The past few days have been spent in what one may call 'idle leisure', i.e. not doing any work at all, which is unusual for me.

Apart from an obsession with multi-player Pro Evolution Soccer 5 on one of my hall-mates' PS2, I've done some reading, reading the newspapers end-to-end, and I've also gotten around to reading Dickens' Great Expectations. I have never read Dickens before, mostly because I always thought that his portrayal of the Victorian era was rather gloomy (from what I know of his plots), as well as my instinctive aversion to anything popularly acclaimed. In fact, I started reading the book as a soporific, to help me sleep, but very quickly his wit and the humanity of his characters won me over. I also found his portrayal of children to be wonderfully charming and warm.

I've also lost control of my appetite in the past week. I have managed to lose a couple of kilograms in the past couple of months through my regime of running, volleyball, gym and not eating junk food, but lately I've thought 'what the hell...' and stuffed my face. So this afternoon, in guilt of the double-scoop Baskin Robbin's I had scoffed earlier, I decided to go out for a run, my first in a few weeks.

It was dark by then (6pm), and as usual I went out in just a long-sleeved t-shirt, shorts and gloves. I made good progress in the first couple of km, heading down towards Regent's Park, before start my ascent up Primrose Hill, looping back towards Netherhall. Primrose Hill, which overlooks central London, isn't very high, but nevertheless running up it is about 7 minutes of exertion which stretches into what seems like an eternity of pain (all you long-distance runners out there, bear with this beginner for a while...).

I've run up this slope many times, but this time the lights along the running path were broken, so it was dark near the top. As I trudged up the hill, a bitter sub-zero wind started blowing at me, just as I was pushing my muscles and lungs to carry me through. So there I was in a t-shirt as the biting wind made my whole body go numb, muscles and lungs straining while I couldn't see 5 feet in front of me thanks to the dark and my watering eyes (from the wind). Everything seemed unreal, and my consciousness started detaching from my body undergoing punishment. As I gritted my way through, every second seemed to last a lifetime, but finally I got down the other side of the hill, where the worst of the wind was blocked off by the rows of houses.

I usually only run about 4-5 km at a time, and yet everytime it's a struggle for me to keep going in the final km. I can't help but admire the runners who can run 42 km of a marathon; while they have superb stamina, nevertheless after about 20km they start aching, and the last few kilometres are always sustained through sheer willpower.