Another day where you can’t see the point


I looked out the window this morning, and all hope was gone. Well, the Central Business District was missing, and had been replaced by a big grey cloud. (For reference, the last picture here is what I should have been able to see.)

No, I don't need my windows cleaned.

Even now, at quarter to midnight, when the haze is easier to see through because there’s less light being scattered by it, it’s filthy out there is still a vague cloud of nothingness where Singapore usually is. The official air pollution index is up above 300 right now (200 is where even the able-bodied and healthy should stay indoors and not subject themselves to the air) and it’s showing no signs of coming back down right now.

I moved away from Hong Kong partly because I wanted better air quality. Oh woes.

Today was Hari Raya, so it was a public holiday in Singapore. We ended up taking a taxi from the car park at the bottom of our block to Ronin for breakfast, and then another taxi to a shopping mall, where La Serpiente could run around in air conditioned safety. She didn’t sleep at all well last night (and as a consequence neither did we) so it was a tough day for us. I passed out about 1:30 in the afternoon, after we’d managed to get our children through the stinking air between lift lobby and our front door. One of our windows had been open just a crack overnight, and the whole apartment stank of smoke until we ran the air purifiers at full blast for a couple of hours.

But let’s extract the positives from this.

Er…

Because we went to the mall, we bought a new large plush toy. This is Destroyer, lying on top of Anthony the Aardvark:

Anthony The Aardvark

We had to buy Anthony because La Serpiente was showing signs of great jealousy when her sister lay on Cecile, her pink octopus. At least now both kids have their own enormous round animal to cuddle when they feel the need. In turn, having Anthony has inspired La Serpiente to lie on Cecile again, after neglecting her bosom buddy for so long.

Because it’s disgusting outside, I had to stay inside, and that meant I couldn’t shirk tidying the house. I’ve rearranged the spare room now so you can get in and out and open all the wardrobe doors, rather than be confronted with a wall of junk piled on top of suitcases. Now at least all the junk is pushed to the foot of the bed, and barricaded with empty suitcases. I threw away a pile of old paperwork as well, much though it pained me to do it, so slowly we’re getting the flat ship shape. It will probably be lovely by the time we leave.

I rested effectively after the past few days of exercise, rather than pushing myself to breaking point. OK, I needed more rest than I got (hooray for four hours sleep) and it wasn’t as if I was training that hard anyway, because I put on a kilo after the beer and chips yesterday, but it’s important to build down time into your schedule. Even if my training schedule is principally down time.

One possible benefit is that if the haze lingers over the weekend (and it’s meant to persist until November) then all the training I haven’t done for the 1500m and the relay will be moot, because they’ll cancel the event. But that feels rather like extracting a silver lining from a cloud via complicated meterological activity. Just sayin’, yo.

Tomorrow it’s back to work – I feel great jealousy for everyone who took tomorrow off so they had a long weekend. Then again, if they’re getting fresh air somewhere else, they’re in for a rude awakening when they return on Sunday night to the exhaust pipe that is the little red dot right now…


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