my mom is cooking white fungus and red date downstairs. this puts me in the beautifullest of moods. we were at si ma lu this afternoon, buying fa chai and birds' nest and dried mushroom and ginseng for my grandmother. i was sitting in the shop looking around and had a moment of defamiliarisation - how curious the things we eat: rhino and antelope horn shavings and essentially bloodied dried bird saliva and grass roots and frog falliopian tubes and white ear-shaped fungus and mossy looking fungus that look like hair, to but name a few. i mean outside of these chinese medicinal shops too. pig trotters and chicken feet and sea cucumber (sea cucumber is one of the most disgusting creatures born on earth nothing anyone can say will induce me to eat the stuff. euuw.) and shark's fin and jellyfish (like fillmore the sea turtle!) and frog legs and fish airbags. is herr piow fish airbags. fish don't have airbags. or i think they do. whatever it is they have to help them sink?

has any one been to the new library@esplanade? i want to go. it looks v nice, doesn't it? i definitely need a library trip. was prowling the house at 2 in the morning yesterday like a mournful burglar looking for my tintins which i have a mad compulsion to read but my mater must have given them away. *teary* i don't want anyone to give away any more of my children's books. have you realise how it's very easy to outgrow adult authors, but you can never ever outgrow your childhood favourites? you just appreciate them more and more the older you get. i read trumpet of the swan and a chinese translation of an argentinean children's author i'm very fond of yesterday. was thinking of going to woodlands library tomorrow, now that i have a bus there, but going to my grandmother's again, because all the other relatives will be there too. it's all relative-ing till monday, alas, and then maybe i can do something with su-lin. went and scoured chengsan library earlier tonight and found nothing i want except the age of innocence and silas marner, and though those will be good what i really want is something written in the last 20 years by someone still alive. or night watch. night watches the country over are checked out. i wonder how long the waiting list is if i try to reserve it. the first thing i'll do when i get back to school *unscrupulous glint* is to recall that copy of night watch we've got. oh my gosh i just remembered. if i go to woodlands library tomorrow i'll be able to stop in at charles and keith for shoes AND get a bahkua bun at four leaves. i think i'll go today and then go up to my grandmother's alone in the afternoon. oh good.

zak got me my ordning and reda organiser!!! i am so pleased you have no idea. one year without was misery. dear good zak!

what i ate today, in reverse order: 10 sticks of satay (chicken and pork), 1 ketupat, half a slice of grilled fish with lots of garlic, vegetarian chicken and goose, ngohiang, springroll, zhap choy, kway teow soup, beehoon with fried fish and brinjal, mijiangkueh.