May 11, 2003. A, Y and I at Cambridge Common, laying out our ten-year plan.

(upon further reflection, the following has been further revised)

In 2013, at 32, after having spent a couple of years after graduation at fun jobs, freelancing, travel writing, self-dissipation in NYC, Paris, Lyon, Hong Kong, Tokyo maybe, teaching English in Beijing or Shanghai, mingling with similarly desultory people, I will:

-be recently married
-have no children
-be living in a sleek apartment near Robertson Quay (but not G's one with the voyeur's-wet-dream swimming pool), next to favorite restaurants but hopefully still uncolonized by riffraff, still safe from the spoiledness of Boat and Clarke Quays
-be driving that Volkswagen convertible
-stay far far from silly country clubs and their golfish clientele
-have my top secret business plan starting to pay off
-write for a large number of international publications
-have started my own international publication
-photograph professionally
-be starting to feel otiose and, shall we say, improperly applied, and will get a proper, normal and boring job

Right, time to stop eating all this junk, these adulterated foreign appropriations of real Chinese, Thai, Japanese food, and start accumulating gustatory libido, for a triumphant orgasm come June. AF mentioned a new Paolo e Judie satellite. AE has promised to take me to his secret hawker-food hangouts. J claims his cousin's rogan josh is "brilliant," though I would take issue with applying that adjective to food.

In Tokyo I will retrace the steps of my youth, when I looked like "a Slam Dunk protagonist," when I went pinecone-picking, when I had a horde of Japanese action figurines (a red falconheaded, yellow lionheaded, blue dolphinheaded, a huge turquoise whale that opened up to become a stronghold, literally armed to the teeth, a portly metal Doraemon with a cavernous abdomen, a stomach-niche, flipping open to reveal hidden prizes, surprises), when I visited post-industrial theme parks (Robert Venturi: "Tokyo is the exemplary city of our time...valid chaos, not minimalist order") -- derelict junkyards of construction vehicles for children to climb on and into, when I visited wonderlands of fish and vegetable markets (yeah, this stuff needs to be hammered into you formatively), when I briefly fancied myself a sumo-wrestler, when I lived in a house of architectural éclat (featured in a coffee-table book that we found on a shelf as part of the incumbent furnishings)...

I will track down the two teachers I still remember, although what are the odds that they will still be marooned at an elementary school after 15 years?