A MIRACLE HAPPENED

Last week, I finally decided to sign up for a hand phone...

Yes, after years of telling my coordinates that I am hand phone-less, and after countless of times seeing their jaws dropped in disbelief, a miracle happened...

My university colleagues cheered with gusto as I deliberately announced the number...

Been quite occupied with 'business' trips lately... after returning from Hawaii, took a quick trip to Tokyo to meet up with some colleagues to discuss about research issues...

Lunch quickly followed the meeting (ah, food! food!)... as our gracious host took us to a Vietnamese joint in Shinjuku...

Ummm... papaya salad, raw spring rolls, roasted chicken with lemon leaves, some kind of fried stuff that was supposed to be on the menu of royalty, the humble yet exquisite pho, and sweet pumpkin soup for dessert... ummm, hoolaalaa...

Then, managed to squeeze some time to meet up with Adriene who is a graduate student in the masters program at Sophia University...

A day before flying to Tokyo, she asked me for my hand phone number... that was the spark that led to the miracle...

(The real story is, dreading to witness another jaw dropped, yours truly decided to just dash to the nearest phone shop...)

We walked around the crowded streets of Shinjuku, occasionally gawking (more of me rather than her) at the ganguros... and finally settling down to chat over some soft drinks...

And yo, before you realize it, it is time to say 'sayonara, sayonara, sayonaraaa'...

Anyway, traveling on a Sunday in the Tokyo subways is quite a blissful feeling...

There are just so few souls in the trains and stations...

But however blissful it is to travel in empty Tokyo trains, the level of blissfulness can never match that of sleeping on my own futon...

The quiet of the Shikoku night... the frogs a-croaking... the sound of gentle waves coming in from the sea...

On my prior trip to Tokyo, Makuhari City in Chiba Prefecture in fact, I could not sleep at all in the night...

Which led me to think... for future trips, I shall try to fly home to snore, rather than to spend the night in the raucous city, rolling a thousand times left and a thousand times right on an unfamiliar bed trying to catch just one minute of shut-eye...

Still, I am due to head to Tokyo again on 21st June and shall be night-stopping... oooh... I see another restless night coming...

This time, I hope to catch up with not only Adriene but also another Malaysian compatriot who is supposedly strutting his stuff at Waseda University...