[Not-so] Stupid O'Clock

Ah... it's stupid o'clock once more.

I had slept almost immediately after my last post, and have woken up about fifteen to thirty minutes earlier in a bit of a sweat with little to no feeling of wanting to get back to sleep immediately, and so, we have this entry.

Anyway, yesterday late afternoon I finally headed out to my favourite bar out in Tai Seng. Thanks to updates to the latest control measures in COVID-19 (in general), combined with a change in the store manager since the last one had moved on to a different place more than a month ago, things felt different even though things were kind of still the same.

The owner of the franchise was not there---I think he's busy with another new bar that he had set up a while back---and so I lost my ``regular patron'' status.

It wasn't too bad though. I was treated well enough like the rest of the other customers, a hallmark of consistent enough customer service. The only difference from losing my ``regular patron'' status was that I had to call for an additional pint of Guinness every time I ran out.

It was an afternoon/evening that was well-spent. I completed the dead-tree version of Computational Geometry in C (2nd Edition) by Joseph O'Rourke, as well as the week's issue of The Economist, the latter of which was, ironically enough, something that I had been failing to do throughout much of this sabbatical. Part of the problem was that periodicals like The Economist were never made available on the desktop version of the Kindle reader, and seeing that I was not commuting nor dining outside as much, I hardly pull out any of my portable Kindle readers---I do most of my reading on the large vertical monitor that I hooked Eileen-II up with instead.

A shame. I wonder what was the rationale for that. I mean, even graphic novels that were purchased over at the Kindle store could be opened on the desktop reader, which makes the whole ``but mah piracy!'' points moot. Maybe it's just some kind of legal agreement that Amazon had to make with the larger periodical providers to have the former act as sellers for the latter---by only limiting it to portable versions of the Kindle program, the distribution of such periodicals cannot then compete with any other desktop version (including behind-the-paywall web browser ones) that their originators might have. The smaller and more niched magazines are probably swept up among the agreements and thus suffer a similar fate.

That aside, I find that as I am getting older and drinking less, my tolerance to that intoxicant is waning. The wane isn't in the sense that I get face-down wasted when drinking them, it's more like my body's ability to recover from it is weakening. Hangover headaches are stronger and come earlier, and it takes a while to clear them up, even with suitable painkillers and remedies (caution: never take whatever you call Paracetamol with alcohol: it can cause liver damage). Since the processing of alcohol in the body requires metabolism processes to occur, my conclusion is that my metabolic rate has decreased due to the age that I am in.

It's not a bad thing. It's just a thing that I need to be aware of. As long as I'm just drinking in a social context (i.e. not bingeing to drown my sorrows), it'll be fine.

Huh, it started raining outside. That could explain the whole sweatiness that I was feeling earlier, having not felt that before under similar room conditions---must've been the saturation of the relative humidity.

Anyway, for a stupid o'clock post, it's not as introspective as to be expected, and reads more like a regular one. Take it for what it might mean.

I'm gonna head back to sleep and wake up at a more normal hour. Till the next update.