-like amusement park, without the rides. It was called Miniature China, and had miniature villages spread throughout the park that represented the 22 different regions of China. Here is a shot of one of the miniature cities.



Now, don't get me wrong, it was a nice park and provided plenty of interesting sights for the family. But, again, as a cultural experience, it was more like visiting Disney's Epcot Center and calling it a United States cultural tour.

We had dinner at the park restaurant, which I'm told was pretty tasty. Unfortunately, I had developed a stomach bug and couldn't even drink the water. But Mary, Anna and Drew loved it.

We then walked around the park for a bit and took some pictures.



Next we went to the evening show, which was a recreation of a Chinese New Year's celebration. This was very beatiful, and as Anna said, very elaborate.







We caught a train back to Hong Kong, cleared customs and immigration, and headed for the hotel. Finally made it to bed around mignight.

Hong Kong Day 6

Hong Kong Disney

We decided to go ahead and give Hong Kong Disney a try, and am I glad we did. We all had a lot of fun, particularly Drew. He rode his first roller coaster - the Hong Kong version of Space Mountain, and I couldn't drag him off it. We rode it 5 times in a row before we had to leave.



The Disney park here is a blast. Not nearly as big as Orlando Disney, but setup the same way. You can make it around the park at a brisk walk in about 30 minutes. The best part is, there are not that many people. We never had to wait more than 20 minutes for any ride, even Space Mountain.




Another major difference was the food, as you might expect. As soon as we entered the park, Anna and Drew said they were hungry. So, we stopped at the first kiosk we saw. Our choices? Corn on the cob, sushi, pickles, some sort of doughnut on a stick. Drew and Anna went for the corn and loved it.

I locked in on the popcorn and bought some, only to find out it had some sort of caramel/fishy kind of coating. Uck.

But, it was a great day. Far better than we had at Ocean Park. If you come, I recommend going to both if you can, but if you can only go to one, make it Disney.

Hong Kong Day 5

Shopping Extravaganza

The day started off rather uniquely. I was at the front desk talking with the receptionists as Mary K booked a day-trip into China for Thursday. I heard a small comotion, looked behind me and saw Drew on the shoulders of a Chinese gentleman with Anna standing beside him. The gentleman's friends were taking photos, so I decided to snap a few as well.

That is one of the great things about Hong Kong - everyone is so friendly and so polite. A few days ago one gentleman gave Drew an origami swan as we stepped off the Star Ferry, and Anna had another gentleman give her an Easter basket after brunch.

We shopped all day long, starting with the Fleet Arcade, a small mall for US military-only. Spectacular bargains on lots of Hong Kong and Asian merchandise. I dropped a bunch of cash on gifts and household items. Then it was off to Poddinger Road and the Lanes for fabric and clothes shopping. Mary K found some great fabric shops, so I took the kids and headed back to give her a chance to do some solo shopping.

She showed up some two hours later with receipts for two dresses and two pairs of tailored shorts, as well as a few yards of silk and Asian fabrics. Still, she didn't spend nearly as much as I did. Needs to practice, I guess.

Hong Kong Day 4

Ocean Park

When we intially planned our trip, we planned to visit Hong Kong Disney on one of the days. However, everyone we have talked to since we arrived recommended Ocean Park instead. So, we decided to give it a shot. Not too bad, but nothing like Disney back home. Not too many rides, but all-in-all, a great way to spend a day.

It is located along the south side of Hong Kong Island, providing a spectacular view of the South China Sea. Here is a photo we took as we rode the cable car from one side of the part to the other.



Later I caught Drew as he stood in line for the Frog Hopper ride.



Anna and Drew then rode the Frog Hopper and had a blast.



We were all so tired we came home and vegged-out on room service and watched the Discovery Channel, which had a great show on about Chinese History.

Hong Kong Day 3

Easter Sunday

On Easter Sunday, we spent the morning at the Methodist International Church - Hong Kong. Excellent sermon by the pastor, who actually managed to quote Stephen Hawking as he explained how science and religion were not necessarily in conflict.

We then stopped by the Hong Kong Club for brunch. The Hong Kong Club is a reciprocal club to the Union League Club of Chicago, our private club. The view was spectacular - the 48th floor of 2 Central Building. We ate out on the patio - check out the view.



Next we went to the Hong Kong Museum of Art on the Kowloon side. We then spent the rest of the day touring the neighborhood around our hotel, the Regal Oriental, in Kowloon.

Hong Kong Day 2

Star Ferry - Stanley Market - Night Market

What an incredible first day in Hong Kong. We took our first ride on the famous Star Ferry, then boarded a double-decker bus bound for Stanley Market.

The double-decker bus is an amazing experience in its own right. We moved to the front four seats on the upper deck, sitting directly above the driver. This gave us a completely unobstructed view of the road ahead and all the beautiful sights along the route, including Hong Kong traffic and the South China Sea. It felt like we were flying.

We passed by Repulse Bay on our way. Repulse Bay is a beautiful beach community on south Hong Kong island.

Eventually we made it to Stanley Market, where we shopped until we dropped. Drew picked up a warm jacket that he rarely takes off. Anna, Drew and Mary K also bought stamp sets, which are customized stamps with their English and Chinese names carved into jade-like sandstone. I picked up a stylish pair of Crocs.

After a full day of shopping, we made our way back to our hotel in Kowloon. On the way, we stopped for photos of the family with Hong Kong in the background.





We also picked up some snacks on the way home. Anna is seen here eating some of her favorite dried fish. Uck.



Then, after dinner, we decided to do some shopping in one of the many night markets. We took a taxi to Lady's Market for dinner and shopping. Drew got tired, so Mary K took him back to the hotel. Anna and I stayed for a bit longer. I snapped this pic of her just before we left.

Hong Kong Day 1

And they're off! We are at the airport, waiting to board the plane. Drew is so excited he can't sit still. Don't know how he is going to last on the plane for 5 hours. Ugh.