I've got a lecture in 30 minutes, so I'll try to keep this short.
I ran last night. Set off at about 1 in the morning and came home at 2; bathed, and slept at 3. It is a very refreshing thing to run again - through an empty campus, past ghost bus-stops and deserted streets, and only the occasional taxi as a reminder of the city; of life. I was left to my own thoughts. They were synched, more or less, with the soft croon of The Temper Trap in my ears - yes, I fixed my iPod, thank God for the iPod Restore Utility - and for that one hour, all was good.
There is a point in a run where your resistance to lactic acid begins to give way, and you start to feel like you'd give anything to stop running, to be hit by a car, to die. I quite like that feeling. It reminds me of Judo. Of Sensei and handstand pushups and the team lying on the ground together, completely wasted, with odd burn marks on equally odd places. Every time I run I return with the memory that I've been through worst things, and that no matter what NUS conspires to throw my way, nothing beats the pain of running a full one hour and coming back to the dojo and sparring again. Or the pain of doing all those things during the STPM year.
I sometimes think, at night, of the could-have-beens. I realize that I've had an incredibly lucky run so far. (Only through God's grace, of course, but people probably don't want to hear that.) I had the balls (and/or the stupidity) of standing up to the Malaysian education system - of ignoring my grades - and I got away with it. That's not entirely a good thing. I'm not sure to this day what advice to give to my juniors, who're in Form 6, because I don't think I was a particularly good Form 6 student. I don't know how to tell them that what they're learning is near useless, but necessary - for it's in the university where the good stuff begins, but to get into university one must run the gamut of good grades and good co-curricular activities and all the rubbish society tells you you need to go through.
And ... ahh, 30 minutes is up. Have to run to the lecture theatre now, probably going to grab an apple strudel on the way.
Life is good.
I hope to run again tonight.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
To Wit
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I want to run alone in the middle of the night (or morning) but this IS MALAYSIA where there are mat rempits and people get pulled into bushes to get raped or your ipod gets stolen or mok mok appears and jumps at you with red lipstick polka dotted cheeks *takes deep breath*.
Yes, this is why feelings that are better let out are left bottled inside because from all the emotional crap, some physical problems still get in the way (refer to the above paragraph)
Oh. Well.
Mmmm, apple strudel. :)
mel wrote that on Blake btw. i think the line of laptop and room ownership is slowly being blurred now that I am in college. Oh mel, how she destroys my life so sweetly=3
1)i think you are replacing judo with running as your new wife.
2) Temper trap is my homework buddy, along with DCFC. In fact death cab is playing as I write this. Tis shall drip with emoness.
3) Is good to hear your iPod working well again.
4) Ah yes, that argument abt good grades again.
5) I am not a running person, but I get the same exercise by running flights of stairs everyday. I refuse to take the lift :) And that gasp for air at the end of the run, even if close to asthmatic, is a kind of release. Is it the same? Maybe not. hmm.
6) Life is good.
7) Run again.
8) Happy early good friday.
@Mel: Mmh apple strudel is right. =) [Running at night's not as romantic as I make it sound - it's more Oh God Oh God Oh God by the time you're done.
@Ida: Good Friday now. Studying. Or at least trying to.
Am very surprised you like the Temper Trap so much. =) I quite enjoyed their album ... until I played it the 20th time. Now a bit err ... sick of it.
Okay, back to work!
Post a Comment