These days I am packing up the house. I drew up a packing schedule, even; you cannot say I am not dedicated to the process. But, oh, how the things—the THINGS!!—they hold their bellies and laugh at me and mock me, for I wrote on my notepad: Thursday, living room; Friday, bedroom; Saturday, library; Sunday, downstairs, and figured that’d be the end of that, whereas the awful truth is that by late Thursday night the room was strewn with piles of old photographs and albums, while full drawers remained yet unexplored.

Aaaaaa this is going to take forever.

And the reformed drug addicts of the Salvation Army are coming for a pick-up next week. But I have, (among my things), faith. The Salvation Army pick-up date is a good thing. Deadlines. I need deadlines.

The good news about packing is, my cousin is coming to take over the apartment furnished, so I don’t have to pack any kitchen breakables in rolls of bubble wrap, and I don’t have to move any furniture. (Sorry, Jeffy, the Conran dinner chairs aren’t showing up at your place anytime soon. It is in writing now; you will just have to accept the difficult truth.) The bad news is, the contents of all the closets and drawers and trunks and underbed storage still need to be dealt with.

Because I plan to move to London with not very much at all—

(truly, I believe this is possible. There are detractors: When my mum was in town the other day, she mentioned that there has recently been a spate of stories in the Singapore Straits Times about young people in the corporate world quitting their jobs to become priests. I asked if it would surprise her if I became a Taoist priest, and she said, after a good bout of cackling: “Yes, I would have you checked for a brain tumor.” Oh, FINE. I have had a tendency to like Things, but these days I am working on austerity. Well—that singular sort of austerity that allows for three pairs of pink shoes in one’s life.)—

(Well, but they’re all different.)—

Because I plan to move with not very much at all, ultimately it’s not so much packing I’m doing, I guess, as facing—and then organizing—a bunch of stuff I haven’t looked at in years. And dammit I will embrace this organizing, for I have been told that one thing I do is organize. My mother has such a fervent and unmoving belief in my ability to organize that she thinks it would be a Great Job Opportunity for me to move back to Singapore and become an Administrator. It is at about this point in the conversation, and this coversation has happened more than once, that I must fall about and start twitching.

In any case. These days I am packing up the house. The question that comes to mind is, Whatever have I been thinking, all these years, collecting Chinese tea tins and Austrian milk cartons, hoarding candy wrappers and clothing tags and stickers and advertising postcards from all over the world? Today, THEY ARE ALL IN THE TRASH. There was very little emotion involved; you see, I am on my way to Taoist priesthood.

More difficult are all the CDs I seem to have amassed. I am listening to every single one of them to see if they make the cut. I had to turn off Oasis’s whining after maybe two songs, but was pleasantly surprised by the rediscovery of Fiona Apple. And is it so bad if the Neil Young album goes into the Salvo pile?

Meanwhile, if there is some good that comes out of all of this, it is that going up and down the stairs in the apartment, and climbing up and down the ladder to the storage space, and running in and out to the trash and recycling bins, and lifting no small number of boxes, means I don’t have to go to the gym.