ginger snaps

I watch and wait

On Saturday we (me and the old friends) went to booksactually and to a japanese teahouse, then chinatown. Chinatown is fun then, all sun and silly tourists, silly middle aged caucasians with sunglasses, fanning themselves, fascinated by cheongsams and name chops. teenage girl tourists, in huge vintage sunglasses and thick cotton vintage dresses. what fun to watch, them sweating like flushed pink pigs searching for the oriental items that are most exotic to buy.

On Saturday night we (me and some of the family) participated in a silly lantern procession and it struck me, what were all these adults doing, walking absurdly around, holding lanterns with little children? What was the whole damn point of everything? To make the children happy, to give them the experience of ti-deng-long! Gently glowing paper balls, gentle pink, red, orange, yellow. This glowing, dangerous, beautiful thing they have to hold outstretched, with their tiny arms and it represented something, though they don't know what, but it just seems like something to be proud of, innit. Then we, 6 of us, played noodnight (what elysia calls midnight catching, catching in the dark) and she giggled all the time and got caught because she kept holding her rustling beloved stickers that i got her, 180 different tiny squares of anythings (mad turtles, crazy eggs, apples). the kind of thing that really fascinates a kid. it kills me. and that han read pride and prejudice at 13, and shann gobbled up the 3 chocolate bars i got him the way i knew he would.

On Sunday afternoon we (me and my mother and the whining work-fearing one with the halo of curly hair) baked ginger snaps. they had lots of cinnamon in them and were rolled around and coated with raw sugar, magical little golden crystals that give them a chrismassy glow. the kind of biscuits i always wanted to make since i was a silly naive girl believing in chrismassy cookies.

Tonight we baked more ginger snaps! My sister said, "next time, when you open your cafe, you can do it in my room!" what super silliness. the girl next door played Noel beautifully on her violin and her mother caned her younger brother. she works from till 11pm nearly everyday, is wanted by her mother to get 100 marks, practices the piano and violin a lot, hardly plays and is almost forbidden from watching tv. she told her maid that she wishes her mother would die earlier, so she could play, or something. how can an 8 or 9 year old girl think that? maybe some ginger snaps, spongebob and harry potter would help her. i hope she gets piercings and tattoos and becomes an insanely intelligent delinquent who does something madly extraordinary someday. go little girl. (who is obsessed with tinkerbell and disney princesses, she showed me her room once, excitedly) i'd like to think that if i start a plan and invite her over to do work and we become friends i can be the one to slowly liberate her, her neighbour jiejie.

I have been having mad dreams every night and does it say something, the kind of thoughts you are swathed in, or people you think about, waking up, or rather, half-awake, under the safety of the plush blanket, like floating in a dream, or rather wisps of floaty thoughts. These days sometimes my thoughts at this time are about the park, especially the morning routine and walking to the park in the morning, jaywalking across the road in the hot sun, with a view of country inn and suits across the road, our wallets and sweets or whatever in our pockets, in the electric blue shirts, walking along the rather foresty road to work, and twice or thrice john was on the top of the tower, or climbing down, against the clouds.

I don't mean to sound rambly or measured because the holidays have not been like that, they have been kind of awesome.

Oh yes, one day, a woman and her two young children alighted from a bus, and she just stood there at the busstop while they ran away to a nearby grass area. I thought she was letting them play while waiting for the next bus but guess what, the children, a boy and a girl, pulled down their pants/panties, next to each other, right there next to many cars passing by, and peed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cha cham bo!!!!!!!!!!!!!