i issued an open invitation for darryl to come over for cake anytime, providing there is any left by the time he arrived. he came last tuesday night after dinner, bringing with him shi ling, one of the singaporean freshmen whom he said wanted to meet me (she had been rj humanz too, though many years after our time.) it was short notice, they were arriving in 20minutes, and i was rather afraid i wouldn't be able to put something together, but i managed to find some dark chocolate bahlsens and meiji chocolate cubes and there were two kiwis in the fridge. i put the kettle on. that left me some time to pack a few teas for darryl too - the lung jing addy brought me from hongkong, the nu'er huan and dongding from tianfu, and the tealuxe strawberry sencha (but blended with my regular sencha to give a greener taste.)

and of course any jc reminiscence must include the sorry tale of how we invited 1ao1b to a friendly game of captain's ball, to get to know our junior class better, you know, and they smashed us with a score so unfriendly it would have started a nuclear war.

but i have decided that the real point of meeting your rj juniors is to tell scurrilous stories about 1a.

"oh 1b (that's the class with me and adeline) was lovely! we were sweet and ditzy and gave lots of parties! 1a was full of mean and ambitious buggers who looked down on us and flamed us on email and was held up as paragons of virtue by all the teachers! they were muggers! all of them! after school they sit in the canteen doing homework while two tables over, 1b is sitting around in their pe shirts, holding mugs of iced lemon tea and eating oreos! and when it was our turn to put on the tempest we did not have a six-foot tall billy neo wrapped in a bedsheet toga playing miranda to caili's dimunitive ferdinand.* 3a? 3a was alright. they were geographers. the whole class is full of large acs boys." (does this sound familiar? me: i heard 3a is having a massive party! let's crash! von: i hasten to point out that 3a is not massive by any means. me: no but they have massive people like choonping and matthew and kuotong. addy: cp says to tell you he loves you for that remark!)

in turn we learn from our junior that the new rjc campus is full of wide spaces for no apparent reason. "nobody makes use of it. except the people who go to school to have trysts!"

- eh, where did people go to have trysts in our time?
- probably the gallery of study carrels overlooking the school hall?
- there are always people studying there though.
- yes, but the sort of rj kid who goes up to the gallery to study obviously wouldn't notice you canoodling.

also apparently last year's humanz intake was unusual for having an extraordinarily large number of boys. keith prince walked into class the first day, backed out immediately and shut the door, counted to 10 and came back in and had another look and said, there really are more boys this year?

* when i told this to von later, he said billy had insisted on the bedsheet. true?