Am kicking myself for forgetting my digi-cam this morning. We woke up late and in the rush to deliver breakfast to Sunday service I left it lying on my desk. Doh.

We had Q-tip with us, so not really knowing our church's policy of having dogs in service with people, we did the prudent thing and deposited our sandwiches in the breakfast area, then took Q-tip out for our breakfast elsewhere. We tried our luck at the Cartel, Raffles City, and were indeed welcomed as long as we sat outside on the sidewalk, in the furthest corner possible from the outlet's doors. We had a decent continental-style breakfast and a free-flow of tea and coffee. Despite it looking like a blazing hot day, the corner we sat in was unexpectedly breezy and cool. Wonder if it's like that all the time?

Q-tip came with us to celebrate World Animal Day at Bishan Park -- our weekend hangout these days, it seems like. Which is why I missed having my digi-cam. So many photo-ops of dogs and their owners (well, mainly dogs), and nothing to show for it. Grrr. But Amy and JY both brought their cams and were happily snapping away at every cute canine walking by. JY promised to pass her shots to me later this week, so maybe a delayed upload in these pages over the next couple of days.

Knowing how fearful JY is of dogs, it was amazing how happy she was, getting up close and personal with some of the larger retrievers. I never pegged Amy as a dog person either, but she seemed pretty comfortable ambling amongst the crowd of 4-legged friends. June was, of course, right at home flitting from booth to booth, animal to animal, looking for causes to support or dogs to pet respectively.

Broke for lunch at... the Cartel again, this time in nearby Gardens. Guess if Q-tip gets accepted at one Cartel, she'll get accepted at another too, under the same conditions. Amy split after lunch and JY followed us back to Bishan for more 'blading practice. While she's practicing moving forward, I'm practicing moving backwards and I'm quite happy that today I managed to actually move backwards with intent, at least for a couple of steps. That's better than before when I couldn't move at all.

Meantime, June was persuaded to sign Q-tip up for the "slow dog" race, top prize going to the last dog to cross the finish-line. Q-tip was the fastest to finish, which meant she lost big time, but the sponsors were generous and gave spa vouchers (for human beings) as consolation prizes.

'blading over, JY and I rejoined June at the event tentage. They both got me to sign up for a 'poetry for strays' contest. So I penned quite a depressing few lines echoing a dogcatcher's thoughts while on-the-job. The judges thought it was quite good (we talked to them) but because the objective was to encourage people to adopt strays, my poem was so depressing it got disqualified. Oh, well.

It turns out the organizers were current student-teachers undergoing "service-learning," their version of CIP. Despite their anxiety that the programme wasn't turning out well, I'd say that considering that so many people and their pets showed up; that there was a brisk trade going on amongst the booths in the tentage; and that everyone and their pets enjoyed themselves under the trees and basically said, "hello," to each other, the event was quite a success. Well done, future teachers!