Friday night

Friday night at Union, I was sitting in a corner with EH, Casey and two former colleagues --- four girls, one guy in all. As we were wrapping up drinks, a group, with four guys and one girl, took over the adjacent couches. Two minutes later, the girl --- very tall, a little drunk --- was by our side, pondering the possibilities of merging our groups, given our symmetrical gender balance. (She didn't use any big words like that, though. It was more like, "There are four girls and one guy over on your side, and we've got four guys and one girl over here ... ")

We declined, politely --- although I was the only married person in my group, so I'm not sure why that was. The guys were kinda cute.

My friends asked me why I was so quiet that night. I was like, dude, your day did not start at 6 am.

Outside, across the road in Chinatown proper, stallholders worked past midnight to set up their wares for Chinese New Year sales, which included not just the usual selection of waxed duck, lap cheong (Chinese sausage), almond cookies and pineapple tarts, but also German sausages, home-made ice cream, cute plastic insects on a stick and Zippo lighters with half-naked faux nubile women on them. Only in Singapore...