i'm feeling rather sad and sleepy today, and i don't quite know why. perhaps it's just pms, or a lack of sleep. it probably is.

for some strange reason (and because i know adele's reading this) even though we barely know each other save through random facebook wall conversations (some in chinese, nonetheless) i want her to come home to singapore so we can kbox and watch mobtv. haha. although knowing how lazy we all are, it's unlikely to happen. dude you can plan them okay. i'll just drag myself out of the house.

it's just a mad, sad world and i want to sleep.

just got back from lunch, and i ate $2.50 wanton mee and had a lim kee banana fritter. the wanton mee was fantastic, great value for money - lovely little wantons bursting with filling, fat enough slices of charsiew - but it was marred by the fact that there was no vinegar. i think the auntie was bluffing me, how can a noodle stall have no vinegar?

also gave in and tried the lim kee banana fritter. not bad, though rather overrated. problem was the bananas weren't ripe enough so they didn't have that sweet mushiness i like.

they've blocked most of yahoo games so i can't even play bridge online, and i can't seem to add the movies function to my profile on facebook so i can't go around talking about movies. how very annoying.

i've been here three days and i've already fallen in love with the food at maxwell food centre. i had a mid-morning snack of ondeh-ondeh (absolutely lovely and light, skin was the right texture, not too hard or chewy) and soyabean (not mr bean. i'd never betray jollibean - and anyway, the hawkers who make it themselves always make it the best). there's ming chiang kueh here which was given a two bowl rating by makansutra, and a shop selling biscuits where i bought a pack of those light-as-air chocolate wafer biscuits. marks and spencer's cookies (you know which law firm provides them, don't you?) will never compare to these, from those huge golden tins marked khong guan. the taste of childhood, a reminder of who we are.

i suppose i should write about how depressingly government my new office looks, with its huge charts depicting the different levels of hierachy in the office, the newspaper articles on "how much this service has helped me" tacked on to every cubicle wall. i could write about how depressing it is, going to the family court and seeing five divorces granted in twenty minutes; imagining the pain and trauma all these people must be going through - and some of them will never recover, it's pretty obvious. i can see it in their tear stained, vacant eyes. we weren't made to cry this much, tears were meant for other things, like getting grit and dirt out of your eye.

but no, i think you'd rather hear about food, won't you?

there's also a shortcut to amoy street food centre from this place. i should be trying the wanton mee from maxwell soon, stay tuned.

it was reassuring, having jon place his hand gently over mine and say, softly, it's just twenty-one. and in the middle of newton hawker centre on a late public holiday night, the too-loud and too-brash voices trying to make themselves heard over the din faded away and for that moment, feeling the warm weight of his palm on my hand, everything was right with the world.

it's just twenty-one. reassurance for the days when Being All Grown Up looms closer than ever before, and it's not going to be the time of Growing Up anymore and it scares, terrifies me. reassurance, like the feeling you get when you find that you're pleased and able to smile broadly to yourself at the simplest things, like the smell of chai tau kueh on the air-conditioned bus, packaged in those ubiquitous bright orangey-red plastic bags we know so well, held by an auntie you can't bear to curse silently at for being inconsiderate - besides, it's quite a nice smell, actually. or finding the last xs ice-cream with a smiley face shirt in esprit, being scolded at the age of twenty by the station control master for eating in the mrt station excuse me miss, the sign is very big there ah, no eating okay? (but i was awfully hungry). or, after being scolded by ian for failing my basic theory evaluation, finding out that after adele failed her basic theory test she simply gave up driving, finding out that jon failed his evaluation too.

i'll get through it, through twenty-two, twenty-three, fifty-two, seventy-five - maybe even ninety, perhaps. and God will be with me as He's been before.