Apparently when my mum’s out in the street in front of our house, she can hear my raucousness coming from indoors. So yesterday when I was walking back home from the MRT station and I ran into our longtime neighbors, Dr. and Mrs. W., I felt the need to hedge. “Hello,” they said, “you’ve been back for a while.” And I thought, Wait, are they saying they’ve been hearing me for a while? And what have they heard? So I said, “Um, no, no, not so long, maybe, uh, just a few days. . .?” and then made my exit as quickly as I could. Somehow all that was forgotten this afternoon as I was helping Mowmy in the garden, slathered with mosquito repellant, belting out highlights from “Kiss Me Kate.”