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.