See you soon, soon, soon.

1) Start by planning a three-and-a-half-week vacation home. It helps to book your plane tickets early, but it’s okay if they cost a pretty penny. It’ll be worth it for this one day alone. You’ll see.

2) When you arrive, start off by being grumpy and critical because you’re an old lady who’s stuck in her ways, spends vast stretches of time talking only to houseplants and computers, and is thoroughly unused to being around people or exercising any meaningful degree of social grace. (This step is optional, but it’s possible that you may not be able to avoid it.)

3) The night before, arrange to have breakfast with Ross and your parents. (If you have not already obtained a Ross for this stage of the game, good luck. They are rare in the wild.)

4) On the morning of, get up early, before the little monsters wake up. Assemble Ross and parents. Walk five minutes and have really yummy roti prata and kopi o. Shovel food into your mouth. Yawn. Stretch.

5) Walk home and find your sister and the babies playing in the garden. Receive hugs and kisses from the babies. They are miffed at being left behind, but it’s amazing how mollifying an offer to take everyone to the beach will be.

6) Pile everyone and a bicycle into the bus your sister now drives, and head to the beach. Watch Asher’s face crunch into concentration as he learns how to bike down a steep spiral slope, and Sophie’s toes squirm and squiggle when they are dangled in the soft rush of the sea. At the end, procure ice-cream. Wash all feet. Pile home.

7) Wait for your friend June to wake up so she can come and pick you and Ross up for lunch. Pop fish vadai into your mouth. Mop up butter chicken, palak paneer, and dal with garlic naan that leaves you with uncomfortably rich burps for the rest of the afternoon. Finish lunch with masala tea. Drag June back to the house and continue the warm, easy conversation you have been having (the kind you can only have with someone who is your polar opposite when you have known them since you were thirteen) until it is almost five. Kiss June on the cheek and promise to see her on Monday.

8) Take a walk with Ross. On the way back (this is imperative), get caught in a rainstorm that turns the sky the color of pale ink. Stroll through the storm, which is warm and smells wonderful because this is Singapore and in Singapore the rain is a gift.

9) At 6:45, go out for dinner. Choose a place you used to go to on special occasions when you were little, and order the same dish you always did then. Smile when your whole family does the same. Have two desserts, and make sure they’re both the kind that get set on fire.

If you are not enjoying yourself by this time, I do not know how to help you.

10) In the car on the way home, sit next to Asher, who is exhausted and therefore nothing but smiles, silly conversation, and cuddles. Smoosh him a lot. When you are almost home, there is a chance—just a chance—that he will suddenly turn to you, his face two centimeters from your own, and say, at the end of a giggle, “You know, I feel like kissing you now.”

This sentence will make up for every tantrum he has thrown in the last three weeks, but DO NOT TELL HIM SO. Just kiss him back.

11) Write a post as your Ross (did you manage to get one?) mumbles sleepily at you, and voila.

Nothing to it.

I came to the hospital with my dad this morning to work in his office. I have an assignment to finish before we leave for Chicago and it’s impossible to get anything done at home because if you answer the question “Aunty Meera, what are you dooooooing? You can come up to my room and play now, okay?” with “I’m sorry, Asher, but I have to do work,” the look you then receive would break a granite* heart. Also the urge to squish Sophia is difficult to resist, although she is less interested in being squished than in waddling around the house picking things up and putting them down someplace else. She is a very busy baby.

Anyway, I accomplished my work goals for the day—yay!—and in between bouts of productivity (bouts is the right word, isn’t it, for something a little bit painful?) I reminisced about coming to work with my father when I was a little girl. My sister and I always used to buy potato chips from the hospital convenience store, watch bags of blood zoom along the ceiling from department to department in their little black boxes, and draw pictures in my father’s room. This was before he had his own private secretary (how swish) and before I had homework. As a result of these excursions I have always found hospitals vaguely comforting, which is something for which I count myself lucky.

Oh! I’ve just been brought wine, sausages, cherries, and a chicken wing from the office Christmas party, so I shall leave you for now to consume them, and perhaps, after all, to draw a picture.

*We went to visit a Hindu temple built by one of my father’s oldest friends yesterday. Apparently granite is more “powerful” than marble; also statues made with five metals instead of one have more “power.” How little I know.

I’m losing track of the date. Mission accomplished?

Such photogenic genes.

…saves nine, what do three stitches after a fall do?

Apart from the cool scar, I’m good. So far the trip has been all about rain, babies, shopping, more rain, more babies, food, random jet-lag-induced naps, three-hour hikes in rainforests, yet more rain, and yet more babies. It’s starting to feel as familiar as it gets.

Interesting noticings:

1) I miss Chicago, and I miss winter. I miss pottering around my little apartment and drinking coffee on the sofa, then shrugging on my parka and heading out into the cold.

2) After ten years away, I’m finally a tourist in my own town. I go to concerts swarming with ang mohs, I find myself shocked by the sheer scale of commerce in this tiny little city, and my old hangouts are barely recognizable. I’ve still got my accent, though, even though I refuse to produce it on command for A.

3) I’m having a really hard time detaching from work, and I think I need to figure that out soon before I ruin things for myself. I’ve only had to do half a day’s worth of work so far, but I can’t seem to get it off my mind.

Oosh — the babe is calling from down the stairs. We’re off to engage in some more commerce. More later.

(I typed “Sadus Update” at first. What, me, Freudian?)

After working without a break for several weeks, I am finally done, done, done, with all the work I wanted to get done before we leave. That is a huge yay. So, yay!

Unfortunately, this past month has left me feeling kind of burned out. I feel burned out on work. I feel burned out on writing. I even feel burned out on things I haven’t really been doing enough of, like taking photos and reading. I’m at the point where I’m so tired the only thing I seem to actually have the energy for is going cross-eyed in front of the computer searching YouTube for funny videos of hamsters. Shut up. I know you have been there. That hamster made me laugh when nothing else did. I heart you, ridiculous popcorn-fixated rodent.

Right now I’m going to do something radical: turn off my computer more than two minutes before going to bed. So, till tomorrow, my fellow addicts.