half empty, half full

Now every Sunday, after work, I pack my bags and scoot on over to the company gym, hang around there until my legs start to buckle and then I head back home, to a sumptuous dinner (prepared by me, so of course it's sumptuous). Basically, I like to earn my calories.

Now tonight, it was a little different - maybe a little too much Red Bull.

And despite the aches and light-headed ringing in my skull, I donned my running shoes and took to the road - something I havent done for quite a while.

I make a left at the main street, stick tight to the pavement, and instead of heading towards the Thomson Medical, where I was born, I make cryptic left turn.

I say cryptic, because it takes me up a gentle slope, one that keeps winding upwards steeply, towards the place known as Tan Tock Seng Hospital. And I while fighting for breath and energy, and desperately trying to put one foot in front of the other, it suddenly hits me WHY this is cryptic in the first place - I was born in Thomson Medical, and it is likely *this* is where I will die - in a hospital.

I mean, this is where people die, seriously. Not that death isnt always serious, but it just seemed utterly surreal. And it seemed pathetic that just a few moments ago, I was fighting for breath, struggling to make it up this slope, and i thought to myself, "Man, this is KILLING me. I am DYING here."

It made me feel small. Really small. And insignificant.

But like all slopes, that road behind Tan Tock Seng comes to a peak and the slope moves away from me now, leading towards a junction in Moulmein.

And as I hit that downward slope, I pick up speed with the night breeze in my hair and the cold air in my shirt - and then I think perhaps I'm looking at it wrong.

This isn't where people go to die. This is where people go to live.