Last night, having delicious and juicy steak (with chopsticks) at New Ubin Seafood with the Even Friday lot (chargrilled and diced, with sea salt, mustard and ketchup on the side, and served up with accompaniment of claypot-style (dark, sweet) rice full of wok hei cooked with beef dripping: o black crunchy bits, who wouldn’t be a Vimes?), and talking Doctor Who, Julian’s first week at his new job (as of Monday, Assistant Professor, tenure-track! Me: But “Research Scientist” sounded so much more intelligent than just “Asst Professor!” People might even think you have “Adjunct” in front of it!), the unfortunate waves of anti-liberalism in Singapore right now) and disagreeing about the newest David Mitchell. (personally I hated The Bone Clocks (gimmicky and unsatisfying — also I was promised Whovian and it was not.) but I love that I’m around a dinner table with people who have all read it already, just 7 weeks after its publication, and that these are people who care more about publication dates of books rather than release dates of new movies.)

With Addy joining Mark in Bandung for the remainder of his tour of duty (they’re back at the end of the year), Xinyi spending six months at her company’s Tokyo head office , and Poach and Cindy both back in the US this Fall for one year MA programmes, the First Wednesday dinners, after 9 continuous years of food-adventures and unmitigated girlish silliness, have been temporarily cold-stored. (It doesn’t feel exactly like a parting — all the relocations are short term, and everyone is returning to Singapore within 12 months.) It’s good to have an alternative dinner group to go to, though meeting every Even Fridays is too often for my current budget and lifestyle. I’ve not come to dinner with the Even Fridayers often, but I love the intellectual tone of this group: lively bright people from different professional or artistic fields: Neuroscientist, Political Philosopher, Theatre Director, Lawyer, Defence Analyst, High School English teacher, the diversity within the same socially liberal spectrum: married and single, gay and straight, public and private sector, all educated in the US or UK, and importantly, all readers. This is very different from the pleasure I have with the First Wednesday girls, who are some of my oldest and closest friends, but who are all also mostly banking and financial types (a segment of the world that I don’t understand and doesn’t really exist for me) — where we never talk literature or science or politics, we simply fall into the familiar patterns of personal ribbing of the sort you share with those you’re perfectly comfortable with and have known forever.)