“As for Anna she was thinking: If I join in now, in a what’s-wrong-with-men session, then I won’t go home, I’ll stay for lunch and all afternoon, and Molly and I will feel friendly, all barriers gone… We’ve chosen to live a certain way, knowing the penalties, or if we didn’t we know now, so why whine and complain… and besides, if I’m not careful, Molly and I will descend into a kind of twin old-maidhood, where we sit around saying to each other, Do you remember how that man, what-was-his-name said that insensitive thing, it must have been 1947…”

i have been back in singapore for more than a week now, have partaken in the weekend zouk rituals and endless mahjong sessions. not that i am complaining, it’s just local flavour as i have always known it.

grandma is doing alright, she’s lost so much weight and the skin bags on her arms that i used to play with so much now look more like rubber bags that have lost their elasticity. she showed me her scar, for which tears welled up in an instant, yet also bringing about another feeling- wanting to photograph it. it is perhaps the ultimate of rudeness, the media beast instinct of wanting to document pain. i remember the last time i took a picture of her she was upset by the result, disgusted that she had become so old and frail. this time, it seems, she is nearer to death than she knows… to have to go through the loss of others is a repetitive process, but to lose yourself? how must that feel like? to physically occupy space no longer?

these days i finally have the time (and desire) to read again. i finished yakuza moon, which was just tragic as a book itself, this chick lit called Band Geek Love, because i was a band geek , and now i’m on doris lessing’s The Golden Notebook, which is simply astonishing even on the prelude. completely marxist feminist i must say, but aren’t we all?