Hooray for days off. I mean, well, yes, I’ve been having days off for the last seven weeks, and hooray for every single one of those days, but also hooray for other people having a day off their civil service job to hang out with you.
A good day off starts with lunch at the Project Shop Blood Bros café in Paragon: grilled duck, rocket, garlicky garlic mashed potatoes wrapped in a Vietnamese rice crêpe, and a berry compote; a massive lemon pudding larger than my fist, swimming in sweet-tart lemon syrup and topped with vanilla ice cream; and a winning cappuccino just bitter enough and perfectly crowned with thick foam. Fed, we made our way through the surprising weekday crowd—did everyone else have the day off, too?—in Orchard Road, trying on tacky-chic clothes at This Fashion (“Can’t go wrong for sixteen dollars!”), making friends with cosmetics salesgirls and gathering product samples, scheming to be friends with Colin Goh, spending way too much time exploring the $1.99 deals at the stuff emporium that is Watson’s, turning the kinky-sex books at Borders cover-side out, laughing till stomachs hurt, and buying oh my god I’m so excited about this, these incredible little speakers for my iPod, before having a sit-down at Olio Dome for chocolate-and-banana (me) and berry (Yumei) smoothies. At Haba, I stood, confused, in front of a display several shelves high of products, doing that thing where I think out loud: “Oh, so what’s th— oh, okay, so that’s cleanser, and that’s, oh, right, toner, oh, ohh, okay, oohhh, so Step One is at the bottom. Right.” Silence, then the salesgirl: “Yes.” But really, who puts Step One of Three at the bottom?
Ren came and joined in time for Crystal Jade dinner, where salt and pepper squid was served up, hot and salty and peppery, with crispy seafood noodles. Somehow it’d never come up between me and Ren before tonight that what we both want to do with our lives—job-wise, anyway—at this point, anyway—is buy apartments, do them up sweet, and sell them. Crap, what have we been talking about all these years? Boys? Oh, yeah.
Later, Ren gave me a lift home, which dissolved into screaming all the way down the creepy, winding Mount Pleasant Road because we kept imagining ghosts appearing—a headless pedestrian, maybe, or the classic pontianak with her long, straight hair.
A good day off starts with lunch at the Project Shop Blood Bros café in Paragon: grilled duck, rocket, garlicky garlic mashed potatoes wrapped in a Vietnamese rice crêpe, and a berry compote; a massive lemon pudding larger than my fist, swimming in sweet-tart lemon syrup and topped with vanilla ice cream; and a winning cappuccino just bitter enough and perfectly crowned with thick foam. Fed, we made our way through the surprising weekday crowd—did everyone else have the day off, too?—in Orchard Road, trying on tacky-chic clothes at This Fashion (“Can’t go wrong for sixteen dollars!”), making friends with cosmetics salesgirls and gathering product samples, scheming to be friends with Colin Goh, spending way too much time exploring the $1.99 deals at the stuff emporium that is Watson’s, turning the kinky-sex books at Borders cover-side out, laughing till stomachs hurt, and buying oh my god I’m so excited about this, these incredible little speakers for my iPod, before having a sit-down at Olio Dome for chocolate-and-banana (me) and berry (Yumei) smoothies. At Haba, I stood, confused, in front of a display several shelves high of products, doing that thing where I think out loud: “Oh, so what’s th— oh, okay, so that’s cleanser, and that’s, oh, right, toner, oh, ohh, okay, oohhh, so Step One is at the bottom. Right.” Silence, then the salesgirl: “Yes.” But really, who puts Step One of Three at the bottom?
Ren came and joined in time for Crystal Jade dinner, where salt and pepper squid was served up, hot and salty and peppery, with crispy seafood noodles. Somehow it’d never come up between me and Ren before tonight that what we both want to do with our lives—job-wise, anyway—at this point, anyway—is buy apartments, do them up sweet, and sell them. Crap, what have we been talking about all these years? Boys? Oh, yeah.
Later, Ren gave me a lift home, which dissolved into screaming all the way down the creepy, winding Mount Pleasant Road because we kept imagining ghosts appearing—a headless pedestrian, maybe, or the classic pontianak with her long, straight hair.
posted by stellou at 5:46 AM
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