Five kilometres, painfully

I got out of bed at 6:30. This was a struggle because I was up until 11:30 last night, reading The Postmortal. That was an enjoyably grim story exploring a future where a cure for aging. (It doesn't end well for anyone: there are other ways to suffer apart from getting old.) It's vaguely reminiscient of the Blair Witch Project, crossed with a blog: the conceit is that the whole story is discovered in an abandoned settlement, and for the most part it feels convincing that somebody would be journalling their experience. Not at the end though. I wonder if I would be.

Something for nothing

Comedy Central Asia were running a promotional event in a large white tent outside Plaza Singapura today. I spent all morning sweating and fiddling with computers, then went down to see what was going on.

GI Joe : Retaliation

I don't know why my wife and I were so excited by the thought of going to see GI Joe : Retaliation. The mere presence of punctuation in the title should have warned us off, along with the wholly negative experience I had of watching the previous instalment, back in 2009. But dumbly, we believed the trailers and thought we'd enjoy it. It had The Rock in it - how could it be bad?

Fight Comic

Tonight I had Fight Comic, and I was dreading it because I've had a week of stress, sleep deprivation and very little time to prepare. Whether it's a crick in my neck, a recalcitrant wisdom tooth that likes to tease me by erupting and then hiding again, or insomnia inexplicably provoked by the sussurus of our electric fan, I've been struggling to cope with the world since we got back from Taiwan. Fight Comic is improvised, but it still requires thinking about the topics that might come up and getting yourself in the right mode.

Defeated by the heat

We admitted defeat last night and gave in, turning the air conditioning back on. A week away from the warmth of Singapore has clearly made us weak.

Struggling again

It was silly to spend all week in Taiwan sleeping and resting, only to get the last flight out of Hong Kong on Sunday, depositing us in Singapore at 1:30 in the morning, and only getting back in to the flat after 2am. (There's a separate priority queue at the airport for pregnant ladies, but my wife refused to take it. I was aghast and dumbfounded, as she's not going to have this opportunity to skip the line for a long time now. Maybe that means I could waddle down there with a cushion stuck down my shirt - the family is owed a free ride, surely?)

How do you like those onions?

I woke aggressively hungover this morning. Last night, after being informed of my obsolecence by a Samsung employee, I'd clearly been affected, and ended up drinking heavily at a bar called The Bank, at 1 Shenton, on Shenton Way, which is a street full of banks, and thus a terrible place to give directions to. I suppose if they'd called it The Toilet it would be worse, but only slightly.

Out for a duck

This should not look like a sexy duck to you.

I've been trying to learn a new thing every day, and today I was worried that, stuck at my desk with nobody but a database to talk to, I'd learn nothing. Luckily, I had a 9pm haircut scheduled, and the garrulous barber cutting my hair told me that Salvador Dali had sex with ducks.

Fika

Today I went to Fika, which is a Swedish cafe. In Arab Street. In Singapore. Serving food which is halal. There's a fair few collisions of different cuisines, cultures and nations going on there. A pity, perhaps, that all I had was some cheesecake. I suppose the horsemeatballs would probably have been out of stock.

Undeprived

After a week where I seemed to be in continual mental freefall, my mood darkening with each day, things have been on the up again these past few days. Last night I managed, in an all-too-rare act of discipline, to go to bed at 10. That meant that rather than having to be unloaded from my bed and shoved out onto the cold, harsh streets of Singapore, I woke feeling fresh and mentally capable.

Cats

There are lots of cats that live around the HDB flats.

They can't live in the flats themselves, because cats are noisy and smelly, whereas dogs are reliably silent and fastidious. Many is the postman who will have bad memories of being savaged by a vicious housecat, many is the man who relives nightmares of being chased by a cat off its leash, or of seeing his flock of sheep worried to death by a cat turned loose in a field. They might appear friendly and fetch a ball when you throw it, but cats - oh, hang on, that's dogs I'm talking about. It's easy to get confused.

Some advice

These days, nobody takes advice. And partly that's because advice isn't given at the right time. In a taxi today, the driver tried to overtake another car on the left, situating himself perfectly in the other driver's blindspot. Nowhere is the element of surprise so important as when you're driving.

A wash-out

As I left the office today, the skies were already darkening; by the end of our ten minute walk back home, it was almost black outside, the corridor by the lift plunged into darkness.  And then - nothing.  Singapore's weather was teasing us by putting huge clouds across the sky, and then not actually bothering to rain.

Haircut and a shave

Today I went back to Hound of the Baskervilles for a haircut and a beard trim; it's been almost six weeks since I last addressed the hair on my head, and in the warm humidity of Singapore it grows quickly.

Tiger Balm for a fevered brow

Today we went to Haw Par Villa, or, as it's more commmonly known, Tiger Balm Gardens. It was built as an amusement park in the 1930s, with a (now demolished) counterpart in Hong Kong. Mentholated body rub has been big business for a long time.

ArtScience!

It's eerily quiet in Chinatown now the non-stop Chinese New Year celebration has, well, stopped, so we headed over to the ArtScience Museum by the Marina Bay Sands.

Tired, with birds

Last night the fireworks went off at midnight, which didn't wake my wife from her baby-induced slumber, and also didn't signal the end of the music from below. There was another hour of loud music, and now if I hear Gangnam Style ever again I may punch somebody in the face.

About 1 o'clock it either got quieter, or fatigue finally overcame noise, and I fell asleep, waking up at 6:30 to switch off my alarm, and again at 7:45 to get up and go out to the Bird Park.

Saturday, packed

Today was pretty exhausting; I got up and started running before 7 o'clock, and since Tuesday I've done more than 50km, which, after doing between 5 and 10 in recent weeks while I was tapering down, has been a pretty hefty step up. So far, the experience I've had of higher volumes in 2012 has been standing me in good stead. That, and a diet of smoothies every morning, so I've been filled with a mix of fruit, spinach and hemp powder every morning. If I'd done it on bread and water, I believe I'd be a broken man by now.

Rainy season

I was pretty sure that the rainy season in Singapore was October to December, but it rained this morning before I got up, it rained when I went running, it came down in torrents as I walked to work, and as I walked home it was still bucketing it down. As I reached my apartment, the tops of the buildings around us were invisible in the clouds. Not exactly the 'drizzle' one of my colleagues had mentioned when he looked out the window.

Near miss

I almost didn't make it to the MacRitchie Reservoir 5k time trial today, which would have been greatly aggravating after all the training I've been putting in.