Musings on a Saturday

In the office/lab on a Saturday morning---not my kind of weekend morning, but it suffices given the situation that I'm in. I'm kind of delayed by a few days of work this week because I had to deal with the pressing issue of a right corneal abrasion that I think I sustained from a rather vigorous training session on Monday evening.

It's funny how one doesn't really care about something before anything bad happens, and then when some strange occurrence happens, one is suddenly made aware of body parts, medical histories and physiologies that we never really paid much attention to.

Suffice to say, this condition is currently under medical supervision, and all that I can do is really to wait it out and let my body do its thing about healing the abrasion over. The medication provided is mostly prophylactic in nature, and in some senses to improve the conditions in which the wound has to encourage healing. This of course includes the properties of the reduction of the inflammatory response (via steroid eyedrops), and a general relaxation of the ``twitch'' muscles (via mydriasis and cycloplegia inducing eyedrops). Of course this leaves my right eye in a somewhat ``zombified'' state where I cannot really use it to focus on anything of importance, and this includes reading as well as other important near vision work like looking at the computer screen. Thankfully, my left eye is still doing a superb job in keeping my overall eyesight serviceable, and I am really grateful for the general adaptability of my body in general.

So, what's new in my world? Well, for some reason I find myself thinking about how life would be like to have a couple of sons or daughters about, living with them, growing up with them, and generally experiencing the joys and pains of fatherhood. It's a funny type of warm and fuzzy feeling---I have no idea how to explain this, maybe real-life fathers will know what I'm trying to convey here. Anyway, this bout of emotions and wishful thinking came about when I read this article by Regina Brett (same person who wrote the 45/50 life lessons column). It does seem like one is missing out on a lot of things in life when one does not settle down with a child or two (or more!). Some time back, my parents did mention how they never regretted having us children, even though it meant that my mum had to stop work and take care of us full-time---they never regretted it even though we were trying at times, me particularly due to my general abnormality of having skin that reacted to everything with inflammations. They never regretted it. They never regretted it.

It makes me cry when I think about what they said.

I suppose as I get older, my perspective shifts away from what I can do to improve my personal self towards something a little more... humanising, if there's a term for that. Like the random team-building events that I had gone through with various people from different stages of life, they placed family above everything else, while silly l'il me was still thinking big thoughts about meeting great people and being great in general.

When I was young, I knew about mortality, but didn't really care much about it, since when one was fourteen for instance, dying was among the last things that would come to mind. But as I grow older and reaching my one-third mark of my expected natural lifespan, the reality of mortality is starting to hit me very soon. It is hard to accept that my parents are growing old---in my eyes, they never seemed to have aged since twenty odd years ago when I was first sentient. Yet now as each day passes, I fear for their eventual infirmity, I fear for their eventual mortality. And then it makes me sad to realise that I'm probably not spending much time with them now that I'm ``all grown up'' and have a life to lead on my own. Yet when I am with them, it is hard to say anything else other than what we might usually say each day; too macho or too repressed as a culture, perhaps?

I suppose it's becoming easier and easier to understand what pains our parents went through the older we get, and it is only after some time of being away and pondering about the past and the future that makes one realise how important it is to love them now when they are still here with us.

A Bicycle Built for... Me

While on the one hand I'm really glad to have gotten my driver's licence in Singapore, I'm still tardying a little with regards to getting the state licence in Illinois. Well, I technically still have around 60 days to get it, but that's not a major problem---it's not a problem at all. Driving is of course a most useful skill, but the maintenance and usage of the car is something that needs to be taken into consideration. Considering that Champaign-Urbana is very friendly to cycling in general, I have taken up cycling as my primary mode of transport.

So I got myself outfitted for a bicycle, a hybrid one specifically. A hybrid bicycle is a cross between the gripping power of the rugged mountain bicycle and the light-weighted speed of the road bicycle; a nice mix of the rough and the smooth, the kind of bicycle that is well suited for urban travel. The one thing that feels different riding in the US is that I need to signal with my left hand. That is a little unnerving and disorienting because I'm too used to steering with my left hand and signalling with my right---this switch of hands just takes a little getting used to. And I have now grown to love the fact that my bicycle has a mirror attached to it to look behind without having to turn all the way around, though I still look over my shoulder to check my blind spots should I have to filter left to turn left.

I'm going to build up my stamina and power to make my bicycle a most useful mode of transport, building up to the point that I can easily cover 50+km in a single day (roughly 25km out, and 25km back). I think that will help my overall goal of being stronger when I return.

Okay, enough of the cycling talk---sleeping time.

Undoing Font Hiding in Windows

If you are on Windows 7, and after performing some update, suddenly realise that you cannot see any of your non-Latin characters in your applications when you once could, try this out. Use Win+F2 and type "C:\Windows\Fonts" and press enter. Under "Font settings", make sure that the option "Hide fonts based on language settings" is unchecked. Then, reboot. Things should work okay after that, if not well, erm, you're on your own.