Mystery Moments and Missed Water Changes

Ovidia--every other Tuesday

Last weekend I missed changing the water in Turtle Boy's outdoor tank and the indoor fishtank--but I did work 8 and 11 hour sessions through Saturday and Sunday and I've finished and submitted the edits for a new middle-grade book (no contract yet, keeping fingers crossed) so I'm calling it a moral victory.

Poor fish and poor Turtle Boy, but I'll make it up to them--tomorrow or once I get through with this!

But it might be a while before things ease up because I've started planning my next history mystery; this is where the first murder is likely to take place.

In case it's not clear, this is one of the rubber-tire swings of my youth, suspended from a tembusu tree. This is what a real tembusu tree looks like:

This is the tree that appears on the back of Singapore five dollar notes. The tembusu is also the tree that was planted to commemorate Lee Kuan Yew, who was Singapore’s Chief Gardener as well as Prime Minister!

The tembusu is a large deep-rooted evergreen, native to Singapore with tiny, distinctively fragrant, cream coloured flowers. It provides shelter and beauty and a tough, durable wood often used for decking here.

Like trees to wood, we play different roles at different stages in our lives. I was struck by how good some people are at all the roles they take on. I'm talking about Tao Li, who I met by chance at Daisy's Dream Kitchen at lunchtime,

If I look weird in the photo it's because I was totally fan-girling!

Not just because of all her swimming achievements (Singapore's first female Olympian), but for how she switched from competitive swimming to coaching swimming and teaching disadvantaged kids.

I was also impressed by how she switched from chatting with friends in rapid-fire Wuhan dialect to Mandarin to order her meal, to fluent English when she spoke to us... and she was charming, friendly and radiating good health and good humour. It's (almost) enough to make me get back in the pool!

The food there was good too, we had chicken laksa with ngoh hiang, watched over by photos of the cast of Crazy Rich Asians taken at Daisy's.

Between all this--my routine chores, the quiet strength of the tembusu tree and good people I meet who are quietly getting on with their lives--I'm feeling unexpectedly hopeful. Even when global news reads like a rejected plot from a Cold War satire, maybe if we go on doing what we can, we might get through this together.

And I have something to look forward to later this month--an old school friend visiting from Canada who I haven't met in the last forty years is coming to visit for a few days. I'm clearing as much of my work as I can now, so that I can take some time off to catch up then.

But I'm also wondering if the ghosts of the little girls who were once so close will awaken inside the layers of life we've wrapped around them since and connect. I hope so. And if not?

We'll get to know each other again.