Getting above yourself

Yesterday we were at the top of Marina Bay Sands, admiring the view. On Saturday we were in the Singapore Flyer, peering down. At times like that, Singapore seems pretty, a collection of sparkling jewels spread across a black blanket. That troubles me: I like Singapore the further removed I am from it.

I don't enjoy looking down on it much from the window of our flat, but I suppose familiarity may have bred contempt. Or if not contempt, wilful ignorance. When my family arrived in Singapore and made worried noises about the various old Chinese men, scattered around the Chinatown Centre, sleeping wherever they could find a space, I was surprised. I hadn't even countenanced the idea that it wasn't normal to have geriatric chaps lying on a concrete bench in the middle of the night. Do they get up and go home somewhere? Do they just sleep there all night? What happens when it rains?

Or perhaps that's just standard behaviour for a Chinese guy of a certain age: you get up in the morning, sit around until evening, get a deafening blast of whatever 'culture' is being performed in the square, then go back to sleep again. I'm not being much more imaginative by going to the office every day.

The office does have five floors, but that's not high enough. If the Marina Bay Sands has taught me anything, it's that I need at least fifty storeys between me and the earth to be happy. Perhaps I should become an astronaut.

I failed to run for a second day in succession. However, this should leave me fresh for tomorrow morning: perhaps returning to a familiar routine, once more fuelled by tofurkey, I'll have those endorphins making me happy again. This week I've been under a cloud (fatigue? Forecasting-related fucked-offness?), and I want to see the sun again.