Weight and Vision

Weight
Yesterday, I took the train to KL Sentral. The train was rather crowded and at my destination station, quite a number wanted to get off the train. As usual, before all those alighting could get out, those boarding were already pushing their way in. And there I was - small and obscure, trying to wriggle my way out. At the same time, a man, tall with a tummy the size of Barney the purple dinosaur's was pushing his way in. As fate would had it, just as we passed each other by, he took a step sideways towards me, and when I took my next step forward, my shoulder and upper arm bumped straight into his big belly. And I was bounced back - yes, my entire body bounced off the belly of that man. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. I don't think he noticed me at all, though. Funny? Ha ha. However, incidents like this and my smallness give people the general impression that I am slim, which is definitely not true. It would be bearable but for these people never hesitating to impose their opinions of my weight on me. All the you-should-eat-more and the-wind-will-blow-you-away and there'd-be-nothing-left-if-you-lost-any-more are really frustrating, if not infuriating. I am, in fact, getting rather sick and tired of having to defend my rights to lose a little weight and get fitter, so there - one fine day, I forced my husband to carry me around and asked him if I ought to try losing some weight. He replied, arms throbbing and wobbly, "YES, you need to lose at least 5kg!" There! Ha ha.

Vision
A friend recently had his eyesight surgically corrected and good-naturedly indulged me and my curiosity by giving me a detailed narration of the procedure. While I was still squirming over the horrid fact that he had lasers firing at his eyeballs while he was fully conscious, he poured on me the emotional impact of gaining perfect vision, after having lived with the blurry one for 20+ years. It is profoundly life-changing for him. In his own words, he would be so much more free to go to places and do things without having to worry about hauling along his contact lenses and lense solution, or the risk of breaking his spectacles and being rendered without usable sight. Then, he told me how he didn't remember ever having seen things clearly unaided in his life before the surgery, and that he, in some strange ways, missed his blurry sight - something which he'd never experience again. It was a whole new perspective for me, who has somewhat good vision all my life (granted, I have a certain degree of short-sightedness and astigmatism, but I had long made peace with a blurry, but tolerably comprehensible view of the world around me, using my spectacles only when I go for classes) While my heart was still reeling from the impact from being exposed to the emotional journey he's going through, he went on to say that he also had a night-vision problem, which could not be corrected by means of spectacles or contact lenses, but was significantly improved by the surgery. What sort of night-vision problem? He explained that he couldn't see light clearly at night. What he sees are halos and starbursts at any light sources - such as streetlamps and tail-lights. But wait - I see those too! All my life I'd seen light sources with halos and starbursts at night, and I thought it was perfectly normal. "No, it isn't normal. You have impaired night-vision as well," he said. But, but.... Oh, nevermind, at least the nights are starrier for people like us, compared to "normal" ones!