Wow, Day 6 was by far the best day.

And I didn't see the awesomeness coming. In fact the day started out rather (very) shittily, for reasons I won't disclose even here.

I woke up so late, again, so breakfast was out of the question. Brunch? Chicken rice. Ah bliss.

Then we made our way to the bus stop because mom had to go and buy floor mats for the bathroom, and the shops selling them were quite a few blocks away. We chatted amiably, about things and stuff and more things and stuff. Both of us were in a good mood.

I sat in the bus shelter, right next to one of the poles acting as a pillar to hold the whole thing up. There were ants running up and down the pole, which connected into a yellow advertising billboard behind me.

Ants! Wow. Hadn't actually seen any in NZ, now I notice. I was actually pretty cruel to ants when I was in Singapore. I kept on teasing them, blowing them so they'd be frantic and run all over the place, peering into their nests and occasionally provoking their anthills with various objects of the stick variety.

The ants were crawling up and down the grey pole and into a slit on the billboard. It's kind of hard to explain...Anyway none of the ants could or would climb onto me, so don't worry.

There was a tiny slit at the bottom of the pole which lead into this metal base, and the ants came in and out of it. Huh...I wonder what was down there that was so fascinating. Anyway, I first saw that and tried to trace back to where the ants were coming from, or going to. However it seemed that they were getting to (or coming from? I could never figure out) the little slit. I blew at some of them, and they went haywire. but it wasn't so much fun.

I peered into the slit. There was some nondescript grey stuff down there. I expected it to be dust or maybe ash, dirty stuff like that. I blew into the slit.

A horde of ants scrambled out, carrying little white things in what seemed was their mouth.

Ew! Ew! I hadn't ever seen this before!

Then the bus came and I (hastily) boarded.

'Top deck top deck topdeck,' I said, gesturing. So mom and I found a seat on the upper level.

Breath only slightly erratic, I said, '...Can I tell you something?'

'Yeah?'

I told her about the ants. She started getting squeamish.

'Ew...'

'Haha I know!'

'Now I feel queasy...'

'What were those white things?'

'I think they were eggs...'

'Really? It looked like pieces of bread.'

'Well, if they're small and white...'

'Yeah, and they were all the same size...I guess those were eggs. Haha oh god, ew! Were those female ants carrying the eggs?'

'I don't know, I don't think so. The only female is a big one, and there's just one.'

'So were those, like...I mean do ant colonies work the same way like bees?'

'I suppose. The black ants are all male.'

'So...what's the female look like?'

'Very different. It's...big and white and transparent looking.'

I blanched. 'Hah - oh god ewwwwwwwww!'

Mom looked queasy, too. We laughed and the conversation kept on going.

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we alighted.

'Don't think me silly for doing this, but...'

she opened up the umbrella. What the fuck?

'I don't want to get tanned,' she laughed. I laughed, too. 'Why not? You're as pale as a vampire!

'On the other hand, I'm so tanned...' I looked at my forearm. 'As dark as auntie Sri's skin.'

She was skeptical.

'Okay, almost as dark.'

Hm, the thing was, when auntie Sri was around I knew my skin was almost as tan as hers. But now it seems I had gotten paler. Huh.

I asked whether there were ways to make your skin paler.

'Sure, like Michael Jackson, you put whitener on. He has a whole crew of dermatologists to tend to him.'

'No but I mean like...natural methods. You get tan by lots of sun exposure, can you get paler by avoiding the sun?'

'Hm...yes.'

'Ah. That would explain things.'

But I wasn't too sure about it.



We joked all the way to the shop. Me and my mom get along awesomely sometimes.


Oh there were floor mats there alright, but mom needed 12 small ones and they came in packets of five. and they weren't the right color. So she decided to buy the mats another day, and we bought some biscuits back.

I hadn't seen any of those kinds of biscuits in new zealand. There were the brown, circular ones, the really hard ones. I wondered why they were called butterfly biscuits.

Ooh and then the wafers. You'd think they'd sell wafters in an ang mor country, but nooo...

And then pineapple biscuits. They reminded me of something.

"Hey," I said as the countergirl packed and measured our biscuits, "Do you know those..."

"Those what?"

"You know...Those snack things with the pineapple filling in them, covered in something, but I don't think it's bread or biscuit..."

"Oh! Pineapple tarts. Like the ones for Chinese New Year?"

"Yeah! Those. I liked those."

I don't think we'd be able to buy them this time of year though...oh well.

The flavor of the wafer I'd bought was strawberry.

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We talked all the way back to the bus stop but the bus ride back was quiet and comfortable.

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That night, we went out for a meal of hor fun, as we'd agreed to have. We went a different route this time, but the walk wasn't far from our block.

We passed a petshop. Mom pointed out a rabbit and I noticed some cute little hamsters, but mom was already ahead of me so I had to run to her.

'Aww! Can we go back by this same route?'

'Yeah, sure.'

Further on we passed a manga shop. A manga shop. I instinctively looked for DN copies.

I found them, on the top shelf. 11 Volumes. I spent a few quiet moments just staring.

"See anything you want?"

"Just...no, let's go." I hurried her on.

I made a decision not to buy any. Besides, what use would I have for them? I'd already seen the anime and I could read English scanlations online.

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Hor fun was good. The serving was generous.

After the meal, sitting there in the spacious and cool area, we were both feeling pretty contented. Then;

"Let's go."

So we did.

As promised, we went back by the same route. And after that nice dinner, I'd made the decision to change my mind.

And I decided that tonight I would walk home with a Death Note volume in my hands.

Um...which Volume again?


I decided to just take the logical route and buy the first Volume. So I did.
Five bucks? Okay, so I might not know much (okay, I don't know anything) about mangas, but I thought they'd be far more expensive...In the double digits, at least. I mean, jesus. The artwork is gorgeous; five dollars?! That's blasphemy.

But then again, seeing how popular DN is, Obata should be rolling in the millions regardless...

Anyway.

I had it!
I had a real Death Note volume in my hands. Oh dear god. I felt delirious and simply happy. How easy it is to please a fangirl.

We passed the hamsters again, and I squee'd. Almost all of them were babies! Cute little ones, like the ones Cookie had before, the ones Mickey and Minnie had before. And the best thing was, more than one was in a cage. I'd learned from experience (and from a few books I'd read) that hamsters are solitary creatures. Cookie proved this to me when she brutally massacred another baby hamster that found his way into her cage.

But no, all the babies were together, and looking strangely panicked for some reason. They ran all around, over each other, under each other, each pawing the plastic sides of their cages as if trying to climb out? Strange. I laughed when one of them trod on top of his sleeping roomate.

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