And, once in a while, my mobile phone beeped with updates on my father's struggles to stay alive.

Pacing about the Shangri-La hotel here, where the Asean and East Asia summits were being held, I did what I always do when I need to calm myself in the thick of such hubbub - I thought about what my perfect day would be.

The late American history professor Morris Schwartz - the hero of Mitch Albom's best-selling Tuesdays With Morrie - once wrote in his own book, Morrie In His Own Words, about his perfect day.

He would start with a breakfast of two perfectly soft-boiled eggs and proceed to soak in the afternoon sun with his friends, doing nothing beyond savouring a simple meal and maybe a glass of wine or two.

How simple and how true - and how good it is to know that, whatever one's circumstances may be, it doesn't really take very much at all to make a person happy.

Children, perhaps, are our wisest teachers in this, with their ready smiles revealing white, bright teeth shining against all adversity when the world's cameras pan on them amid mired misery in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

If you want to test whether or not that thought holds water, all you have to do is try and answer this question: What would I do or ask for if I could not possibly fail?

It may be one of the most difficult nuts ever to crack as having to choose only one ultimate high goes smack against our survival instinct to want more than we need, and crave what we do not have.

The ancient Greeks had it that happiness was being able to use one's skills and talents in meaningful ways, with enough scope and challenges to help one grow.

I used to believe that fervently. But now I wonder if we are all pursuing our potential too much, such that our bodies are rebelling, our families are becoming strangers to us and, in the end, we live lives of mindless repetition instead of mindful reflection, as veteran counsellor Anthony Yeo would say.

Desperate to quell the pain from blows to our good sense and conscience from a heart-hardened world, we are more than ever confusing indulgence with necessity, leading to myriad races to keep up with not only the Joneses or Smiths but also the Tans, Mohamads, Krishnans, Subramaniams, de Silvas and so on.

When will the newest hot rod, hot doughnut, hot property, hot school and hot arm candy et cetera, et cetera ever be enough?

'Never' would be about right.

So why are we searching for peace with tools that are as bluntly bluff as they are sharp in needling our egos?

I haven't an answer to that, but I think that, sometimes, when the world seems much too much to contend with, it may help to remember what you really want to make a perfect day.

I have been blessed with many memorable days, including the wet April night in 1986 when I found myself at my first, and only, Malaysia Cup semi-final at the Merdeka Stadium in Kuala Lumpur.

That match between Selangor (yay!) and Kelantan (boo!) was almost cancelled because of a four-hour thunderstorm. An hour before match time, I got down on my knees and prayed for the rain to stop. It stopped.

And guess whose team won 3-1 that night?

Then there were the rare still hours in August 2005 when I sunned myself under the skylight of Passione, a wee orange and green trattoria in a London lane, eating the most luscious olives I have ever had amid happy, warm chatter and the clatter of plates licked clean.

Nibbling on the olives, which tasted like the coldest, clearest water with teases of toffee and the greenest grass, I recalled an old Irish blessing: Deep peace of the running wave to you/Deep peace of the flowing air to you/Deep peace of the quiet earth to you/Deep peace of the shining stars to you/Deep peace of the son of peace to you.

If I'm in a mirthful mood and am asked what a dreamy day would be for me, it would invariably involve waking up with the man I love in an apartment in London.

Fortified by fat chips and hot cocoa, we would chat deeply about faith, hope and love while mooching about museums, libraries and musty old bookshops before walking in the park at dusk.

But that's solitary, selfish and entirely possible to plan - well, save for the man - which rather robs it of joy and wonder.

Still, standing in the lobby of the Shangri-La this week under the false cheer of its big showy lights, an invincible summer burned within me, as Camus would say.

In my mind's eye, the day's laundry was flapping about on the clothesline while, from afar, came the brooooosh! and crackle of fish being fried for a late lunch with loved ones.

The day would be bathed in the half-light of an overcast sky, a reminder that life is as much a promise of rain as it is of sunshine. And, always, there would be a gentle breeze, the very breath of God, soothing the aches of existence.

Then we would strip fish down to bone, push back our chairs and bask in the easy company of sure love, recalling how each of us first met the others and what about them we loved most.

How normal, yet how rare, don't you think?

The poet Mary Jean Iron once wrote of a normal day thus:

Let me be aware of the treasure you are...

One day I shall dig my nails into the earth

Or bury my face in the pillow

Or stretch myself taut

Or raise my hands to the sky

And want more than all the world

Your return.

Now, what would your perfect day be?

suk@sph.com.sg