Sometimes I just wish that this country wasn’t so darned small and the world wasn’t so darned big.

My sis had a visiting friend over the weekend, and my family invited her to join us for dinner at Clarke Quay. We passed by the river cruise ticketing box, and Mom thought that it would be rather exciting to take a river taxi down the Singapore River, and so we did, on the DUCK and HiPPO hybrid powered eco-friendly electric boat. There was a friendly tour guide who pointed out the sights as we went along.

When the then-Hill Street Police Station, now MICA Building came into view, the commentator introduced “that colourful building… which is now called the MICA Buildling. MICA stands for the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts”.

And what do they do?

He had but a one-liner to share with the Japanese, Taiwanese and us pretend-tourists on board: “They’re the ones responsible for censorship in Singapore”.

And there you have it.

I’m not sure if I was the only one who appreciated his style of humour.

From Edward Monkton:

Today I did something on a public light bus that probably made the observer-passengers and the driver think, “she’s so stupid”. But inside me, I was laughing. I was happy, for I had learnt something.

View from my window this morning:

 

Quite typical up here.

It’s a mild winter – feeling like the upper 10s instead of a 11°C, yet the locals are all wrapped up like they’re training for an Arctic expedition. Something that amuses me greatly, every time.

* * * * *

“唔准哭,” he tells me. But how can I not? ‘Tis a sad, sad thing, for it’s beyond the point of no return, and everyone’s given up. So many have even left. I wonder if we’d still return every February… we were so close to not returning this round, for what’s the point, when we know that reunions are no longer possible?

People, even those you think are thought were closest to you, can be cruel. Even to you.

點解要搞成噉…?

Such a mess.

My hands smell a combination of rotting flesh and latex gloves, hours after exhuming a sludge of a month-long-buried Oriental whip snake to pick out its skeleton: its skull pieces, much of the vertebrae, and some ribs have been retrieved with some assistance from a colleague (she had previous experience in sorting caterpillar frass, which is arguably an even tougher task), who suffered the odour and the mozzie bites with me. I didn’t expect the bones to be this tiny. When I first fingered through the muck of soil, I thought the remnants of the snake had totally disappeared. It was only after washing the contents through a three-dish sieve set with a bucketful of water that there appeared to be the first inkling of anything bone-like.

Tried cleaning the pieces as well as I could, and laid them out to dry in my bathroom. Assembling them like one would an airplane model would be too impossible a task so I’ll be contented to just leave it at that!

The whole exercise was one great lesson in snake anatomy. Photos to come when I have the time.

Leaving for Hong Kong tomorrow, for the Chinese New Year. Packing, among other things, is always a pain.

Man is always inclined to regard the small circle in which he lives as the center of the world and to make his particular, private life the standard of the universe. But he must give up this vain pretense, this petty provincial way of thinking and judging.

~ Montaigne, The Complete Essays (1587-88)