A sad Monday


There’s a haze settling over Singapore at the moment, possibly the result of forest fires in Indonesia. It’s not rained properly so far this year, just a desultory shower a couple of weeks ago, and as the grass yellows, the air gets slightly tacky and funny-tasting.

I didn’t do much at the office today; I had some bad news, and that, combined with a few other things, meant that at 10:30 this morning I wasn’t at my desk, I was sat on a bench in Hong Lim Park weeping, and that wasn’t the right state of mind to be making decisions about search engine arbitrage, so then I went home.

Where I discovered that as my wife had gone out with La Serpienta Negra for the day, and I had forgotten my doorkeys, all I could do was sit on my doorstep for two hours, and, via the wifi network that seeps underneath our front door and out into the hallway, make decisions about search engine arbitrage.

That didn’t involve much moving about, but the heat and my emotional state didn’t help things much, so when the rest of my immediate family unit returned, I passed out for an hour on the bed, and then woke to find La Serpienta Negra terribly excited to have her father to play with on a weekday. She crawled all over me, she pawed at my face, she drooled, she growled in happiness, all things that lifted my spirits somewhat.

Today is Monday, and that meant that at 6:45 I headed out to Botanic Gardens for another session at the track. I figured that half an hour of vigorous exercise should help clear my mind a bit.

The session this evening was 6x1000m, 6 minute repeats. That isn’t one of my favourites: I like the intense pain and distraction of short intervals, not two and a half times round the track, when my attention flags and my mind begins to wander. I also don’t like the aesthetic failure of not running complete laps, just two and a half times around the track. The air was still bad this evening, leaving an unpleasant taste in my mouth and the back of my throat (like I was in Hong Kong, not Singapore) and my calves were still sore from Saturday’s escapades.

Still, I did ok, or at least I made it through all 6 kilometres, and then as per usual failed to cope with the core stability work at the end (3 minutes of doing the plank, which everyone else seems to be able to cope with, whether they were going twice as fast or twice as slow as me). My feet a little sore, my head very tired, I trudged back to the station, purchased a Cadbury’s Boost (which didn’t provide much of a boost, but enough to get me home without fainting) and returned to Chinatown, where my cheese sandwich was waiting for me.


2 responses to “A sad Monday”

  1. Babies are good for making you feel better. A good run sometimes helps but it depends – sometimes can just seize up with internal woe which is not helpful miles from home. Then again that is where a track comes in useful.

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