And this little scruffbag is Girlfriend, who lives among the bushes in the square behind our block. She's about kitten size, but she's a grandmother already. Her family life has been quite tragic. For one thing, Flirt was her daughter from her last litter. There were 3 kittens in her first litter whom we named Kasumi, Nabiki and Akane, and today only Nabiki remains as her only known descendant, although they aren't quite on speaking terms with one another.

June decided to bring Girlfriend home today for a scrub 'cos Girlfriend is filthy with mud and other debris which she's picked up from roughing it outside. Notice that even after her bath, Girlfriend still looks brown around the edges. Think only bleach is gonna get her whites whiter than white again.

When she's dry again, we'll release her back to her natural habitat. She is a wildcat, after all.

Meet the people who are in D. NY EL. That's what our department T-shirts say today as we facilitate our Big Event of the year: our multi-disciplinary college seminar on the theme of "Crime & Punishment".

Apart from inviting external speakers from the legal, enforcement and rehab agencies around town, our other departments volunteered staff speakers to make presentations on crime & punishment from the point-of-view of their own subjects.

For example, biology discussed genetics and criminal behaviour; physics went behind-the-scenes on forensics; art showed us the value of graffiti; history exposed war crimes, and so on.

Now, that's a fun, short way to end our 2nd term. Good luck on your GP & K&I papers tomorrow, kids! Sleep early!

June arrived home from Japan at about 0200 this morning and found me asleep on the living room carpet. I'm not in trouble, though. She'll be claiming her cab fare from her company.

She bought me a bento box (left) for a past-midnight snack. Not bad, authentic Japanese cuisine, air-flown and hand-delivered straight to my dining table. Though cold, the mackerel and prawn were still good, as were the sections of tamago and tofu. But I discovered that I perhaps I'm not really a big fan of Japanese pickles after all.

The cats were very curious about the fishy smell and had to investigate. Kaiser proudly displays the 2 bite marks on the top of his head, a loving present from Momo.

Spent another day on sick leave. Woke up to a schnozz clogged up with liquid snot, causing lots of heavy breathing, not of the good sort. Meds ran out over the weekend and the nasal passages were letting me know that fact, no mistake.

Doc seems to think if I've had no history of asthma, I shouldn't be getting it now. I didn't know it was a strictly childhood condition. He sent me for an x-ray, just to be safe. Thankfully, the results only confirmed that I have bigger lungs than than the radiologist had set the machine for. Needed a second shoot to get all my lungs in the frame. Heh. People tend to underestimate my size, me too sometimes. I'm not a big guy, but I'm bigger than I look. Larger-than-life.

Had time to look at the papers today. Looks like Dubai's moving in a big way towards a knowledge-based economy with a humongous $15b private donation to education, while China's drawing in Ivy-league eggheads to develop its creative innovation sector. I must be taking on the right subject, then. KI seems to be where the future is headed -- if only people would stop treating it like it was still an old-school study-memorize-regurgitate type deal. The old, traditional ways still command too much respect. New wine, old wineskin. What to do?

The trees are having a field day assasinating our fellow countrymen and women. They've finally had enough of us cutting them down to make way for new infrastructure and they're hitting back with suicide attacks. The victims suffer through no fault of their own, though. Wrong place, wrong time. Beware, folks, the trees are on the rampage!

Funny that Malaysian politicians are debating our involvement in the IDR. I would think their position on the situation would be quite clear to them: our adik will put their money into our project, we say "terimah kasih," they balik kampong to their little red dot, everybody happy. What's so difficult about that?

Outward Bound Singapore is 40 years old. I remember being drafted by my venerable old institution to go on a 5-day 'adventure' course with them. Was it fun? Yes, I learned to sail a dinghy, fly on the flying fox, and abseil down a rocky cliff. All the time I wanted to go, "again! again!" But there were so many other of my fellow adventurers with me there was only time for 1 ride each. The hardest part of the camp: waiting in line to go once on a ride. Pretty much like staying in a coaster theme park for 5 days in summer. Every queue starts at the "45 minutes from this point" marker.

Man, I sound old and cranky. Must be the meds talkin'.