Insomnia.

I hardly ever draw in my sketchbook in the time that I've been here, and I wonder why.

But speaking of the haze, there is a terrible haze going on in Southeast Asia right now. Due to the smoke arising from people burning down rainforests in Indonesia, Singapore is now awash in this sickly gray smear. While it is not as severely affected as other surrounding countries, it was bad enough to cancel a hot-air balloon riding activity,with the argument that you wouldn't be able to see anything once you were up in the air. (This hot-air balloon riding activity organized for the EAP students, by the way, is less glamorous than it sounds; the hot air balloon is still tethered to the ground while you are up in the sky, hence giving you a panoramic, albeit stationary view of the whole country.)

As I was telling a friend earlier today, this is far worse than the perpetual smog that casts a yellowish-brown cloud over Los Angeles. I never thought I would hear myself saying that.

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In the rare weekend when I am not country-hopping, I try to make time to volunteer at the Communicable Disease Center, where myself and a handful of other volunteers spend about two hours talking to AIDS patients and giving them massages for their weakened leg muscles.

Unlike other developed countries, Singapore does not give a state subsidy for drugs used in treating AIDS patients, which makes them unaffordable for the average Singaporean. Government officials claim that the focus should be on prevention education as opposed to treating those who already have the disease, which cannot be completely cured. While a big portion of HIV infections in this country are contracted by heterosexuals engaging in sex with prostitutes (whether locally or overseas), some activists argue that Singapore's antiquated laws making gay sex illegal between men creates an obstacle in improving the situation.

In this tiny country where littering is illegal and people celebrate the opening of yet another gargantuan shopping center, human cases like the homeless and HIV patients are considered gross anomalies in the backdrop of an island state that is clean, abundant with green foliage and rich.

The Mid-autumn moon festival reached its end on Friday, so when I came to volunteer on Saturday all the patients had a plastic inflatable toy by their beds and a whole mooncake sitting on their food trays. This is to remind them, I suppose, of the world that extends beyond their hospital beds.

One of the patients I spoke to is one of the luckier ones; he will be able to rejoin the outside world in less than a week once he has gained enough strength in his leg muscles to walk on his own. His name is David, and he instantly picked up on my American accent when I first met him. He told me about how he used to live in the United States before he eventually got a job as a marketing consultant in Taiwan.

David said that as far as he can remember, he has never traveled extensively for his own personal pleasure, even though his marketing consulting job sent him to countless countries for business-related trips. He said the ultimate example of this was how he had been to Beijing many times but had never seen the Great Wall.

He's forty-two-years-old, and once he is released from CDC, he will be going on a two-month trip to the United States, starting with Los Angeles to visit an aunt, working his way up to San Francisco and heading back to his former hometown of Chicago, where he once lived as a college student. I imagine that it will be a wonderful vacation for him.

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Peter was the first patient I massaged when I first started volunteering at CDC, so he has always been a personal favorite of mine. I was told today that he passed away last Saturday.

His friend Tan, a fellow patient, was depressed by this recent event. Even though he had a limited command of English, my friend and I tried to console him as we massaged his legs and arms, which ached from a recent injection.

"You shouldn't be sad," said my friend, who is better than I am at saying the right things at the right time. "Your friend in a peaceful place right now. He doesn't have to suffer anymore."