Feet

So the month-long internship has come to the end, and I've learnt a few things:

1. Life can be heaven or hell, depending on who you can work under.

2. Be very careful with self-righteous, sexist people. Be very very careful.

3. There's the perennial habit of shooting the messenger in medical communications. Messengers gotta avoid taking it to heart, or insanity soon ensues.

4. Seek inspiration and meaning from daily experiences whenever you can, just to stay sane. Having to take blood samples from someone with The Cure playing in the background can be a very transcendental experience.

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New shoes. Got a $50 Running Lab voucher after trading in my pair of Adidas ($60 new) that didn't fit me well, then blew it all on a top-of-the-line Sauconys that are plushly cushioned and therefore, suitable for my high-arched feet.

I might sound silly for saying this, but I'll say it anyway:

Feet are important. You'll miss them when they no longer work properly.

So please, please, take good care of your feet.

Running Lab is quite cool, they have this treadmill where the shop guys watch how you run, then recommend you shoes based on that. And then, you'd be able to try out the new shoes, run in them and make sure they're OK before you buy them.

I'm officially retiring my 2006 Nike Pegasus from running training after several hundred km on them, since the cushioning's all compacted and all.

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Just watching the world go by can be fun. Noticing the hard lines on the air-conditioning grilles in the train, looking at sleepy-eyed commuters staring at their shoes, counting down the days to the weekend, while fashion-conscious youth calibrate their pose just so that they look elegant-yet-casual at the same time.

The bright-eyed foreign trainees of SIAEC taking sprightly strides to work, probably eager to send joyous letters and comfortable amounts of dough back where they came from. And in the background, behind the Expo, you see those very aircraft they work on soaring into the sunrise.

The occasional sad kid, the world's weight too heavy for his small shoulders, slumped in his seat and staring at his iPod.

And back to looking at my own shoes again. They could really do with a polish.

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It's the time of the year again where they burn paper and joss sticks that fuck up the atmosphere we breathe, and leave food to feed the stray animals leading to a public health risk.

And the particulate matter swirling around in the air makes my throat irritated. And goodness knows what diseases the animals who feed on the food offerings will eventually spread?

They're fucking with my right to my good health.

Which is more inalienable than the right to practice one's beliefs.

Using religion to justify your 'right' to hurt me is terrorism, so fuck you.