still of the night

4am, and the rain is not falling. Why?

damn you haze! you shroud the city in a romantic veil. the definitions were blurred, the lines are not so crisp and stark anymore. its as if the city suddenly became a CRT monitor instead of the hyperreal plasma or LED ones. "looks like you are in a foggy european country," mentioned a friend, but to that i add, it also smells like we are victims of neighboring pollution. since the great '97 economic crisis, we have not experienced a haze as severe as this. perhaps the haze is the sign that the economy has truly recovered so much so that the farmers get bolder, greedier, and more willing to take risks to produce more crops.

i have no idea.

but i don't smell the haze yet. my nose is not that sensitive, and it seems more like some visual FX now than an experiential one. it reminds me of the month spent in northern india where the villagers burn rubbish every evening because they do not have alternative trash disposal options. the air from 5pm onwards starts to get sooty and soon the acrid smell of smoke surrounds every pore of your being like a miasma. that was really bad compared to the haze we have now.

but air quality is really something that i appreciate. having been to hong kong, bangkok, india, kuala lumpur.. it just feels like we have the cleanest air around the region, even if it is that much humid and hot. let's not compare it to europe or the states though, but i think we should be grateful for what we have and crave for it even more. i hate it during the 7th month when people start burning things, or even when I go over to the west side and there's the sour chocolate factory smell in the air.

till the haze and heat goes away though i am staying indoors in aircon as much as possible even though it consumes electricity which comes from burning fossil fuel which also harms the environment.