When I was much younger, people always said this city was a concrete
jungle. Not anymore now, as many high-rise blocks are built of steel and glass.
These days, caged homes, butchered rooms, and shrunken flats are the fashionable
local terms in the media to describe the living space of many. Something should
have been done for that, but I feel despondent, and hopeless about the whole
situation. Hopefully, this is only my pessimism.
Worse than the concrete gridlock of dwellings is a rigid belief in inevitability
and unchangeability. Some people, having a nomadic mindset of following whatever
sustains their survival rather than waiting for the return of the rain, may
suffer less from such a belief system. For others, to survive such a sense of unchangeability
seems futile; living each day becomes forced labour, and the future becomes
today.
Last Monday, after staring at the ceiling for over 30 minutes, I
decided to go hiking in the nearby reservoir. I took the easy catchment trail
because it rained the night before and the dirt paths might be hard to walk on.
The fact was that I feared I wasn’t up to that after a long period of laziness,
and the catchment trail was flat and well-paved with cement and asphalt.
