We were barely on time for our last Mosaic gig. It was the Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra, which was an odd choice since neither of us were huge ska fans. I had bought the tickets on impulse - because the Sistic hotline kept me waiting too long while processing my other ticket purchases, and I started browsing through the festival lineup again. (This is the same way I'll be the first person to decide what food to order while the rest are still pondering over the menu; but because they take so long to think, I'll start changing my mind back and forth till I end up with a dish I didn't really mean to eat.)

They gave everyone different neon glowsticks before the gig.. those bendy ones you can twist into a bracelet and wear. The air was electric right from the get-go. The band gave a high energy performance from start to end, and the audience was lapping it up. It was the kind of concert where it was clear that seats were unnecessary. It was the best Mosaic gig I've attended this year, but what I wanted to blog about is this:

During the encore after the gig, the folks sitting at the upper levels started throwing their glow bracelets down. It was like being trapped in a magical shower of tiny bouncing neon halos. You joined in the fun to throw away your neon bracelet and urged me to follow suit. But I didn't. Somehow I thought I could preserve this memory if I kept mine on. Suddenly, you reached out your hand and caught a flying bracelet in mid-air. You laughed and said, "Wow, did you see that?" and turned around to hurl it away again.

And this is the precise moment I want to remember.

33 1/3 books.

What I really want to read are Afghan Whigs: Gentlemen, Elliott Smith: XO and The Flaming Lips: Zaireeka.

Today, you spoke to me before I went for my solo run.
I heard you say: "Try not to waste any money when you run".
When actually, you said: "Try not to race anybody when you run".

Lol.

Haruki Murakami's "All God's Children Can Dance" is the first of his short stories to be adapted in the US. See the trailer.

Your friend sent me a joking sms to warn me that it would not be advisable to kiss you anymore because right that instant, you had picked up food off the table and were eating it. I could so imagine you doing that, the quick pop of the morsel in your mouth and your mischievous (you couldn't understand why I would unconsciously pronounce it as "mischievious" like "devious") grin.

A few hours later, the warning went unheeded.

Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations.
- Faith Baldwin, novelist (1893-1978)

We still remember what we ate the night we got attached. I had a huge bowl of salad (why?), you ordered falafel (those were the days before we changed each other's diets), and we were eating with my friends whom you were meeting for the first time. At that point in time, we had no idea we would define our relationship that night. In fact, we hadn't even held hands yet (later you would exclaim I was slow).

Tonight, exactly one year later, we're going to go back to eat at the same place. This time, I'm going to order a pint and a huge whopping burger (which you will of course share because we share everything we eat, even at chi chi places where they frown at people swapping huge plates with tiny morsels). And this time, I'm going to hold your hand.

Thank you for everything.

4 reasons I'm happy today:

• Paul Arden's "Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite"
• Joan Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking"
• Amir D. Aczel's "The Artist and the Mathematician"
• Pietra Rivoli's "The Travels of a T-shirt in the Global Economy"

You have recipe books which you don't refer to. Instead, you like to search for recipes online. The problem is you don't own a printer and we're too lazy to copy the recipes out. As a result, we had to run back and forth between the kitchen and bedroom as we started forgetting the recipes. Sometimes I caved in and summarized recipes on tiny scraps of receipts (though not too precisely). There was once when you asked if I meant "teaspoon" or "tablespoon" in terms of measurement and I replied confidently "tablespoon" when of course, it was the former. And there was the time we left out the sauce mixture for a fish dish, because I thought I had asked you to run back to the computer to check the recipe, and you thought I had told you I didn't think there was a sauce. Strangely, everything still turned out delicious somehow.

Our next cooking attempt will probably be to replicate my dad's fried rice cake. I think dad would have liked that.

Love is a Mix Tape.