It's 10.20pm now. Since 8pm I've been requested NOT to eat anything until 8am the next day.

For the blood test, they say. Arggghhhh! Feels more like a test of wills!

Can someone please explain why when you give blood they expect you to have eaten a good meal, but when you check the very same blood you could donate the next day, you have to go on some pretend spiritual discipline and fast?

In the West it may be slightly easier, because over there you don't really have the idea of late-night supper, encouraged no doubt by the myriads of hawker food-stalls shining bright and smokin' tasty at night. I mean, c'mon, when I was in Sweden only bars serve food after 8 or 9 at night.

So I went for a swim - to keep my body distracted. Nicky was quite caught up in his bicycle-style water-playing strokes (I write "water-playing" because swimming would be an overstatement...)

So I continued with Mangoes & Bananas - to keep my mind distracted (Hwa Yung really likes this Vinay Samuel dude, doesn't he?)

So I'm blogging now - to keep me away from the kitchen, to maybe cause enough tiredness to emerge so when I hit the sack I hit it hard.

So I checked out Alibris for some Kosuke Koyama books - if you'd imagined that 20-year-old books on Asian theology would be selling cheaply, you're wrong. The lowest price for Water Buffalo Theology is US$12. Only last week I paid US$6 for Orlando Figes' People's Tragedy, the monumental 1000-page plus work on the Russian Revolution.

And now I gotta get back to starve-mode.