dulled and duller

i don't know what, it must be the current prolonged hot spell combined with the staidness of sleepy hollow that makes a man feel out of sorts in all sorts of ways. Outwardly i'm the same as usual, but inside there is a puppy howling to be let out. This is when i feel like taking a trip OUT of the Golden Chersonese and be away for maybe a week or so - so that i can regain my lost perspective on things important and not-so-important. One gets mired in the customary pettiness of day-to-day living simply by being fixed to one place and routine for too long. My cough has almost completely cured itself, after a dose of antibiotics and boiled menthol leaves over a span of 1 1/2 weeks - which prescription was responsible for curing me I cannot tell. ok, first things first. The reason why over 300,000 fellow countrymen have emigrated abroad in the last couple of years? Well for all the usual reasons. Politics, a sense of grievance, greener pastures (this is probably the greatest lure) and a sense of despondency over the state of this here our dear old Golden Chersonese. An old uncle friend kept saying to me whenever we met up: "Get out now while you are still young!" Uncle I'm not young (but i didn't let slip my chronological age to dear old uncle. People always assume that yours truly is young but some are smart enough to suspect otherwise). Uncle was convinced that sleepy hollow was a dying community. And he's probably right in many ways. Short of being overawed by the voting pattern in the next general election which i wearily predict will return the same old folks to their accustomed seats of power (hey look at Hulu Selangor and coming soon-to-be Sibu) and you'll see what i mean. I always could depend on our voters voting intelligently. Or not. So the sense of despondency hangs thick and creepily in the air. Confounding me, adding to my asthmatic cough. The thickness which i caanot swallow anyway at all easily. Oh Lord pity me, a fool! Someone wrote a poem about that. Nice things in life come at a price, so i have grown to believe in a dark despairing way. Nothing oh nothing save perhaps for the love of God, is free. No one is holding you back, and yet you let yourself be a "victim" of circumstance. The loneliness of the long distance runner - aye, if only my hip allows me to run as before. I can understand why people pop themselves. Life is too dull, too tragic, too unbearably stupid and brutal for some of us to put up with. But most of us are too cowardly to take our own lives. And not courageous enough to live it to its fullest. We exist in a twilight of the almost-netherworld, neither living nor dead. Just existing, as a HongKong friend in a moment of quiet reflection once told me. We exist simply because we are afraid. We vote for the same people simply because we are afraid. We let fear govern our lives. We are not strong enough, not brave enough, to change our destinies. Well, but life has to go on! There was the black death, and life went on. There was WW1, and life went on. WW2, and life continued. The polar caps are melting, so what life goes on. It goes on and on and on. Says Monty Python : Always Look On The Bright Side of Life. Oh brother we must!