Four and a Half

I'm in the perfect frame of mind now to write about something that I came to be intimately familiar with, during my year as a banker in HK.

Fatigue.

Tiredness.

Sheer bloody exhaustion, felt down into your bone marrow.

I've been so tired that I've fallen asleep in situations where people normally do not fall asleep in.

Like, while standing in the middle of an elevator.

Or dreaming split-second micro-dreams in between footsteps while walking out of the office.

Or in the middle of brushing my teeth.

And those were the situations when I was ALREADY out of the office.

While still IN the office, quite often I found myself waking up to a page full of a single letter that happened when I fell asleep midsentence like thisssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

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....

You get the idea.

An acquaintance from one of the Morgans told me before that the maximum number of pages that Microsoft Word accepts of a single letter is apparently 4.5 pages: I've never reached that apocryphal limit before, but have had to delete whole pages of single-letters before.

On the flip side, a recurrent nightmare I had while I was safely at home, sleeping, was to dream of waking up from a nice dream, only to realize I had fallen asleep without realizing it, and was way past a hard deadline. (Come to think of it, my recurring nightmare was a nightmare within another nightmare. How fucked up is that?)

Sometimes I wonder if I will suddenly wake up and find myself again in the middle of the bank office at 7am with a hard deadline, and my secretary coming in to work. Then again, if that really did happen, I'd probably just walk out of the office straight away and... laugh!!