it's all cindy's fault, i say. *meaningful look* all i was going to do today was to get all souls day from tampines library and then meet her for dinner and bubble tea. when i step out of the library my phone rings: she's getting her hair done and will be 30mins late. where is she getting her hair done? in seletar. ah. clever. make that one hour. so i mutter and grumble and saunter into tampines mall and straightaway i run into trouble because there's an isetan in tampines mall and in every isetan there is a voyage de rita. i was lucky to get out with only two sweaters. so far, still alright. on the way i pick up a long linen skirt from metro and one of those evita peroni hairbands. even then, still not too ruined yet. then cindy arrives. we're so hungry we don't stop to think and therefore we end up on the same floor as the cinemas, at the japanese restaurant. if we had eaten in one of the basement restaurants, it would never have occured to me, but as it is, on the way down, after dinner, we pass the charles and keith. disaster. 30minutes later i am coming down the escalator carrying two pairs of shoes in a bag. (it would have been three, i found of a pair of shoes in the most gorgeous blue, which i keep wanting to go back for now) these would be my 8th and 9th pair of charles and keith in three summers. that makes about a pair a month. okay, i say to cindy. no more shoes this summer. noble, cindy says, but not believable.

cindy leaves tomorrow morning for illnois. she doesn't want to go. she's hardly been back three weeks! of our old group i'm the only one she's met up with. and even then we've only gone out twice, because she went to china in between. i doubt i'll see her again till this time next year, or maybe next springbreak, at the earliest, because she's spending the semester in tokyo. anyway we'll all be graduating this time next year, and then it'll be impossible to stay together, when everyone goes off to work on different continents. already with the uk ppl graduating this year, we're missing lots of ppl this year. mingchen is starting work in london right after graduation, addy's doing summer school, su-lin's graduating and racing about the continent taking a last look at her beloved europe, poach won't be back till the end of july, and i haven't heard that xinyi was coming home. and now cindy's back to summer school. in fact this will be the first year that i can remember that we're not celebrating cindy's birthday. last summer was probably the best we'll ever be able to manage - all 8 of us back in singapore. i remember the cake we had in the rooftop garden at suntec for cindy's birthday, and sitting in a row comparing shoes (how many variations of strappy black sandals do we own between us?), and afterwards sipping our drinks in a pavilion at chijmes, and our phones starting to ring one by one as the clock hand passes midnight and cross parents wanting to know when we were coming home. and mingchen's birthday too - trying to find a suitable bar at raffles hotel, and then finally sitting in that dim corridor/balcony under rickety fans eating peanuts and ending up aiming shells at each other. or at least addy threw one at me. heh. also poach and cindy complaining that the singapore sling tasted like soap. mostly this sense of belonging to a group that goes all the way back to when we were young and sweet and guileless thirteen-year-olds, (now we're only guileless) and how somehow, even though we see each other only a few times a year, when we're together we still seem to be the same bunch of schoolgirls, making the same idiotic jokes, for one thing.

we go for bubble tea and write poach a longwinded letter in chinese. cindy tries to gou1 ying3 bear and i call her a dang4 fu4. we take 72 home together, i sing her the states and capitals song, and then taking up on tjan's excellent suggestions we sing the grcs of singapore. we watch the news on the bus and tsktsk france's disastrous results and she tells me all about world cup fever in china, from which she has just returned. the chinese team has a really cool ad too! oh yeah, i saw in the scv mag the other day, appraising teams, saying that the usa may be the only superpower in the world now, but in terms of football they're definitely still a third world country. haha. they won their opening match though, "the us's first win on foreign soil in an international match", the commentator insists on adding. i think i shall root for the us team just for the heck of it.

cindy's on the plane now, probably somewhere over the pacific. i miss her.