National day holiday in Singapore, but the holiday did not make much difference to me; at 80 years, I stopped actively working for a few years already but continue to do consulting and volunteering. I have a date with my friend Shan for breakfast, we worked together years back, and since then we both kept in touch with a regular breakfast meeting.
It is only 4.45 AM, my wife and I live in the same apartment we moved in 30 years back. The size has shrunken drastically; about 12 years back, a company purchased our block called it reblocking. They kept the same structure but remodeled each floor, and 4 houses per floor became 8 houses per floor, my 1,200 SF house became 610 SF, lost the balance area to inflation.
Requested the kitchen tap to make a warm cup of water with Ph level 7.2, two hours before meeting Shan. I synced my morning readings with the doctor, D74. My sugar level is 2% higher than Sri Lankan origin male living in southeast Asia between 75-80 years, the doctor requested access to my fitness app to increase my daily activit, total fat is less than average male living in Singapore, and that gave me a reduction of .7% in August month insurance premium. While reading my daily health checkup results, I could not stop thinking about my visits to Dr. Lim at Serangoon Avenue 3 at his clinic every 6 months for a blood test where he used to tell me why I need to bring the sugar level from 5.9 to 5.5.
I instructed my living room furniture to fold and move to the ceiling to create a space for my yoga and meditation, turned on my tele on the full glass window on the balcony, next 60 minutes was the best time in my life, 30 minutes of yoga and 25 minutes of meditation
At the end of my yoga, I went into the vertical shower room for a 15 minutes bubble bath at a pre-set temperature of 5 minutes warm, 5 minutes hot, and 5 minutes cold shower. Tesla 925OQ messaged and said it would be at the lobby to pick me up in 14 minutes. I need to rush because the apartment management will charge additional pickup fees of $75 per 5 minutes waiting, I quickly changed into my blue Bermudas shorts and white shirt, said bye to my wife and went down to the lobby.
While a lot of things have changed in the past 20-30 years, the coffee shop culture had not changed. The car dropped me in front of the coffee shop; when I walked and looked around, Shan was already there in one corner. We both had a quick eye contact to confirm we don’t have any virus we might pass to each other, after confirmation in less than 6 seconds, I gave him a big hug and sat on the table. The watch beeped and ask me to confirm our regular order of kaya toast with 7g sugar, 22g carbs, and kopi o kosong with 27% caffeine, and my fitness app suggested I request for less sugar to avoid extra walking tomorrow.
With coffee in hand we started talking, my comfort app was warning me that coffee is still too hot for me, I need to wait another 90 more seconds if not it will burn my tong, we remembered our friend Ram from NZ who passed away last month, every time I talk about or remember Ram, music mind app trigger and suggest to hear Ram’s favorite song poova sem poova https://youtu.be/uaamFUk2s8I which we both used sing at every party. Since I want to have quality time with Shan, I ignored the music mind suggestion and continued to chat, as always we did gossip a lot.
After two hours of quality time, as I said bye to Shan, my pickup pinged and said will be at the parking in 2 minutes. I gave Shan a big hug and left the coffee shop. As soon as I got into the car, a call came in, only a handful of people still call me, it was my granddaughter, after a quick hello she said she feels like eating Appu’s chicken curry, and complained that Amma can’t still get it right, cooking lunch was not part of my plan for the day, but again no other significant plans too so I told her will be there in about two hours plus. Messaged my wife and said we are going to our daughter’s place for lunch, she sounded relieved because she doesn’t have to cook for me.
From the car I pinged my daughter and requested access to her refrigerator and spice cabinet, in the refrigerator, she had a full chicken cut into pieces, did a quick scan and did a tracing to make sure it’s Origin. It is from a farm in Batam managed by earth one supermarket, naturally fed and less than 24 hours since refrigerated. Looked at the rest of the items, had enough eggplant, cucumber, and Chile, did a quick scan to see if my daughter got anything in the refrigerator, I am not able to trace the Origin; she is smart, every product had 100% traceability to the Origin. I went to scan the spice cabinet; everything looked good. Still, my screen was showing red close to cinnamon, quickly did an extended trace, and found it is cassia sticks, not cinnamon sticks. I reordered cinnamon, which will be delivered to my daughter’s balcony by the drone in about 30 minutes.
By now, I reached home, was looking to rest for 60 minutes on the easy chair with pulse massage and stimulation, could feel blood getting circulated, and the reading showed brain pumped enough blood to rest of the body, transferred that to my I-ONE doctor. My wife and I left home in the next 39 minutes to reach my daughter’s house.
As always had a warm welcome with hugs, my daughter, her husband, grandchildren were there. My granddaughter requested access to my music mood so her music system can play music based on my mood; what she doesn’t know is, whatever the feeling it is going to be, a song by Illeyaraja subject to few exceptions. But the music mood had a better choice for the time, probably because I am at my daughter’s house, it was playing Kanana Kane https://youtu.be/-K8Oid03eUU. I started cooking the chicken curry, white eggplant curry, dhal, and cucumber salad. The spices made fresh using a measure count processor. My wife was playing some games with my grandchildren. My daughter was helping me in the kitchen, halfway cooking she know what papa need, she gave me a single malt with one ice cube, I got emotional and remembered two weeks D&D trip to India after she finished her JC and the music turn into unakenna venum sollu https://youtu.be/SdcAN3dobz4
By now, I finished cooking and 3rd glass of single malt, my daughter, instructed the helper K21A Nina to clean the kitchen and set the table. I joined the grandchildren for a round of the game, and we all set for lunch.
Suddenly we saw my son walked into the house, to my knowledge that was not part of the plan, but it was nice to see him after few months, my daughter looked like she was expecting her brother. We all started dishing out the food on to the plate, I quickly check my calorie count, it is 677 calories, and it suggested I reduce 25g of rice, but I ignored that saying you can take a Sri Lankan out of Sri Lanka but you can’t take out too much of rice from a Sri Lankan’s plate.
I looked at everyone eating to make sure they all liked the food, when I looked at my daughter and son, the way they were chewing each piece of chicken ignoring the beep from the fit mate and also eye contact between them with a cunning smile, I started suspecting that it was a plan created by my daughter and son to have Papa’s chicken curry on Singapore’s 85th national day and they just used my granddaughter to be the middle person.
I do not even know how I ended up here, but I thought this post was good.
I don’t know who you are but certainly you’re going to a famous blogger if you are
not already 😉 Cheers!