I found out that my mother, behind my back, is going about saying that I am “very competent.” Chinese mothers, what can you do. They grip the door and twitch toward an imaginary brake pedal when you drive, but then you discover from your sources (hello, CC) that really, they think you handle yourself rather well. The point is that all of a sudden I think I can drive in Singapore.

Which is why we are getting very used to this car thing, me and CC, which means that if we have a Sunday morning roti prata date on Upper Bukit Timah Road opposite Beauty World (cha-cha-cha), it is not only on, it is set, and it is confirm. We scam the keys from Mowmy, pack Tym up front for directions, and off we go toward two tables of food, I swear this is true. At Al-Azhar, we were three girls with one still to come, and the waiter boys brought one paper dosai, two plain pratas, two egg pratas, an ice cream prata, two Godzillas and a teh tarik, and all accompanying curries and chutneys, and it took up our table and then some. When Jacq got there, we said, “Don’t be shy, don’t be shy,” and surely she is not shy, this one, so then there were also teh halia kurang manis and a tissue prata, and oily hands all around.



Girls at a Sunday morning prata breakfast natter about multilingual chat rooms for lonely local men, about the state of writing in Singapore, about the possibility of a girl returning home. Oh, it might not be so bad if I had to move back here. I wouldn’t have to scheme and plan and wrangle my way into one more bloody foreign visa, for one. Coming back here would be so easy, is the thing, and it’d be tasty, too. And maybe I’d buy an old shophouse and do it up sweet, with a poured concrete goldfish pond in the inside courtyard, and giant chrysanthemums floating on the pool of sparkle water. I’d have a magnolia tree outside, the large waxy leaves hung low, and the sweetly dizzying scent of pink blooms. There’d be the fat ants crawling in a lazy trail on the cool bathroom tiles, or a furry caterpillar dropping in for a nighttime visit. There’d be the great crackling thunderstorms, and then, after, the smell of lush grass, and rain, and the tropics. And at night the sky’d be the same as it is in London, in Brooklyn, in Paris.

Girls after a Sunday morning prata breakfast are full of drive power, and motor about the city because they can. “Mowmy,” I texted, “we have stolen your car and we are going to Holland Village.”