I wanted to make sure it's midnight when I phoned you but the times on my watches, cell phone and CPU clock were all unsynchronized. I called you anyway and you said it was only 11.55pm. I wondered aloud as to why typing on my keyboard sounded louder than yours. You said you prefer playing snooker to pool, and I replied that I've never played snooker. You told me you like Dune cos it's so political. It's also why you like Romance of the Three Kingdoms (the English translation of cos). I mentioned about Machiavelli's The Prince, and told you to read it. He wrote this thin volume in 1513 and filled it with advice like... if someone helped you overthrow the previous ruler, get rid of them cos you don't know when they'll do the same to you. Hmm.

I mentioned I saw the music video for Chicane's No Ordinary Morning in Hong Kong but you had never seen it. I tried to explain. In it, a couple quarrelled, and in the next scene the girl was driving her car in a multi-storey carpark and trying to ram down the guy while he was trying to ride his motorbike. And she tried to ram him again the next time while he was hitching a ride from someone else. The music video ended with both of them toppling off the roof of a tall building and flailing wildly for a long while... before landing on a huge mattress. Then you realise it was a film crew shooting a scene, but then the girl and the guy looked strangely at one another, and you wonder if that's all there is to it? It was not what I would have expected from the lyrics of this song at any rate.

We went on rambling about nothing in particular. My ear was burning but I didn't tell you this time. It was nice to have just another conversation with you.