It's 83 degrees out, breaking the previous record of 82 on this same date back in 1896. And instead of frolicking in the sunshine I'm indoors playing Rockman 3, SMB3 and Final Fantasy 1. Yes, 1. All part of a conscientious second-childhood kickback program to counteract a quarter-life crisis. I want to be at home, loitering in Junkspace, in shopping centers brimming with thrilling tedium and commercial conformity, shuttling effortlessly between the high luster of Wallpaper venues (go look at the photospread in this month's issue, with the octopus-shaped fountain in Marina Square) and the lost-world vernacularism of the neighborhoods. I'm glamorizing, of course (one stupefied by reminiscence can hardly act otherwise). But this time I am well and truly homesick, beyond reasonable degrees. By which I mean that I am not to be consoled if I had weekly shipment of belacan, fried shallots, pineapple tarts, chwee kueh. Nor even if more close friends were here. Barring the weather (but really, how can one exclude the one persistently annoying, and hence cloyingly integral, aspect of Singapore from any wish list?), I want it all. Anal restrictions, parochial neuroses, material fixations, churning contradictions, I absolve you all. You are my sustaining tensions, my inveterate specters, my relished bugbears.

Montreal was not just about food. I saw a Miles Davis documentary, a heart-shaped card of a Zauberflöte, Morvern Callar, Habla con Ella, Herzog and de Meuron at the CCA, Gillian Wearing and James Casebere at the MAC, Gauguin and Matisse at the MBA.