“Lock up your crazy things, the twinkies are in town!”

If you wake up at 6:30 in the morning, especially if you have a CC, there’s quite a bit you can get done in a day, like: make a breakfast of apricot-raisin toast and fresh strawberries and vanilla yoghurt; ride the MRT during rush hour, watching the blank faces of the office crowd as you plug yourself into A-Ha’s “Take on Me”; go to the dentist; buy a blue plastic bangle in flower shape; get some rilly good Japanesey stationery at Kinokuniya; share a White Chocolate Dream Latte and a Black Forest Ice Blended at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf while filling in the quizzes in a teenage-girl magazine; run into an old school friend on her lunch break; have an aimable chat with a store-manager sort; poke around in the downstairs food hall in Takashimaya; try samples of champagne chocolate from the very accomodating Royce chocolate girl; split a roast beef and horseradish sandwich and a mango lassi in the pink-tiled paradise that is Toast; plan a Chinese New Year party; wander the candy aisle in Cold Storage; pretend to be Japanese tai-tais with a new friend at the Royal Copenhagen Tea Lounge; play several shaky rounds of five-stones; and head back to the heartland. Then, after a refreshing evening shower, you can also: take a cab to meet the girls at Da Paolo in Club Street for salmon carpaccio on rocket, tagliatelle with crabmeat and green peppercorns, and chocolate profiteroles; dash over to the Boom Boom Room for some local-like over-the-top variety-show nuttiness; have a chill nighttime drive with Ren, the half-moon following you home; and let yourself in the gate quietly, quietly.