i am terribly relieved that i have got the nohrnberg letter written and sent off, which to tell you the truth was the most stressful thing i'd done for a long time, and i found myself quite uncharacteristically convinced that i would be able to express myself much better by talking than by writing. collapsed completely afterwards and very relieved when cindy called on saturday morning because i absolutely needed to get out of my room and stop biting my nails about how the letter was not good enough and whether i might have misspelt any word and if i should kill myself if he doesn't get the appointment.

shopping is a cure for nearly anything so yesterday under cindy's approving eye i bought a dark red wool skirt with long raised darts from flowers in the attic which is really a lovely shop (and a lovely name) filled with unusual, feminine pieces, romantic and girlish, and mostly, as its name suggests, flower-themed clothing. kit chan owns it, i believe. also went gaga over a denim skirt which is two flat panels laced with brown suede ribbon all the down the sides, but i decided i couldn't possibly show my legs. *bashful* and while deciding that covered legs are good i bought a pair of boots from americaya, with crisscross stitching up the side, very pretty! *beam*

as always with cindy i appreciate how we can be loud and chatty, switching swiftly, even mid-sentence, between english and chinese. why is it, by the way, that in singapore girls can hold hands but i never see girls doing that in america? i'm pretty sure i would feel strange holding hands with an american girl friend in school and people would probably look at us funnily but when i'm home or even in the states with my singaporean girl friends we are always walking down the street holding hands and that feels perfectly natural. hm. we're too old, cindy declares, not to have traditions. we've got to make some. cindy and i are therefore establishing a routine that consists of shopping, having japanese food, shopping more, chatting loudly and frivolously, complaining about men in our lives and ogling the ones in our way (well okay, so i don't ogle men. not that men, in general, here or elsewhere, are much to ogle at, is my conclusion.) and then to a bubbletea house to write chinese letters to people ostensibly but really insulting each other's deterioriating language abilities, and shopping even more. now that's the sort of ritual that's good keeping!!

cindy says, over bubble tea, that she's sick of men and bad relationships and that she's quite decided to leave men alone. accordingly, she orders a drink called wang4 qing2 shui2. (the potion for forgetting love) when she's the minister of trade and industry and can afford her orchard road penthouse, i am welcome to be her housemate, seeing that if things continue the way they are now, we'll be the only two spinsters left of our group. she laments that her life has been a rapid series of rebound relationships, racing to one to leave another behind, only to flee from the other too, and never settling down. sigh. my problem, of course, is exactly the opposite of hers - i am too settled into mine i never get over anyone. my relationships are the kind that last at least 2 years, relationships more or less happy and stable and seemingly very permanent, and then a sudden event - an irreconciliable fight on an unexpected issue, a violent change in opinion, being hit on the head by a major life decision - and then immediate and irreparable collapse of the relationship.

my relationships die guillotine deaths.