FR strikes back!

I was in the fitting room at a certain store trying on new pants and every time I lift up my feet to slip into the pants, I detect a familiar odor. Something closely associated with army, field camp, dirty fellas.
Footrot strikes back and yes, I hate it.
My friend got it and his feet is nauseating to look at. Just picture CRATERS on your feet. *hair stands*
I have to protect the identity of the store, just in case this entry serves as a deterrent to patronise it.
Just tried soaking my feet in hot tea in a pail, it felt like it worked previously so I'll just try again.
If not, I'll have to get potassium permanganate to kill kill kill those frustrating fungi on my feet.

If you have friends and loved ones suffering from footrot, please do not judge them as unhygienic. It's a sad, unfortunate, unexpected, sometimes unpreventable outcome of military training and it lasts for a long time. My feet had never been looking good since last Sept. Always peeling and rough to touch with the occasional soft painful bumps that could fester.

Sleepless tonight.

There's a pain that comes on and off in the middle of my right shinbone, if the unexpected happens, it's probably a stress fracture.
The sum of heavyload exercises and high falls, should have been more sane.
Today's hiking at Bukit Timah was good except for an occasionally irritating adam. However, considering that going up and down is quite a stressful workout and having to carry the 20kg kid occasionally on the slope meant that my suspected stress fracture could have possibly been exacerbated.
It's hard to sleep with the pain.

Where's the sun?

I hardly see it these days.
I miss the handy sunshine that sanitizes my helmet and slippers (unfortunately I just recalled why I keep getting a low-level footrot cos I don't sun my boots =\)
A lot of aunties must be distraught about their wet laundry and half-baked laundered ones.
Plus the children complaining about the half-baked stench emanating from their fav. shirts.
My plan to bring adam to Bukit Timah hill tomorrow will probably be foiled because of the monsoon rain that will almost definitely plague every single day of this month.

Are we to live in the rain or get sheltered from rain?
Now the image of an ancient man stuck in rain appears in my mind.
What will he do?
Is he acclimatised to moving about in the rain and he will never / seldom fall sick cos of it?
Or are we really following our instincts to hide in waterproof areas?

This is the month to sleep more if we think about it. Hibernate...

Moderately minimal.

At times I ponder upon their reluctance to buy/do something, their not-so-happening lifestyles and social circles.
I guess I've found the first clue to it - that my parents are 'moderate minimalists'.
A psychologist might say (well, guessing) that they've adopted such an attitude towards life because they did the opposite and didn't find any incentive or experienced unpleasant things while doing so.
To me, they probably enjoy life as it is now. With those few strings attached.
I'm their biggest rope metaphorically speaking and to be less desirous of all things material leading to easy contentment could be the way for them. I take on their values and attitudes but it makes me misfitting at the same time, at least I feel it that way.
But it ain't that bad usually, if the quality of the intended purchase/activity's good, it's usually green light for me.

Time conscious.

A couple of guys are touching up the last bits of their NS stint.
One guy just converted his licence, others clearing up their belongings.

Then I did some counting.

Dec... Jan... Feb... March... April... May... and finally June 1st 2006.

6 more months to go !

However, I need to remind myself to live one day at a time otherwise 6 months would be a miserable stretch of time. Ignore the time and time will flash by.

I usually have a lukewarm to warm passion for squash but I need to change that cos a SAFSA coordinator might be taking me in for the games and definitely I wouldn't miss the last chance playing for Air Force plus the bonus. ;)

But..... going about that is analogous to getting outta a maze.

-------------------------------

Ever notice that most animal-to-human diseases occur in cows, pigs and poultry ?

Far lesser in sheeps, cats, dogs.
And a corresponding coincidence that beef, pork and poultry are the among most consumed (I suppose so...) in today's society.
So wouldn't one hypothesize that the mad cow disease, pig disease and avian flu are natural retributive means to redress the unjust overkill of these species ?
I'm just thinking along the lines of karma. Heh.
But of course, their living conditions are usually horrid, in-bovine, in-swine and in-avian (think inhuman), thus giving room for bacterial and viral resurgence (as I hypothesize).

But I'd often like to think that these farms are concentration camps and hellish. Ever see castration of piglets ? I saw it on TV before and the gore and piercing screams are forever etched in my mind.

Exercise I must.

Squash's been cancelled this morning and I've been quite sedentary for the past week.
All I hope is for fair weather so that I can run later.
And also the same for tomorrow. My urge to test out my dad's golf club is building up.
Now if only golf is cheaper...

Morphing.

Nick stared at me and looked amused.
" Your face is becoming a skeleton. "
I couldn't agree more. Gimme 2 bones behind my head and I do look like a toxic sign.
While others are fretting about weight loss, I'm struggling to gain weight.

Q: Have I gained weight before?
A: Indeed, ironically during tough, turbulent periods like BMT and Field Defence course.

Q: What causes weight gain ?
A: Torturous exercising.

My ex-classmate JY is a naval diver and he really looked big and heavy during training. But when I looked at his recent friendster photos, he looked back to square 1. We probably share the same ancestor.

Meanwhile, I'm currently tracing my diet and daily routines back during those punishing times.
Did I eat more rice back then ? Yes.
Had plenty of fruits and syrup drinks ? Yes.
So... I'm patronising the cookhouse more frequently these days. Just to see if it happens.

I slept at 2230 and woke up at 0530 the next day. Maybe I should follow suit.

36 chin-ups/day. *ticks* I should try it too.

60 push-ups per set, I'd try.

4km runs.

That's a regimental weight gain programme I probably wouldn't bother with.

*ponderssssss*

Kitchen Mural.

5 elements
Originally uploaded by SM Huang.

Inspired by an ad and troubled by the odd-looking kiwi gold background, I decided to mitigate it with spring yellow scribblings of ancient beliefs, the 5 elements.

E.C.

My first time hearing him was around P6 with his hit, Change The World.
He looked like nerd with his brown rimmed glasses, curly hair and simple clothes.
Today I'm quite a fan of Eric Clapton. Fan of some of his songs actually:
Blues Eyes Blue, Wonderful Tonight, Tears in Heaven and my favourite Layla.

A fan because his riffs and licks are simple yet really groovy.
A fan because his songs make really good guitar songs for me to play.
A fan because his voice is really expressive.

I ain't that sure how his other songs were inspired and produced but the above songs were generally inspired by love and grief in his relationships. Like Tears in Heaven, a song where one can feel part of his grief for his dead son who fell from the 53rd storey house window.
Recently he announced that he would not perform the song anymore because there's difficulty connecting to the feelings he had when he first started on the song, and now he doesn't wish for the feelings to return.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clapton%2C_Eric

After this ?

My mum and I were painting my room this afternoon. It's Nippon Spring Yellow and it made me hungry cos it looked like the filling in Kong Guan's Lemon Puff biscuits.
We were chatting and in the midst of it she said, " I don't know how old I'll be when I become a grannie and after I become a grannie, it's time for me to go. This is how life is like. ".
Having grown accustomed to a life of planning and thinking that something will happen after something, I asked, " So where do you go next after that ? ".

Life as it seems is quite empty and blank isn't it ?
We come into existence from somewhere/nowhere and construct an identity for us to hold through our lives and this identity, or rather we feel that this identity needs to be perpetuated on in the afterlife.
To me, after I'm dead, my consciousness's also dead. I probably won't think about " I , me, myself ".
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, my material body - an aggregate of atoms, shall undergo some conversion and be gone, spread, dispersed.
Considering that I eat and assimilate food from various parts of the globe, my ashes shall be spreaded across world.

Labouring day.

Subconsciously, I slapped the alarm off and woke up late for my scheduled morning run.
After the first 100m, my back started aching and it was the only part I left out for warm up.
The streets were pretty empty except for the occasional buses and Fort Canning was cool and fresh-smelling.

Recalling on how I missed out on joining the Vert. marathon, charging up the hill's steps was a way of compensating for it. Fortunate it is that I didn't manage to register, 'cause merely a flight of 20+ steps left me gasping for air.

I circled the hill via the 19th Century walk path and headed to Macs for a Kaya Meal.
But " Sorry, Sir. It's not available on a public holiday. " was not what I expected at the counter.
But why a public holiday of all days ?

The rest of the afternoon was spent painting my ceiling.
I changed into my smelly clothes for the paint work, ironically after a shower.
When lunch came, I just headed for the market in a undersized SAFRA Half Marathon shirt and crappy shorts, with speckled paint on specs and shoes, arms and legs.

I recalled how one SMU student pretended to be a beggar for his Creativity project and tried the same. It only lasted for like 5 s cos it's really silly.

A ethnic chinese tourist couple walked past and looked lost.
I asked, " Ni Men Yao Qu Na Li ? "
The lady shouted at her husband, " EH! Ta Hui Shuo Hua Yu YEH! "
Again, they probably thought I was malay.