Pickles n' Tickles by JJ

THANK you for the well wishes! I'm doing pretty good and having a speedy recovery. Hope I haven't spoken too soon but for someone with shingles, I've very little blisters. Still have all those random shooting pains in the head, and weird phenomenon like my arm feeling icy cool sensations still exists but it's a big relief to be moving around and doing stuff. Not too bad.  Just woke up to news alerts on a woman shot dead at South African Olympian Oscar Pistorius'( right ) home. Media speculations suggest that the arrested 26-year-old is Pistorius and the woman in question was his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. Now this peels my attention away from the rogue Los Angeles Police Department   ex-cop Christopher Jordan Dorner  (He  has my sympathies in some ways though). Currently  perched in front of the TV watching CNN, I can't imagine what led to this awful news alert but to speculate like the rest of the world, although by speculating, I'm allowing myself ...

I'VE been quiet again, and this time, it's the Olympics. Thanks to the official Olympic Channel that has HD quality live streams and replays, I've been hooked the whole time. Been spending many hours, watching and following the games, and in just two more days, it'll all be over and I'll have to get back to routine and reality. So Malaysia's won two medals :) That's a great achievement for us, let's not get into detail because that would entail a long, sensitive debate on local sports management. Datuk Lee Chong Wei brought back a silver in badminton (men's single) in a stressful match against China last week, and yesterday I woke up to an unexpected bronze from our 19-year-old diver, Pandelela Rinong Pamg in the women's 10m event. It's a great feeling to see your national flag being raised against the Olympic rings after a competition. Pandelela is Malaysia's first female to win an Olympic medal and from a sport other than...

SO the first doping accusation in the London Olympics has kicked off with the sensational Chinese swimmer Ye Shiwen. It makes me wonder if a non-Chinese (or just a non-Asian for that matter) swimmer had created the same magic in the pool that Saturday evening, would she be subjected to such heavy criticism. Really. But I can't blame those who doubted/ doubt Ye if you had seen her create that record.  Ye Shiwen won with a time of 4:28.43 Ye not only won gold in the women's 400m individual medley but she also smashed the world record by a second, her own personal best by five seconds, and swam the final 50m faster than both the American stars Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte had managed in the men's 400m individual medley.   Now, that must be mind-boggling too - to have beaten two of world's best male swimmers in that final lap.  No wonder World Swimming Coaches Association executive director John Leonard labelled Ye's feat as 'unbelievable', you ...