It Was So Quiet

I went out for no particular reason last night (25th), the lunar new year eve. Orchard Road was quite deserted, eerily quiet. Even the street light-up decoration was gone. It seemed 80% of the population had disappeared. I dropped by Borders and found there “Facing Unpleasant Facts,” another collection of essays by George Orwell and bought it without hesitation. It was not there when I visited the bookstore when I was still reading “All Art Is Propaganda,” but there were three copies on the shelf last night. I walked down from Borders to CC and found two men sitting on a bench near the Somerset MRT entrance. Between them were four or five Tiger Beer cans. One of them were saying, “そこまではやらないけど (‘I wouldn’t do that much’ or ‘I wouldn’t go that far’).”