Breaking out Books and Bowels amidst Friendship and White Fish

Ovidia--every other Tuesday

First the good news! I'm back in Singapore and my advance copies of The Rose Apple Tree Mystery are here!!!

And even though I'd already seen the cover images, I think these are Gorgeous!

But there's more to be excited about than that... because there's something else on my personal horizon;

Unfortunately, 'bl**dy sh*t' isn't just an expression, so I've been booked in for a procedure on Thursday.

And starting Monday morning, I've been on a Mission of Elimination. No cereals, grains, red meat, dairy... and all these meds to take in before the procedure on Thursday!

As these instructions make clear, it's complicated. But I figure as long as I stay off anybthing with fibre or taste I should be all right.

This was my last watercress soup on Sunday night... now a distant memory...

Since I don't really like white bread and white rice, I find it's actually easier to go on a liquid fast, while being careful to stay hydrated.

Wednesday promises to be extremely productive, unfortunately not in a writing sense.



I've decided that I'm not going to do much writing/ editing, I might as well allow myself a couple of days of deep reading.
And since I'm fasting physically, I've been trying to take a media fast too. Avoiding screens, doom scrolling and rabbit holes and stick to reading books and mkaing notes and see what comes up.

As was explained to me in the pre colonscopy briefing, you can’t see what’s inside your bowels unless the gunk inside there gets cleared out—I figure what applies to my colon applies also to my cerebrum right?

So we'll see what comes out of this!

I was really touched by some old friends though. We were supposed to meet up for a xiao long bao lunch on Monday, before this 'cleansing' appointment was made. Given my dietary restrictions, I warned them I might be dining on congee but I didn't want to cancel or postpone because I really wanted to see them.

And they switched our rendevous to a sushi place--where we'll all eat fish (allowed) and white rice. Now that's friendship!

It's funny how the people you were thrown together all higgledy piggledy poo at the age of six can somehow stay friends over the years. After all we had nothing in common except that our parents signed us up in the same school! So was it just that forced proximity that bonded us? Because we were young, uniformed blobs of hooks and loops that velcro-ed to each other for survival?

Not necessarily I guess. There were forty or forty one girls in a class and I can't even remember most of their names now! They've been flushed out by time and all the other ideas, experiences and encounters that have passed through me since then.

And some things do end well... since I couldn't take dairy, when their desserts ice creams came I was given chocolate mochis!

Which were delicious!

Wish me luck with the results of the procedure on Thursday--and I look forward to seeing what surfaces after I allow myself two days of deep reading!