BMW Swap

Nearly a year ago I bought my Bimmer. 11 months ago to be exact.

BMW316i

It was a humble F30 316i – humble by BMW standards, in that it’s basic when compared to its higher-end counterparts like the 320i and 328i.

While my ultimate aim is the technology-advanced BMW i8, I’ve sought after a slight upgrade – the BMW F30 LCI 318i Luxury line.
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Bought used this time, it’s almost as good as new. Driven for no more than 28 days and under 2,000 km mileage, I took up a rich man’s generosity to get his car.

He’s too big for this car, and he decided he should just go for a big Porsche instead (don’t worry about him, he bought 5 of the same cars so clearly he’s doing very, very, very well…)

The interior is classy, complete with brown leather and wood furnishing.

There’s been a huge criticism on the 3-pot engine – even the 316i runs on a 4-cylinder. But given my driving habits – I seldom hit up the sports mode and most of the time I go between PJ and Puchong – this works good enough.

Surprisingly, the 318i clocks 0.3 seconds faster than the 316i on the century sprint despite the 3-cylinder engine, and is slightly more economical on the fuel when in Eco Pro mode.

As far as the swag factor goes, the Alpine white exterior underlined by chrome face lift, combined with the classy interior is a big win for me.

So yes, I traded in my gray Bimmer… albeit with a heavy heart. She’s been with me for no more than a year no doubt, but probably because I’ve experienced heck a lot of breakthroughs in the short time I drove her, and that I took care of her pretty well.

But life continues.

Hustle’s got a new color.

My First Spartan Race

And I was told that of the three races held so far, I had joined the toughest!

I believe that. This is probably twice the difficulty of Viper Challenge. 20 kilometers with 30 obstacles, with a lot of windy uphill and unforgiving terrain. Rain made an already tough challenge, tougher. This made VP look like a walk in the park, really.

Starting the race with a 80% healed lower back injury, I was careful not to injure myself when attempting each obstacle, and when doing burpees for penalty I took my time to cautiously do the routine as to avoid the sharp pain on my lower back.

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I had failed at a lot of the obstacles and half way through the race, legs were giving in – and I consider myself someone with good walking and jogging stamina.

In all, it took me around 6 hours to complete everything. Crossing the finishing line to get the medal felt really good, and I thought it would take nearly forever to get there!

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Not sure if I want to do it again. Right now I feel like getting a shower to wash off cakes of mud, treat myself to a solo pizza party and sleep for a century.

Going Around Jakarta

After DBA Jakarta, we extended our stay here for another two days. Sovi and Jen took time off to bring us around including: Pantai Indah Kapok, Mangrove, Time Machine (my most favorite and highlight of the trip!), Korean BBQ, LemonGrass Bogor, and Little Venice @ Puncak.

Gotta admit, it was a bit of a guilty pleasure as I have a launch coming soon with Kate (this being her first) and I barely got anything done in the past several days.

Great trip overall to wrap up our visit to Jakarta!

DBA Jakarta Live

Last year I went to DBA Surabaya Live as a speaker, this time I returned as an attendee. Joining me from Malaysia are my ex-interns Shaun and Cally, workshop student Kate, and newcomer Charis 🙂

There were about 70+ people attending this event, and even though I think some parts of the event could have been improved we got what we came for: networking and connections building. Plus, catching up with friends in this business from long ago.

Didn’t get much work done as Internet is sluggish at JS Luwansa and with long hours at the event. I reasoned that I do a launch almost every month but it’s not all the time I get to meet my business associates and friends face-to-face.

Spent a good 4 days here receiving luxury and pampered treatment, lol.

After the event, we extended another two more days stay to visit Jakarta…