smoking

hmm...from the place i study(tiong bahru office), as i walk from the office to the shopping centre, i notice people standing around smoking. I was thinking to myself, don't they have a smoking-section?But then again, they are not allowed to smoke in the office toilets and there are no other open-air rooms so that's their only choice. I was reminded in my army days when i went to mindef camp. It was not really an army camp but the headquarters of mindef, so you could expect that the facilities are one of the best among the army offices. That time we were supposed to collect some old computers from mindef and use it for our own camp. As we arrived, we decided to head to the canteen. And my colleagues being smokers, they went to the back-alley to smoke. For me, i didn't want to stay alone so i followed them to the back. The alley was dirty..the walls, the ground...there's even a bench there(definietly to cater to those who are smoking). I also noticed that other officers were there in their uniform smoking...hmm...i wondered that time the same question..isn't there a better place for them to "do-it"? Hmm...but i guess that's the most appropriate place for them without flouting the no-smoking rule in mindef. I don't even know whether they are allowed to smoke even outside their offices. It's the same with NUS. No one is allowed to smoke ANYWHERE on campus so one fine day, i went to a relatively deserted study bench to plug in my laptop. NUS has a few areas where you could come face to face with its natural surroundings, and the bench was the closest to it. Suffice to say, there's even a back-alley. After a while, i saw a malay guy taking out a cigarrette as he walked there and smoked away.

Then there's also my lecturer now. As classes are quite long(930-530), we do have a few breaks. There was one day where i attended a make-up class with only me as the student..so it was a 1-1 teaching session. As we came to the end of one of the chapters, the lecturer just mumbled something like "give me a min" and he went out. I then sensed it was break time. It was funny coz usually he would tell me explicitly that it was break, this time he didn't so i had to "take the cue". So after going for my toilet and water break, i came back and waited for him to come back as i surfed the net. When he came back, i could smell cigarette smoke as he talked..so that's where he went-downstairs to smoke.

With all these experiences, it seems quite sad to know that if you are addicted to something, you have to "resort" to such circumstances(go to back alleys, smoke outside) just to keep with the no-smoking rule. I think as a more general application, it's not good to be addicted(to something bad).