年初二

Once again, I couldn't sleep well last night. I felt as if someone had put really rough sandpaper between the skin and muscles of my right arm. I crawled out of bed at around 3 am, went to the kitchen, and realised that the Panadol tablets were not kept in their usual location. Dad must have put them somewhere else, after giving Mum a tablet earlier in the evening.

The kitchen lamp had blown, so I had to rely on the fluorescent light of the adjacent utility room to obliquely illuminate the dark shelves in that dark kitchen, the dark bottles on those dark shelves, the dark contents of those dark bottles... In the end, I did dig out some Panadol tablets, though I couldn't tell if they had expired, not that I cared at that point. I popped one into my mouth, prayed for the best, and crept back to bed.

When I got up this morning, my right arm was still feeling stiff, but not as stiff as it was yesterday. 感谢主. Dad had taken Mum to the GP while I was earlier still in slumber. During the consultation, Mum had been given an injection, and she was in much better spirits today. Thank God. The GP said that her rashes and vomitting could be an allergic reaction (as if we didn't already suspect that), but he wasn't sure what caused it (which was what we really wanted to know). Mum thought the culprit was probably the pot of red flowers that we had bought for the Lunar New Year, so Dad moved the offending pot outside the house first-thing the two of them returned from the doctor's.

Joe had invited me over to his place today for a steamboat lunch and to meet new friends, but I decided to decline, given the state of my right limb. Balasing and Tiwazz too are asking me out for coffee, but I don't know if I should go out at all. Yet, staying home can get rather depressing, especially when I am not faring well in my online quests for worldwide domination...

That's when books are such a God-send. I was chatting with Enn on MSN last night about the joys of reading, and she really echoed my thoughts when she said that books helped us to gain experience and insights of life that we might not be able to have or live in this lifetime. How true, and how delightful! And I remember saying almost exactly the same thing to Ripley a few days ago! :D

Coincidentally, the tale of Schopenhauer's Telescope (which I have now read up to Pg 145) centres around an unnamed baker who understands the power of knowledge and thrives on a lot of reading. And I mean, a lot.

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Update as of 1150 hrs

Roonz, SV and Tiwazz dropped by for a visit this afternoon at around 4.30 pm. It was very nice of them to come by. Later in the evening, I took up Dad's invitation to head out of the house and see the Mystery Men exhibition at the Asian Civilisations Museum. We got back home at around 10 pm, and then we gathered for dinner. Soon after, Mum's rashes started to act up again. After a quick process of elimination, our fingers pointed to the new brand of coconut milk that was used in the curry. As so, suffering a fate worse than that of the pot of red flowers, the coconut milk was unceremoniously disposed of into the rubbish chute.