1 week left. i've been swanning around town with my mom's friend and her family (just in from the uk) while sweating and baking in the unbelievable heat. we did the tourist loop round chinatown, through orchard road and down to the bay, where we were finally done in by the weather (and for them, the jet lag). then su-lin called, and i thought she said she had bought me eight pounds of chocolate, but it turns out that wasn't the case.

***

in the museum in the raffles hotel, there is a newspaper clipping from the straits times (i think), circa 1910. it reads:

BOAR HUNT AT RAFFLES

No sportsman in Asia should miss paying a visit to Raffles, for he never knows what a rare bag may be picked up on the verandah of a morning before breakfast. Within the past few months we have had occasion to chronicle a tiger hunt under the billiard room and a lively python chase in and about the verandah. Yesterday morning there was an exciting wild boar hunt, including a separate conflict between the monumental Sikh jagah who stands at the doorway of the hotel and the extraordinary brute that sought to pass the portals. This jagah in question who is known to practically every globe trotter on earth as well as to residents in the Peninsula, hails from somwhere near Peshawar, and stands over six feet in his stockings. His girth is generous and he weighs about eighteen stone. Recently he came into a legacy from an appreciative guest of similar dimensions to his own. This legacy consisted of a full dress evening suit, whic, when worn in the morning in conjunction with an immense puggree, a sash and new lemon-colored boots, lent to the naturally imposing form of the jagah an additional air that was bizarre and picturesque. In this attire he met the wild hog.

The circumstantial details of the combat as purveyed by Mr. Chaytor and other officials of the hotel management who were eyewitnesses to the unusual spectacle, furnish mental pabulum which will rejoice the soul of every shikari, and every student of wild animal life when such life is considered under the contorted conditions which must obtain with wild animal life when combined with life in a first class modern hotel.

It seems that at about three minutes past nine o'clock yesterday morning Mr C. Chaytor was attending to routine duties on the verandah of the billiard room when he was amazed to hear the voice of the Sikh jagah uplifted in a great roar for help. On looking down at the spot whence the roar emanated Mr. Chaytor was still further amazed to see the jagah - dressed in his best suit of clothes - but wrestling despearately with a wild hog. The situation so far as Mr. Chaytor was concerned stood absolutely without precedent. Neither the tiger nor the python had wrestled wiht the jagah. Therefore he simply waited and watched. Presently, the jagah cast aside the hog and panted. Then still panting, he rooted up one of the stakes supporting a climbing orchid, couched the...

#16: A place for everything, and everything in its place.