Here in the office. It’s 1:00PM, Hong Kong lunchtime.

I’m sitting at my desk with a hot bowl of Wei Wei Premium Saday instant noodles, hungrily sipping the soup while I haplessly look at my computer monitor and its schfifty-five open browser tabs. I’m feeling a tad bit shitty today, but then again I realize, no one ought to give a damn but me.

So at what state of affairs is my life in?

These days, I manage to consistently shirk away from things I really want to do, settling down into a routine which I have been in for the past year:

• Wake up at 730-8AM
• Take a bath, dress up, drink coffee
• Walk to work
• Prepare a breakfast of oatmeal
• Answer customer service tickets while eating oatmeal
• Get down to real writing work + make new layouts for an online parenting community
• Have lunch
• Work some more
• Walk home
• Have dinner
• Watch TV
• Go to sleep

Though I do engage in some routine breakers, they’re few and far between.  A good example would be that time I found out about Restaurant City (facebook app), in which case, just take my whole schedule as written above and insert “check restaurant” in every other line.

I feel an overwhelming sense of paranoia and ennui. At this exact moment, I am as exciting as a bowl of half-eaten noodles.

Thinking about the lives of the people around me, I can’t help but be a little jealous. My friends in this country are mostly young, carefree and quite unaffected by realities and responsibilities (needless to say they aren’t married) and at every week they have a new story to tell: of a lunatic colleague who runs away and gets herself lost within 4 days of flying in and starting work, partying the dawn away in an island with a french unemployed young boules player, and an invitation by a mysterious stranger into a secret opium den.

I have no such stories to tell, and I am burdened by no changes and challenges. My life is more like molasses crawling down a wall – inch by inch – falling inevitably into a predictable future.