i go up to the third floor with the general idea of looking for a chair for fitzie to surprise su-lin with, but having suddenly remembered there was an mph on the second floor, i shot downstairs again. (hot bullet through butter was the way pratchett put it) got through the first 23 pages of night watch surreptitiously: lady sybil goes into labour; vimes is having a leisurely conversation with a lady assassin paddling in the cesspit who was explaining that she was only on a practice run, his name having been taken off the assassin's guild register (the only other person off the register being the patrician.) and him reflecting that this was a bad sign - if no one sends assassins, how would he know he's annoying the right people? igor offers help, distrustful of midwife, carrot reports stronginthearm killed, the watch expands to beyond ankh morpork and newly trained "sammies" are sent all over the disc, the semaphore towers are clacking away, angua has been put off the scent of a dangerous criminal by a pure aniseed bomb, and nobby and sarge colon go to the graveyard - and and and! i want to know more!!! but had to go down to station control to meet cindy. this of course is what always happens to me when i read pratchett - i don't want to do much else but read pratchett, and until i'm done with the book i don't want to see any human beings - unless they are also on the same book. as my return to virginia approaches i am looking for plane books - i sleep well enough on planes, and watch plenty of movies - but having the right book is what makes my journey most comfortable. and i know that night watch is the perfect book but there is absolutely nothing that will induce me to buy a hardcover pratchett, not to mention that my backpack is laden enough with library books (something i was reminded of lifting su-lin's backpack on thursday, when she had just come from nus library) - i think i'll finish up byatt's virgin in the garden - a book i've started on once but never finished - on the tokyo leg and then i need a heftier book of some kind for the tokyo-dc flight. something definitely not school related. perhaps i will pick up a copy of lord of the rings in airport bookshop - that would be light enough, but definitely engaging, and of a sensible length. the usual predeparture book rush is worse than ever this time - worsened by the conviction that i must do some real work this coming week instead of bumming, coupled with the unhappy sense that this semester will be too hectic for any self-indulgence with respect to reading novels. for this week, i have philip roth's the dying animal and three short stories by truman capote and byatt's portraits in fiction. i would start on age of innocence but for fear that i can't finish it in time, and an unreasonable idea that i should be rotating authors. not having been to a singapore cinema for a while i was caught offguard by a hilarious ad that von would have loved - by the navy, of all things. army ads are usually very bad, and i haven't liked any of the navy ones since the rubber ducky one, but the airforce usually has lovely ads - tjan and i saw lots of planes on the 72 to tampines - he identified them for me - this one's an F4, that one has a tank below - suddenly i would like to go up in a plane - remember vicky austin and zachary black in a plane? everyone was surprised how she wasn't afraid though it was her first time up, and she could not explain that anyone who has ridden a dolphin knew what it was to fly. i like vicky. saw the trailer for catch me if you can - a new spielberg movie - i disapprove of leonardo di caprio and btw, no, that's enough of people asking me to see gangs of new york - i refuse. also saw the trailer for yingxiong - the new zhang yimou movie that is coming out jan 16th - school would have started by then - and could i hope it would come to charlottesville? probably not, the way nothing i want to watch ever does. sigh. i like maggie cheung - she's so magnificently beautiful i would watch any movie she's in. and now i must run because the mater calls.
thursday late afternoon, heavy rain, arriving from tanah merah at city hall 50mins early for cindy, i wander around raffles city glancing through shop windows but firmly battling back any urges to inspect at closer range lest the devil of shopping rear her lovely head. run into serene ow outside mango to find that she's in sweden studying engineering!!!! i always thought she was either in nus or the uk - the last place i would expect her to be was northern europe - she never struck me as the sort who would either be interested in going so far from home or particularly adept at foreign languages. i can't remember which third language she took, did she take any? probably german. are you the only singaporean there? pretty much so. mental images of piercing blue eyes and handsome blond men come to me - which images have to do with orlando bloom as legolas, i am sure. i have been patiently telling su-lin ("legolas legolas legolas! minzhi!") for a year that orlando bloom doesn't really do anything for me because i like my men dark and roughhewn. choonping tried exactly the same tack the other night when he came to dinner, asking how it's possible i haven't been to see the two towers yet, and humming "legolas" happily as a kind of enticement. nah, i said to him, pretty boy legolas, thanks very much but i'll have aragorn any day. oh that sort, grins choonping knowingly, you mean - craggy, unshaven and monosyllabic? hey! i protest indignantly, but when i went with tjan to see the movie on friday orlando was very delicious indeed - i still say viggo mortensen has more seh, but i wish he wasn't always so dirty - i am detecting a pattern: lucius malfoy, legolas greenleaf - men with very long light blond hair and expressive eyes and clean handsome faces - ooh. serene is off to orchard to meet dawn lim, so we exchange numbers - isn't it funny how you know this is singapore - you meet an acquaintance on the street and whip out your phones and start exchanging numbers by one person calling the other on the spot.