Our favourite things: fish and chips with vinegar, too much food, fake grass, a sinking sky and nothing to do for the next few hours. The sun was setting somewhere we couldn't see. Chinese tourists flooded the plain momentarily, taking grandiose photos of each other reclining sultrily on the grass. I closed my eyes a few times but every time I opened them the sky was still bright. Somewhere in the building a master was rapping out a beat for a student who played his piano rapidly. A couple ran down the brick steps screaming at each other. Then it was perfect peace.

You look like your dad but you also look like a moon child, eyes like two plums and happy crescents, cheeks like warm steamed buns, our arms and foreheads and shoulders together an animal skin tent that we can hide in.

The prettiest place.

Somewhere in Singapore there is a tree on a hill, and two chairs on that hill, and nothing all around except the occasional car.

I've lived by this lake for fourteen years, and found every special spot I thought there was to find. There are the saga seed trees, the mid-run scenic stop where I pause to think about whatever problem I was trying to run out of my system, the mini jetty, the castle on the hill. But today, fourteen years of exploring later, I found the Sunset Trail.

I call it the Sunset Trail because never before, from any angle or lookout point around my lake, have I seen the sunset so beautiful, large and orange across the water and filtering itself through trees. No car driving past can see it. No train commuter can see it. You have to be on that trail to be bathed in light.

Not just the sunset--this new paradise I have found has people flying kites in secret fields, picnickers dotted along secret lake banks, and groves of unpruned trees that look like meeting places for elves.

I wouldn't have found it without my new bicycle. I love cycling. Firstly you can cycle in flipflops and sitting down, and you still work up a full-body sweat. Secondly you can go so fast that it's perpetually windy. And thirdly, I run to explore. Gyms are nice and private but I get bored of the scenery, if there's any scenery to begin with. A bicycle lets me explore much more than my feet can.

And I love the sky today. Bewildering whorls of white, much much vastness, and too many dragonflies to count above the trees. Sunday evenings should always sound like this.

As part of my life ambition to live large, I refuse to go to town. (until ion opens with a huge uniqlo, that is)

This is what I want to do this weekend, starting today:

1. take my international friends (hello ann! welcome back joeun!) to peninsula because it is dark, musty and full of good stuff like band tees, stickers and guitars
2. brotzeit with the classmates i miss
3. national museum for Verner Panton, to see the environment exhibit and if it's really all cushy
4. night picnic at fort canning, on the fake grass and to steal timbre's live music
5. toy festival at SAM on sunday, with free comics and hopefully to pick up some ancient toys
6. sunday market at haji lane for "pre-loved" items, how i adore euphemisms
7. scrapbooking with all the photos i've been printing on my new very cheap home printer

too busy having fun to look for a proper job.

I rearranged my room so that I have more table space to use my long rulers on, and space to sit on both sides of the table. It has been a busy week of sewing up accessories for saturday's shoot and getting swallowed in whales of cloth.

Every week is different. One week I am restlessly idle, the next I am busy and happy. Working hands make for good rest. I enjoy this partially-busy lifestyle, and now I'm in no hurry to tie myself down to a full schedule.

About picnics. I have grown bored with the things I used to love, like hanging out in malls. And I think most people have grown out of their city ways as well. Perhaps we're influenced by the pretty pictures of casual grass-lounging on scandinavian and european websites and want a piece of that earth for ourselves. Singaporeans used to scoff at picnics for the pragmatic reason that we have too hot a sky. Nowadays lithe fifteen-year-olds spread out picnics in the botanic gardens to live out the romantic picnic idea.

It's still hot, but at least it's out in the open, and I love open spaces.

4 x 25 = an open fake field and quibbles about wanting to be closer

question for all singaporeans: do you think this generation of youths is changing for the better? i think so. One reason is we have more picnics. More on that soon.

You know toil-free days have arrived when:

Now if only tomorrow morning would come, so that I can go to popular and buy sticker paper and lettering and get this thing behind me! But tonight, while tomorrow has not yet come, I shall glut myself on photographs of this very satisfactory weekend.

Happy birthday amelia, yes we had a picnic in Singapore, at our Mystery Location. And happy holidays viscom group, you make me uncool and very happy, and I can't believe it's only one more year of midnight marathons with you in the lab.

Damei, we shall have our otherworldly Day of Contentment soon too.

I was thinking and thinking, and I suppose I do know why my submissions are all late this sem after all. I threw out my concept of time as a new year's resolution, clocks and calendars and numbers, in a bid to calm my heart so impatient for big changes. Not too practical, but calming indeed. Like cutting paper very slowly. And swift window-shopping after buying paper because I was in the area and had to say hi. I think it's better this way, being late for submissions but more proud of the work that comes out. I don't know. Yes. I think so.