I realize my website is down --- because the friend who hosts it has temporarily lost his internet due to @HOME's abrupt bankruptcy --- but I'll keep writing anyway.

These few days have been quiet. There has been much rest and not much else. The few moments when I did venture out of the house:

Tuesday night: my college prom. The kids were there in full regalia and I showed up fashionably late just to check out what they were all wearing. I am delighted to report that two of my most attractive students chose to deck themselves out in red --- which well-suited their chirpy but not flamboyant personalities --- and one of them walked away with the "Lady of the Dance" award. She is the sweetest kid. Even though she's obscenely wealthy, she's also unbelievably nice and will probably go on to be an excellent, if somewhat giggle-prone, member of society. On the flip side of things, I sadly must also report that many young men had either dyed their hair horrible colors, gelled their head stiff enough to prick a person's hand (I witnessed this inadvertently when a friendly slinging of the arm around the shoulders was punctuated by an "Owwww!"), worn red shirts with black jackets, or worn fall/winter jackets in lieu of the customary suit-jacket. It's very very strange to enter a ballroom in Singapore and see young men in fall/winter jackets. It wasn't even raining that night.

Of course, there were some truly horrible outfits donned by the female students too, including the requisite too-short dresses, invariably worn by an uncomfortable-looking girl who would keep tugging it down, the over-the-top tiara (on one of my colleague's most problematic and least favorite students, so ha!), the pouffy balletic tulle skirts and the gowns straight out of an '80s' movie. But nothing that seriously hurt my eyes.

I stayed for about two hours, ate a bit of food, obliged excited students who wanted pictures, got the scoop on the post-prom party (one enterprising badminton player had booked local dance club Eden for three hours) and then dashed off into the night once I got bored.

Tuesday/Wednesday afternoon: errands. We developed the photographs from Sunday night's adventures, but a number of pictures didn't turn out; Terz suspects it's because he was using 200(-speed) film instead of 400. We also helped our photography friend (from Sunday night) buy some paint and move it down to an art space in Chinatown (at the corner of Upper Pickering Street/South Bridge Road in an ancient block of flats that's about to be demolished, for those of you Singaporeans that are interested). The space used to be occupied by a coffeeshop for untold millennia and the grime on the wall, as well as the customary sexist Guinness Stout posters, prove it. It's an interesting slice of old Singapore, though. I'm glad we got to see it before it gets painted, even though all the dirt was sorta creepy.

Thursday afternoon: I pulled grandfather duty. Well, it's not really duty in the sense of being a chore. My grandfather had to go for some medical checkups, none of my aunts or uncles was free to take him in, so my mom asked me to do it. It took about two hours --- mostly spent waiting in the very posh premises of the National Heart Centre --- and then we went to Jelita for him to get some stuff and me to pick up theater tickets for tomorrow night. My grandfather is very cool. He's eighty-four, very spry, and was just complimented by the cardiologist today for having a young heart. I think that made my grandfather's day; he was pretty talkative after that.

Oh, and the theatre tickets are for tomorrow night's performance of Hark the Jingle Red-Nosed Chestnuts. It's a Christmas parody thingie, performed by a friend of a friend and his theater group STAGES. He got rave reviews for his previous shows, so I'm really looking forward to this, even though I can't really afford the tickets, so soon on the heels of Terz's birthday spree.

Um --- what else? Oh, I bought a new crosswords book from MPH yesterday. It's a collection of puzzles from the US Airways inflight magazine. It was the only decent crosswords book at the store and I'm desperate for a new one because the New York Times one we've been doing (since Terz wisely invested in it at the Vancouver airport bookstore before our flight home in June) is almost completed, except for three or four absolutely impossible ones. This one is easier than the NYT one --- too easy for Terz, in fact --- but it'll tide me over for a while. It's also more current and slightly less America-centric than the other.

It really sucks that @HOME crashed because I have so many friends who rely on them for e-mail and internet access, and now they're scrambling around, looking for alternatives. Phooey.