Last Thursday of November

I haven't celebrated Thanksgiving in six years, but when I realised this morning what day it was (mostly because it's a marker for the Byrds' arrival in town), I felt obscurely thankful.

For my health, which has always been decent and which seems to be taking well to all the new physical routines I'm crazily imposing on it.

For family and friends, who are always there to hear about the latest silliness in my life, to offer keen advice, to entertain me with their phone calls, SMSes, blogs and emails, to receive gifts, to go out for drinks on a whim and a prayer, to teach me new words and languages and ways of speaking, to teach me new ways of thinking.

For a steady income that pays the bills.

For good books, like Neil Gaiman's American Gods, which I'm currently reading, and Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers, which you read, and have to put away to think about, and then find you have to come back to, and Jonathan Frantzen's The Corrections, for which I still have no words to aptly describe.

For my eyesight, so I can read and write, surf the web and blog.

For the 49% of Americans who voted for Kerry.

For the dignified stray cats who live in my neighbourhood.

For the abundance of good food on this tiny island where I live, from $2 fishball noodles at Margaret Drive to $6 Breko's sandwiches to $15 Peranakan delights at Bumbu to $35 Japanese buffet at Kuchinbo to the crazy expensive dinners my parents splurge on once in a while.

For blue skies.