About a cough
Sunday, June 17, 2007
I have more or less cleared up all those Threadless tees, and my shipping business has reached a cul-de-sac.
Hence, for the past few days, I have been indulging in my favourite hobby – sitting perfectly still.
Nevertheless, I managed to discover something new about myself. It is quite startling because I have known myself for twenty years, and I was sure that it is about time I stop all the surprises.
Not anymore.
I discovered yesterday that I may well be one of the biggest hypochondriacs in Singapore.
Yesterday, I was supposed to meet a few of my friends at Khatib for supper at 1030pm. As usual, I was late. I only left home at about 1025pm. I wasn’t late on purpose, but I never made an effort to be punctual too.
Anyway.
While I was walking towards Sembawang MRT station, I started coughing. It started as a choked-chuckle kind of thing, and gradually escalated into a full-blown tear-inducing cough.
It was terrible.
My brain, being the incredible organ that it is, could not stop functioning even though I was coughing full-time. I wondered about the reasons for the cough.
None of them was any good.
One reason I came up with blamed my surroundings. I live near the Senoko incineration plant and Sembawang Shipyard and it gets really dusty. How dusty can it get? Well, for example, if I stop moving and stay completely still for half an hour, there will be a layer of soot and dust all over me.
Nah, I’m just kidding.
Anyway, back to the cough. I thought I had swallowed a genetically mutated dust mite or something, and I started having panic attacks.
I speculated that this genetically mutated dust mite might be able to clone itself and I might have a dust mite colony within me in seven weeks or something. I worried that I would have to eat dust in order to sustain this colony.
I don’t like the taste of dust very much.
I tried to calm myself down, despite the panic attacks and the incessant cough. I told myself that it might not be that bad, and that it could just be a case of tuberculosis.
And then my panic attacks got worse.
I remembered reading about a guy called Andrew Speaker. Basically, Andrew contracted drug-resistant tuberculosis, and then proceeded to fly around the world with it.
I wondered if he came to Singapore, and if the tuberculosis is as drug-resistant as it sounds.
Luckily for me and my lung, the coughing stopped just as I reached Sembawang MRT station. It was the toughest and longest 10 minutes in my life.
However, I learnt an invaluable lesson in life – walking makes me cough.
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