Welcome!: Close to Swine Flu

Monday, 22 June 2009

Close to Swine Flu

How do you guys feel about swine flu?

Well, it's a retarded question, 'cos any pandemic diseases are terrible things. I actually just wanna talk about it in a more personal level.

In news gathering class, we learn that proximity is as an important factor in news writing as prominence, or even timeliness. Although, yes, there is a term, 'news is new', and no such thing like 'it's only newsworthy when it's close to you', but that it true. Of course we are proned to be more affected when something occurs nearby, rather than if it happens in Timbuktu, or somewhere far away.

Well, anyway, I'm kinda rambling here. The relation between these all with my first question about swine flu is that, yes, WHO has upped the pandemic alert to 6, and hundreds of people have died because of it, and not one day passes by without a mention of swine flu in the news. Of course this is an enough reason for everybody to freak out and feel scared.

But, I haven't been really thinking about it, or allowing myself to be worried. It's like those things when you're almost certain it won't ever happen to you, because, well, just because. I'm relatively a boring person, and nothing ever really happens to me. I have never witnessed anything particularly exciting, like one time in Oklahoma, two of my classmates ran back to class, all sweaty and breathless, and they were like, "Oh my god, we just saw a chase between a police car and some bad guy and there were guns!" See, I have never been in that situation, even a minor one. My sister was once in the taxi and it hit another car, so there was this major fight drama, involving both drivers yelling and cursing at each other. Nothing ever happened to me, that the thought of swine flu doesn't even affect me anymore.

The possibility of me actually catching swine flu is even more unlikely than having pigs shooting out of my arse.

So this morning I was browsing news in the internet and read that there were another 16 new cases of swine flu in the island. Normally, I would have known that the victims must have been like, foreign students who just came back from US, and their friends, or their relatives. But these last few days, the pattern has been slightly inconsistent, because cases were found locally. It's like, having set up a parameter to protect a country from the outside, and suddenly finding out that there's a mole inside, and that sort of just changes everything. (Have I been seeing too much '24'?)

Anyway, this is what I came across:

A third cluster of locally—infected cases has also been identified at popular nightclub Butter Factory at One Fullerton.

The new case is a 19—year—old Singaporean female student. She visited the
club on June 17 when three previously reported cases were also there.

The Health Ministry has advised all those who had visited Butter Factory on
June 17 to monitor their health and seek medical attention if they feel
unwell.

At first I thought it was funny, 'cos hey, I went to Butter Factory just last week. And then I checked the date, and oh shit! It was Wednesday, the same night I was in the club.

Actually, we were planning to check out the new branch of the club in Fullerton, and we were already there, trying to get in. But the queue was ridiculously long, which we didn't expect at all. We sort of hung around and said hi to a couple of friends we accidentally met there, but later decided to just leave to another place.

Was the poor swine-flu victim there among the crowd when we were there? Or has she perhaps, gone inside? Only then did it hit me, how close we were, are, to everything. And I don't know, maybe it's not such a crazy idea to think that it could happen to me, to all of us.

I'm not gonna start freaking out or anything, but just a kind reminder to everyone, I think it won't hurt to pay more attention to our health, to take care of ourselves a little better. We will be fine as long as our immune system is good, and that means, don't let yourself get too tired, never miss a meal, drink a lot of water, and rest enough.

And, good luck to us.

No comments:

Quotes

There's a hundred million different ways of writing, and it takes you a long time to sort through that stuff. And I think it takes anyone a long time to find a voice.

You must learn to take the good with the bad, the happy with the sad, love what you’ve got and remember what you had. Learn to forgive, but never forget, learn from your mistakes but never regret. People change and things go wrong, but you just have to remember that life goes on.

The day before I’m supposed to be meeting Caroline for a drink, I develop all the textbook symptoms of a crush: nervous stomach, long periods spent daydreaming, an inability to remember what she looks like. I can bring back the dress and the boots, and I can see her bangs, but her face is a blank.

I don't know, I think that if I could just accept the fact that my life is supposed to be difficult. You know, that's what to be expected, then I might not get so pissed-off about it and I'll just be glad when something nice happens.

I can see now I never really committed to Laura. I always had one foot out the door, and that prevented me from doing a lot of things, like thinking about my future and... I guess it made more sense to commit to nothing, keep my options open. And that's suicide. By tiny, tiny increments.

There's a big fucking world out there. It's messy, and it's chaotic, and it's never, never ever the thing you'd expect. It is ok to be scared, but you cannot allow your fears to turn you into an asshole, not when it comes to the people that love you, the people that need you.

Maybe what I'm saying is, is the world might be evolving the way a person evolves. Right? Like, I mean, me for example. Am I getting worse? Am I improving? I don't know. When I was younger, I was healthier, but I was, uh, whacked with insecurity, you know? Now I'm older and my problems are deeper, but I'm more equipped to handle them.

I am nothing special; just a common man with common thoughts, and I've led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten. But in one respect I have succeeded as gloriously as anyone who's ever lived: I've loved another with all my heart and soul; and to me, this has always been enough.

Later that day I got to thinking about relationships. There are those that open you up to something new and exotic, those that are old and familiar, those that bring up lots of questions, those that bring you somewhere unexpected, those that bring you far from where you started, and those that bring you back. But the most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself. And if you can find someone to love the you you love, well, that's just fabulous.

A woman needs to be held, even, and science has shown this, if its with someone she doesn't care about. Protective hormones are released, and the amount of hormones released depends on the degree to which she is held. The first and best is the complete surround. He wraps you in both arms, whispers how beautiful you are. Second best is the 'arm around.' He is next to you but with one arm around you. Third is he's just next to you on his elbow, but he rests his hand on your stomach and looks at you. Fourth is you snuggling up to him with your head on his chest, while he looks away into space. But when the first best happens, you feel completely, wonderfully like a woman.

So, so what, so fuck off, go home, leave you alone? I'll tell you something Paul, there isn't anything that I've wanted for eighteen years, cause I was a kid eighteen years ago. And if I did still want the same things I'd think I'd gone wrong somewhere, because actually I don't want to marry David Cassidy, I don't want bigger tits, I don't want to do better on my marks. I've stopped worrying about that kind of thing and maybe you should try.

Well maybe there's a big bit of you that's gone missing somewhere, maybe everyone should want something they've always wanted.

Why is it that adults aren't supposed to go mad about anything? You gotta keep a lid on it. And if you don't then people are apparently entitled to say what they like. "You haven't grown up. You're a moron. Your conversation is trivial and boorish. You can't express your emotional needs. You can't relate to your children." And you die, lonely and miserable. But you know, what the hell, every cloud has a silver lining.

I just woke up one morning and didn't feel the same way. Where did it go? It was like there had been a lot of food on a plate in front of us, and we ate it all really quickly, and then there was nothing left. Maybe that's how couples stay together: they're not greedy. They know that what they have in front of them has to last a long time, so they kind of pick at it. I hope it's not like that, though. I hope that when people are happy together, it feels as though someone keeps piling seconds and thirds on their plates.

That is what I have learned: Sex is destructive. Love is nothing to be fooled with. I learned that I was dangerous, not to be trusted. I wondered if my parents were right, with all of their stiff lovelessness. Maybe they knew better. My parents don't dole out love for the deserving or the undeserving. I was learning that love could cost me.

You could say all you liked about reason and logic and common sense and imagination, but when the chips were down, the one skill you needed was the ability to think about absolutely nothing whatsoever.

There is a comfort in never making an effort, but it's a lonely comfort. What keeps you going is the knowledge that you're only playing with only four cards showing. But when you see other people succeeding with their mediocre hands, you have to make a decision. If you turn over that final card you're certain of victory, but it also means you have nothing in reserve.

I’d gone through life believing in the strength and competence of others; never in my own. Now, dazzled, I discovered that my capacities were real. It was like finding a fortune in the lining of an old coat.

Maybe we all live life at too high a pitch, those of us who absorb emotional things all day, and as mere consequence we can never feel merely content: we have to be unhappy, or ecstatically, head-over-heels happy, and those states are difficult to achieve within a stable, solid relationship.