Singular Weekends

Rather than being joined literally at the hip, some weekends I actually spend alone since Charming Calvin dedicates the last day of the week to his numerous tuition students ( one of the many ingenious ways he's developed to beat crippling credit debt ). Actually only one desperate kamikaze student who plans to complete her entire syllabus in the space of eight intense months. Good luck to her, I say - especially with her erstwhile mentor presumably jetting off to Beijing in a month.

With me in tow a week or so later ( with credit card and shopping cart ).

A weekend like this with a clear morning sky with no particular agenda or mundane errands to run, I find myself traipsing around the antique shops in the historical quarter of town looking hopefully for that special bargain. Perhaps a quiant pair of wooden lions to place under the window sill in my library. Maybe even a pseudo-antique Chinese Ming style cabinet to grace my guestroom. Tnen there's my year long search for the perfect sideboard cabinet to place on the first floor landing. I picture something painted and Tibetan!

Calvin : I'm all alone in the city!
Paul : Like you really want to follow me antiqueing all over the streets of Malacca under the hot afternoon sun?
Calvin : ....

Well he certainly has no reply for that :)


It's getting hawt in here!
Thankfully as well since I know poor Charming Calvin always finds it a pitiless chore to follow me on one of my trekking expeditions. Whereas I'm usually the epitome of cool - some say I hardly sweat though I know that's patently untrue - Calvin finds it hard to walk more than five metres without the the modern convenience of the air-conditioner. Under the sweltering sun in a cloudless sky through a neverending array of stalls and shops, he sweats, melts and puddles... and very soon, I'll have to get him into the shade before the poor guy gets dehydrated from heat stroke.

And though I find olden-day thingamajigs, moroccan lamps and chinese cloisonne endless fascinating, I do note that Calvin's eyes usually start to glaze over mindlessly as I wander the aisles. Even while I'm shifting through dust and cobwebs to find that particular Venetian mirror, I find that he has already nodded off asleep in the Ming inspired jichi chair. Not sure what he's gonna do in China when I start repro antique hunting.

Yeah. Reproduction antiques. Rarely superstitious but I've always had this eerie feeling that the certified real antiques carry a bad omen for some reason. I mean, we're essentially buying bits and pieces of someone else's past life. Now isn't it quite a wretched tragedy that their luckless descendants have hit upon such a patch of ill fortune that they have resorted to hawking and peddling their family possessions?

Juk juk juk. Serious bad juju. And I haven't even gotten to the part where some afflicted ancestor might have met a calamitous end impaled on the wooden carving of the daybed - whereupon the superstitious servants hastily sold off that said item!

Guess I do have my irrational notions.

Just this morning, chanced upon a beautifully matched pair of wooden carvings ( no doubt snapped off the canopy of a broken down bed in Zhejiang ) detailing the scenes of a woodland glen - that I'm sure would look perfect above the bedroom doors. But I caught myself at the last minute.

Maybe I could get them cheaper in Beijing!