a windy night! dad and i went for a walk by the canal after dinner (wish we still had a dog to take out) and the wind whistled in my ears. i thought rain might come. i had a long umbrella (green) which i was brandishing about like a sword, or maybe a rifle, at least the way soldiers at the ndp parade twirl them, but my dad said i'll hit some unsuspecting cyclist and confiscated it. we gawked at some cranes at a construction site and tried to spot herons over the water, but tonight the herons seem to be especially reclusive. my dad is getting old - we hadn't walked 2km before we turned back because he was tiring. only two years ago we could still walk all the way to sengkang! i love walking, and i'm sure i got that from my dad. he walked from hougang to pasir ris once!we carted one of my bookshelves downstairs for my dad's children's library today. and we bought new books - all the henry huggins! which i sat down and devoured in half an afternoon. it's very calming to have lots of children's books to read at this time. last night i had begun one of the mr tompkins books, which minyin had given to me in the hope of interesting me in quantum mechanics. i have to say that no matter how many layman books on the subject anyone tries to give me i have no head for them, with one exception, that being the ian stewart/pratchett collaboration: the science of discworld, which was terribly amusing (there is no higher form of life than a librarian) and i began to think i was getting somewhere, but i only got a few chapters into it on the plane and after that all semester i didn't find time to go back to it. it would be an excellent plane book for *now*, but of course now it's on the wrong end of the journey.
what shall i do with my books when i come home? 15 months is too long to leave them in the states; to ship them home, even by sea, will cost a fortune. i'm talking 200kg. it'll cost a thousand dollars! or more! probably more!
i'm too restless, now that i am going back, or rather, the word i want is fu zao - even though it is not summer nor is the weather smouldering hot - to write a proper entry. i go because this is totally pointless.
and i promised to get up early to have breakfast with my dad tomorrow morning. and that book of roald dahl selected ghost stories turned up and i've left that for tonight. i do go.