I'm on a roll today.

I take the lozenge, like a good girl, and the medicine taste of it hits my tongue. I used to hate it because it tasted too much like oranges, but today there's just the medicine. Briefly I wonder if the lozenge is too old, lost its potency, or maybe I don't have a sore thoart, it's just a tickle that I'm over-reacting to.

Maybe. But then again, I hate sore thoarts.

I turn to the computer again, as I realise one strange thing: I haven't written about my university mates yet. Odd, since we've already spent half a year together, but then again at that time I'd been too busy chasing the shadows of things lost, of trying to keep in touch. But sometimes, the new is more important.

Like now. I never really appreciated how less alone my new friends make me feel, how lunch can be enjoyable rather than a hurried affair, how it's nice to have someone to spend breaks with. But I'm also reminded of the clunkiness of company, how it takes forever to get to anywhere, or to find a place.

But Su Chwe sat next to me again today, and Jeanette and Catherine have always been there, and lectures aren't just about learning anymore. As can be seen when I nearly laughed my head off when Jeanette said to Catherine, "Valerie, do you want to go to the toilet?"

"Valerie? Who's Valerie?" Catherine took on the slightly mocking look that meant that Jeanette was going to be teased mercilessly, whether about her intelligence or height or whatever was more relevant.

"Oh, I'm sorry, you look like the lecturer."

Catherine howled in protest as her tuition mates joined in the teasing. I cut in, "She's quite smart what. Take it as a compliment."

Catherin wasn't content to take the 'compliment' as it was though. "Jeanette, you look like Victor Yeo!"

We were mystified at this reference to the other law lecturer, especially since, as Katherine friend of Catherine pointed out. "But you said he looks like Teo Chwe Heng!"

"Yah, that's what I meant." Our brain fizzled as we made the connection, and all started to laugh.

"Then who do I look like?" I managed to choke out after a while.

Jeanette pondered for only a moment before saying, "Divesh."

How the heck I can look like a male Indian accounting lecturer is beyond me.

But I dislike the fact that lectures are so late; by the time I get back it's dark already. Today I had to share a seat, and I sat there fighting the itch in my thoart whilst looking out of the window.

The garden shop is hard to miss, since it is literally flooded with light. The sudden brightness of the light bulbs burn my eyes, but under the harsh glow I see something that makes me perk up with joy: they're selling orange trees. The oranges must be humongous, since I can see them clearly from the bus that's across the road, but the more important thing that occurs to me is that Chinese New Year is here. It conveys more than the red banners put up by the GRCs, with new year couplets in calligraphy on one side, and Happy Lunar New Year (in English) on the other. And this happiness follows me home, like the blaze of lights left in the distance as the bus trundles on.