The Days Would Blend Cause We Stayed Up All Night

I have a list of things-to-do during the holidays, and bar cycling at East Coast and Cafe Del Mar, the boxes have remained unchecked thus far. Karaoke with Jin, Cheryl and Sam was thwarted by other people who occupied all the rooms (small, medium AND large), and tennis yesterday was thwarted by, well, general laziness.

But what does one expect at the Lalwani household? By the time I arrived, Jin and Jess were tucking into yummy home-cooked Laksa followed by yoghurt and ice-cream (which I requested for but was denied). Predictably, any inclinations to go down and play were thwarted after that, and we traded sport for lying around in Jin's room, reading and laughing at his student's essays - no sorry, compositions - and just indulging in what I suppose is termed 'chilling', although it just felt like good old sloth to me.

Had to leave for dinner with Jon Phay and Shaun, which was an exercise in conversation and laughter, areas where I obviously am in my element. We traded gossip like, I don't know, the US and Israel share snippets of information on Iran. Not quite an appropriate analogy but I let the news on CNN today filter into my brain.

After dinner and ice cream at J Co, I went down to Orchard to meet Jeff and we bused to Bukit Timah where the familiar faces of Tong, Gerald, Josh Ee and Lena waited at Liquid Room, where we have become regular fixtures every Wednesday.

I knew it would be a bad idea, but we went ahead with pool instead of LAN. I'm not going to bother describing how abysmal I was because you really have to be there to witness my talents. Let's just say that while attempting to hit my own ball, the white ball ended up going down, along with two of my opponent's striped ones. As my teammate, Tong was none too pleased.

LAN was extremely addictive. I pride myself on not being a slave to computer games or consoles, but last night (or rather early this morning) was an entirely different story. The prospect of casting spells and wielding power proved irresistible, even if it was in a virtual world. We didn't quite succeed but there's always a next time.

By the time we finished breakfast, it was already 6.30. It felt surreal to be looking for a taxi to whiz us home to our beds when the usual hive of morning activity was already in motion - small children with huge bags trudging to school, shops at the market opening, cars moving in the direction of the expressway and town.

The light of day was piercing through the cloudy sky by the time I finally crawled into bed around 7.30 (quite possibly one of the fastest 12 hours of my life - I had trouble accounting for time), which is usually a shade before when I would be waking up if I had lessons at 9. The beauty of the holidays indeed.

And that was my Wednesday. While half of my world was probably at Zouk, I was happily ensconced in the past, doing the same things with the same people from so many years ago - and you know what, it was tremendous fun.