Peggy came to visit us tonight, it was so much fun. She was late because of some overtime work but… let me describe my day from the beginning.
I woke up at 5:40, like I do every day, did my exercises, woke Zen up for breakfast at 6:00, Naoko got up after that. Naturally, nobody’s quick to get up, but eventually they got going. Went to school at 7:15; storm clouds were gathering, but no rain was falling (yet). I got my bus at around 7:25, got to the train station near 8:00. The platform was more full of people than usual, and when the first train arrived an announcement came over the speakers that the train was not proceeding on, and that everybody had to get off. So, when that train emptied, there were 1.5 trainloads of people standing on the platform. Each train that arrived after that was stuffed full of passengers; since only a few people would get off, the crowd on the platform hardly dimmed at all. I got a call from the aquarium people that we could come by and buy the clownfish that we’d wanted. Great. I was reading the 33 1/3 publication of “Black Sabbath, Master of Reality”, and I think I read more than half of the book. Finally, I got fed up, decided I could take a train in the other direction, and two stops away I could switch to the other direction and be in an empty train. That detour took a while, and 20 minutes later I was once again passing Clementi, now with an empty platform. I wonder if I jumped the gun, maybe I should have waited.
Oh well. I got to Tanjong Pagar, where I work, and it was raining like hell. I used my umbrella to walk to work but still got a major soaker up to my knees anyway. Oh well… it didn’t matter, since I was listening to Black Sabbath.
Once at work, I switched to Neil Young. I have actually listened to nearly nothing but Neil Young these 10 days. I listened to “After The Gold Rush” over 40 times, and “Tonight’s The Night” five times during these days. Great, great, great, great magical music. I just don’t get it – why is this music so amazing?
Had a 45-minute lunch, where I accomplished a few tasks:
- bought “The Amazing Mister Fox” for my family
- bought six muffins for my family
- took Naoko’s CD player to the repair
- helped my co-worker find a watch repair place
- chatted with my co-worker
- ate my lunch
Quite efficient. I was hoping to leave by 5:00 to get home for dinner to meet Peggy, but at 4:59 my boss called a meeting. Luckily, it was only 30 minutes long. But when I got home, I found out that Peggy would be delayed. Too bad. Luckily, there was stuff to be taken care of – we needed to make sure that the new tropical fish that we’d bought had a good habitat. The challenge was to get the right salinity for the fish. I hope we got it right.
Peggy came at 7:40, we had a great dinner, ate nice paella and played the fun monkey game. There was an odd phenomena – at one point Zen said “papa, you are the only one who didn’t have any fallen monkeys”, and at that point mysteriously a huge pile of monkeys fell down. What a predicament. I ended up having more monkeys than the other three players combined. Loser!!
Peggy went off at 10:30, she needs to work early tomorrow. Take care, Peggy.
Zen has been a sweet boy this week. He talked about a past visitor, saying that he wished he could play badminton with her, then later started reading one of the books she gave him. He also had a nice time speaking Chinese with Yuping and Peggy (both girls from Taiwan). Great week.
PICS!!!
Peggy Naoko paella
our dinner - paella!!!