I'm Not Crazy, I'm Just A Little Unwell

The title is robbed from Rob Thomas, in case it gives a familiar ring to you. Life can bite back unsuspectingly to make an occasional reminder that we are always at God's mercy. Recently, I recommended to a good friend in KL the supplement that I take which had kept my motor running without a break for months, and guess what? Yesterday I was unwell. I got a sore throat with a mild fever and now I am having congested chest and coughing out phlegm every now and then. A friend of mine told me that it is the change of weather which my body hasn't got used to. I called the office to declare 2 days of sick leave. Something I am not so proud of. But it's better than spreading the bugs to others at workplace. In my 2 days of sick leave, I slept most of the time just to kill the time. When I woke up I cooked for myself. I couldn't bring myself to walk out of the door to eat outside. Luckily, a day before I got sick, I had done food stock-up. So I had cereals with fresh milk, mushroom soup with garlic bread, oranges with yoghurt for breakfast. And nasi goreng for lunch. I have taken the advice from a friend, the mat stylo of dubai, that I should not eat nasi goreng that looks like a hospital unhappy meal. So I had fried decapitated anchovies (without the black internal parts) , shrimps, calamari rings, tomatoes, capsicum, cili padi and eggs, all fried together with the cooked rice in one wok, and I ate right from the wok so I could minimize the dish-washing. It is a plain lie if I say, the taste of the nasi goreng was heaven-like. It's just OK since I am sick and I had it when it's very hot, so my senses couldn't be very judgmental about the actual taste. But if I were to redo it tonight, I will add a few more pinches of salt.

My running training is affected with my health condition. Having to take a few days off from running, I decided it is a perfect time to wash my running shoes. Despite the modern technology we are enjoying today, the method of washing shoes now has not changed much from the way I washed my school shoes when I was seven years old, when velcro and viagra were unheard of . First, I removed the shoe strings, soaked the shoes and the strings in a pail of bubbly soapy water, left them for a few hours and came back to do the scrubbing. The differences, this time, I scrubbed it gently, not to scratch the fabric that characterised Reebok and I got the job done without messing up the bathroom with the white chalked diluted paste or what it was called back then, 'kapor kasut'. Back in the early 80s, I scrubbed my cheap Bata shoes (well, not so cheap back then, but having a pair Bata shoes was better than the Fung Keong's pair) with all the might that a boy could possibly muster, in order to make them spotless and then for the soothing and whitening effect, I applied the white 'kapor kasut' on the fabric and yes, the shoe strings got the same treatment or else the white tone wouldn't match and my mother would nag even on that. So today I have a newly washed pair of shoes that could make any mother proud.

Since I just mentioned my mother, I got a call from my wife, telling me that my younger brother is warded in the hospital for dengue and my mother as expected, is worried sick. Some eight years ago, I had my encounter with the blood-sucker Aedes and consequently, down with dengue, but there was nothing to worry about. I got a jab. Blood was taken everyday to monitor the platelets level. After less than a week, I was fine. But nowadays, dengue has a new twist and the twist can now be deadly. But what can I do here, other that praying for God's mercy, again.