Bad memories

A most unfortunate thing happened to me today.

I was transported back to those days of horror, when I was one of many marched down the long dark corridor of gas chambers (well, there were fume cabinets…). The nose caught a whiff of some pungent gas, and amidst gagging and choking, I congradulated myself for scoring one hundredth of the marks for the subject.

“Sulphur dioxide. Aha! Gotta test for sulphur dioxide.”

As you might have guessed, the unfortunate incident was as such. While showering, I pumped some shampoo onto the shower sponge by mistake. After a bit of cursing and swearing, I decided to live with my terrible fate, and pushed a few squirts of shower cream on the sponge too.

It was then that it happened. While rubbing it on my body, I smelled the unmistakable insert-random-vulgarity pungent smell of sulphur dioxide. Instantly, I was thrown into the abyss of my darkest memories with a teacher named after the toilet, in a place smelling worse than that. For a while I thought my skin was going to sizzle and burn away, thank goodness it’s still alright. But there’s this nagging feeling that it might be suffering a slow rotting process.

I read the label on the shampoo and shower cream. There’s some hydroxide on one, and some sulphate on the other. Is that the cause of the gas? I’m sorry, I can’t even remember something as important as what I had for lunch last week, so please pardon my selective amnesia on this one. Yeah, for the professional chem and bio students who bother to come here, feel free to correct me if I’m wrong (which I suspect is most likely the case).

Then again, taking into consideration my failing memory, was that ammonia? There’s some ammonium on one of the labels too.

The irony of it all. Some things you just wish you can forget.

The things in mind…

There’s a need to run away, run back to a little haven. Where? I do not know.

I hate having lots of free time on my hands with nothing to do. I enjoy being busy. I want to be involved in something, many things, everything. Yet, I still shun doing more. Because I want to concentrate on the more important things. What are the more important things? I do not know.

Being busy helps me appreciate stolen time for myself. And I stole a lot of time. But I’ve this selfish want to keep the time for myself, I do not wish to entertain people. A hermit?

I want a good book. What good book do I want? Fiction? I’m tired of unreal fantasty stories of a time too long ago or places too far away. True stories? Do I really want to run away from my reality into another person’s reality? Non-fiction? I thought I’m escaping from the reading of textbooks. The more I read, the more I learn, the less I seem to know.