what i will like to know is

weekends should be about sleeping in bed and leisurely breakfast, about slowing down and breathing in the flowers, if the smog is not rampant and the sun not scorching down, like it is now. what a damper.

when i was little, mum would start pounding on the door around 10 in the morning, telling me to get a start on my day, the sun is shining up to my bum and all the stuffs that mothers shout about to get your lazy carcass out of bed. in the blink of an eye, i'm all old and cynical now and realisation dawned that i can't sleep late. much as i want to, the alarm in my head jolts to awareness with the early morning sun. such a cruel twist of fate. want most, have not. have most, want not. perhaps it's the pre-conditions of getting old; you don't need as much sleep; regardless of how much you crave for it, apparently your body doesn't. or perhaps it's deeper into the subconscious. with each ticking of the clock, knowing that time left is limited and morbid as the thought may be, it is more effective than all the alarm clocks in the world.

i welcome the early start of a new day, if only it preludes the start of a good breakfast. last weekend we drove around the area looking, searching, hunting for a place to have a nice leisurely breakfast. we were armed, with a thick weekend edition of the newspaper, promising many hours of peaceful reading. it only served to confirm what i already know. the other vexation of growing old, besides creaking joints that wake you up when you toss and turn, is that no respectable eateries are open when your stomach announces its start of a new day. used to be all you needed was breakfast, at 12pm. now, you need nourishment, sustenance, ambience, at 7 am in the morning. but nothing is open. aside from the 24hours macdonald with its vacuum-dried scrambled egg and cold stiffling cafes, and the forever-open mamak places with their heart-clogging nasi lemak and roti canai. you can only have those so often in one week before you keel over, clutching at your chest. if you are willing to wait, willing to deny your stomach satisfaction, at the very least until 8.30am, those kopitiam chains are popping up everywhere faster than mushrooms. again, you can only go for roti bakar and omega 3 eggs so many times before your body trembles at the mere mention of the words. so, when you are almost 40, when you wake up at 7am in the morning, where do you go for a good breakfast? that's what i will like to know.