Waking Hours

I: In one of the days preceding was the much-anticipated 16G poke. The needle in use now is much larger than before, resembling an undersized drinking straw. Blood tended to pool around a little more than before, where we practiced on each other. There should have been more mosquitoes consequently also, but the sky rained mercifully upon the camp that afternoon.

The way people reacted to the presence of a needle inside their systems are varied, and pretty interesting to watch. Aaron twisted his face in agony, while Andre did nothing but laugh when I pushed my needle into his vein. When it came to my turn to be practiced upon, Nicholas came to me and talked, which took some attention off that thing in my arm. The conversation went something like: What did you take for the A-Levels. I took Physics, ow, Maths, Art and Computing, ow ow. Hey, you took Computing too. So I did. Is it fun, then. Ow, sorry but it still hurts ow, I wouldn't say that, but it was much more fun in the old days oww I surmise, hey, don't walk off just yet...

II: I'm looking forward to lights-out time everyday, probably because of the studying and stuff taxing noticeably upon the neutrons but probably more due to the greater amount of time available to worry about what time to sleep.

In my first night out, I wandered to the National Library and borrowed a book. Most of the alotted time, however, was spent on public transport and walking. In the end I went back late, and soon everyone in the platoon had gotten wind that I went to the National Library. It seemed to amuse them to no end, the reason to which I may never grasp.

III: The book I borrowed was All the Names by José Saramago, published in Portuguese in 1997 and in English in 2000. It told the story of a Central Registry clerk, Senhor José, whom for no reason went to search for a random woman whose profile he found among his secret collection of famous people's profiles. The woman was found to have commited suicide (for no reason either) while he was carrying out his search, and the Registrar, secretly following Senhor José's every move, came to the decision that the archives of the dead and the living are to be merged.

The prose is delivered in a heavily morose spirit, with conversations written in the format demonstrated in (I.). So far I have not found any deep philosophical meaning into the reading, but I have long believed that such things are for finding out later, possibly in the form of a nightmare, a violent awakening.

IV: IV is our slang for "intravenous", but this is not the section about IV. It is (I.)

Andre is entering the UOB art competition armed with ballpoint pens and chicken rice paper. I had bought canvas the weekend before, but only thought of joining because he mentioned it.

Painting might follow the general lines of what I've done in January, or it might not. The urge to start dabbling with portraiture hasn't gone away.