we pulled off one of the oldest tricks on su-lin yesterday, choonping and i. he summoned me to orchard because he was coming from his army medical and was flatly depressed at returning to army. we tried chocolate on him, but even an nydc mudpie didn't do it. we mused on the fact that su-lin is a better cheer-upper than minzhi, and that she was only a 10min cab ride away. thus we arrived unannounced at her house, let ourselves in while chatting inconsequentially on the phone with her, and then happening upon her in the kitchen and tapping her on the shoulder. she hit us both for it, but it was well worth the joke, except that choonping left my eugene nida behind in the cab, which i was most unhappy about: a) i bought it in china b) i'd only got 10 pages into it that morning. lying around the place with su-lin is very comforting and comfortable. i was thrown back to rgs days when i spent quite a bit of time at her place after school. school was alot nearer then too. ah! district 10! i have sometimes thought that it would be wonderful to live in district 10 but that cabinet minister has got to show up. although bukit timah road traffic is awful (serangoon road is worse, obviously, but then we're getting the northeast line! hahah!) i found a cab coming out of coronation drive with 15 mins to go on my 7pm date with yen and michelle gozum, the children's lit person, and all of those 15 mins were spent lumbering on the same side of bt timah until we found a u-turn. got to suntec at 7.15 with profuse apologies and found yen and michelle and indecision abound before we settled on sanur. belacan kangkong, tahu telor and barbecued squid was what we had, and i ate so much keropok it was embarrassing. michelle showed us books by her friend randy bustamante, including a very nice volume of folktales that was given away at one of the apec meetings. i think that's cool! to give away a book like this, i mean. not fountain pens or pocket calculators or anything. she told us about her work as a docent at s.a.m., i had no idea they have to go through so much training, and she was so enthusiastic about it i felt like going to the s.a.m. again before i went back to school, though i think no time. at the end of dinner she gave me two filipino-english children's books (i love bilingual editions!) and i'd brought her margery williams's the velveteen rabbit, which she knew. she said she'll put me in touch with randy bustamante, who's teaching creative writing at boston university now, he does translation of filipino children's literature into english!

von was at boat quay with mindy, egoh and a few other of his friends. yen and i decided not to join them, and walked through one raffles link, by the esplanade (it doesn't look that bad up close, the interiors look beautiful!) and along anderson bridge. spotted a few river taxis, walked through one fullerton, and met usha and julia in the fullerton hotel underpass. they were going to centro with a bunch of other girls. i remember that wednesday is ladies' night at centro. hm. which explains the queue when we'd passed it earlier. we walked through to the fullerton, and out to cavenagh bridge. i can't help thinking again, hey, i was here when it was a post office! walked to empress place museum again and looked at indochine, siem reap and bar opiume, which i still haven't been to though a quick reference to the index shows i've been wanting to go since i came back from beijing! we walked along the river slowly, and i thought, not for the first time, that singapore is beautiful at night. we settled down ard uob building (near the bloated black bird) talking and suddenly von was upon us. we make tentative plans for a saturday meeting, and he returns to his jiu2 gui3 friends, at 11.30 yen and i decide to go home. it's been oddly relaxing, if too hot. the weather defeats everything in singapore, yen says.