what i need is to sit down here and work steadily for a few hours and not think about desires. what i desire, however, is to go out and have a real meal, i mean the kind that is brought to you and eaten with proper silverware. after class i hesitated at the bus stop and thought, so take it the other way, woman! but the homeward bus came and saved me, although i got in a good mutter about how i'd promised to eat like a peasant after von leaves, and why i had to buy all those books. the rest of the singaporeans are going, rather, have gone, to yokesan and bruce reynolds' for dinner. chew-mee kirtland is in town, and i would really like to be there, but if i don't want spatula fates here is where i should be. oh well, i am going home and will see her a few times in the next year, i expect, and also these dinners at the reynolds' are very nice but they do last a long time. it's a big house and people wander off to different parts and drape themselves all over the furniture and do not budge. and at some point after dinner, someone will open the grand piano and then the singing will begin, which lasts late into the night and gives you a warm fuzzy o home and hearth feeling, provided you aren't thinking about the spatulas. and now, i shall cease thinking about what i am missing out on, and go to the dining hall and hope to stay unpoisoned, or, given the circumstances, be poisoned.