almost...

usually, over the weekends, i would stay over at my grandparents' place. for two good reasons.

1) it is generally more comfortable than my own home.

2) having said that, it means i'm under no restriction or curfew - well, i'm not facing any limits anyway, but the comfort factor is often the key in deciding where to stay over the weekend.

staying over is free - except for certain situations, where i have to help my grandfather out with some manual labor. the helping part is kind of the rent i pay, though i willingly oblige.

these manual labor usually include tasks out in the garden. considering that my grandfather is well over 80, it is no surprise that i'm asked to help out. now, some facts about him:

though 80, he drives like he's 18. this translates to (somewhat) reckless changing of lanes, jamming the brakes, and weaving in and out of heavy traffic.

he still has black hair. i have no idea how he manages that.

his temper is still fiery, though somewhat subsided compared to when i was young.

nevertheless, i was asked to climb on a ladder and help remove some dead leafs and twigs that were clogging a large "canvas roof" which is directly under the largest tree in the garden - our mango tree. the mangoes are generally sour... perhaps the weather and soil conditions do not allow for sweet mangoes. the tree is there "for display."

and so i climbed up the ladder, which is chained to one of the canvas' metal poles. the poles, all four of them, are L-shaped. the ladder is chained to one of the poles via a metal ring chain wound around the pole and one of the rungs. this would mean that it is secure, but not safe for climbing.

how could i miss that? my brain only told me that it was secure, and then it assumed that it was safe for me to climb. i climbed to a height of about 1.5m, and adding my height to it, my head reached about 3.3m.

frankly speaking, falling from 1.5m is no big deal. however, as i was clearing the dead vegetation halfway, the ladder "slipped" and i was hanging mid-air, holding tight to one of the metal poles that formed the roof's structure. for that split second, there was no fear of falling at all. no fear of anything at all.

what's the reason? i couldn't figure it out at all.

balls of steel?

i climbed to a nearby trunk of that mango tree and slowly got down. when my maid asked me if there was anything that happened to me, i replied, "only mosquito bites."

hmmm.

that's just a reminder to get me to pay attention to such tasks in the future.

PS. hmmm... i wonder how it's going right now. nah... just very random.