Sleepy Afternoon

It was a blazing Friday afternoon. The sun beat down on me as I made my way back to school from KFC. The lunch was filling, but not satisfying. A lot of food had become bland to my jaded tongue. Fast traffic zipped past me, and the heat of the sun squeezed beaded sweat from my forehead. I could feel the breath of the breeze about me, but it did little in mitigating the scorching rays of the sun. My full stomach induced a heavy spell of sleepiness in me, and I longed to return to the air conditioned staffroom of my school, where I could lay my head between my crossed arms on my desk, and took a short, but invigorating nap.

I had problem keeping my take-away Pepsi unleaked in the plastic bag I was holding. It kept tilting sideways, causing the cold,fizzy liquid to continuously drip  through the straw hole in the center of the plastic lid. At last an idea struck me. With the layer of the plastic bag under my hand, I clasped my fingers around the paper cup lid, held it in an upright position and thus prevented more Pepsi from emptying out. When I reached the staffroom, I would drain the liquid in the plastic bag into my mug. Not a single drop of it would be wasted.

By the time I reached school, I went into the hall to see how the choral speaking practice was coming along. The students still had a hard time performing as a group, but they had made a huge progress in memorizing the script.  I was on the verge of giving a comment, but thought better of it.  Let the students deal with everything themselves. After all, they were in the process of learning, not me. I hated to act as if I knew everything. Sometimes, students have more creative ideas. They fare better by fixing their own weaknesses.

When I was back in the staffroom, only a few colleagues were typing away at their laptops. The air conditioner in my area had been switched off and I turned it on with a desperate urgency. I adjusted the louver in such a way that more cool air was directed towards me. Feeling utterly relieved, I undid the top button of my shirt and sipped my Pepsi through a straw. Getting fidgety and impatient easily, I could not nurse my drink like some of my colleagues. The soonest I finish a drink, the more satisfied I become.

Too lazy to drain the remaining Pepsi into my mug, I bunched up the plastic bag, poked the straw into it and sipped the liquid greedily. When a hollow sound came through the straw, I realized that I needed to wash my oily face badly. I went to the sink and gave my face a few splashes of water.  If I had brought my towel with me, I would have rushed into the toilet, scooped up some water from the always- filled-up  basin and sluiced it over me without self-restraint. Too bad I could only imagine that!

After patting my face dry with some tissue paper, the same feeling of sleepiness came over me. I returned to my place, rested my forehead between my crossed arms on the desk and gradually fell into a deep sleep. When I woke up, the choral speaking practice was over and the students told me they would return to school for practice on Monday and Tuesday next week. "Thank God holidays have started," I thought to myself. "The students can practise all day for two days in a row before Chinese New Year." As long as they could make a good use of every hour, they would look good to excel in the inter-school competition on 26 February.

Today's writing has nothing significant at all. I usually find it relaxing talking about the most trifle things in my quotidian life.