There is a dress I have been admiring in a store window for days now, every time CC and I go downtown. Today Ren called just after noon and asked where I was. “I’m going to be late,” I said, “but I have a new dress.” What can you do, sometimes a slight tardiness is inevitable if it is good for your fashion.

Over Killiney coffees, later, Jacq and I were talking about Shanghai and New York and London: this is our lives, the possibilities of our lives. Jacq is nimble like a little Chinese seamstress, and when I looked at her hands, I found she had made a small crane out of Morinaga chocolate wrappers.

There is nothing like a thick porcelain cup of kopi, complete with the plastic soup spoon of condensed milk. I don’t know what it is about coffee here, I can’t imagine it’s just the condensed milk that makes the difference, but, man, it’s good and thick and sweet in a way that makes you forget the skim cappuccinos and the double macchiatos. “It’s the way they roast the beans,” Jacq said. “They roast them in butter.”