Recently, I’ve noticed a colleague’s screen, usually freezeframed at spreadsheets, now perpetually displaying an MSN window. See, he’s met a girl, and he’s head over heels. The girl must be quite enamoured too, since she’s right there, chatting with him as well.

It makes me wonder, when will this oh I’ll die if I don’t have you I can’t live without you-ness end in a relationship? It doesn’t help that the two of them are miles apart, trying out a long distance thing while barely knowing each other face to face at the start, but does that augment the longing?

Which is to say, can it be worn out? If a couple is face-to-face instead, is the number of I-love-yous finite? Is every relationship assigned a bucket, each partner dipping into it till it ends?

Sometimes one of the two dips into it a lot more, and the bucket’s depletion is accelerated. Some other couples never seem to get enough of each other at the start and fizzle out soon after. And then you have those that dip slowly from the bucket, taking things in a long, drawn out way.

But that’s assuming the bucket’s supply really is finite. My parents seem to have a healthy supply of it, having settled into a life that still sees a dash of affection here and a sprinkling of love there each day.

So when you’ve come to the point where you enter that next chapter of familiarity and being settled, do you have to leave the bucket behind?

Will you collect another $200 on your next trip around the board, or head straight for jail?

Mizkan Apple Vinegar

In a recent, under-researched yet completely typical attempt to jump onto a health food quickfix—the ‘quickfix’, in this case, painless weight loss as usual—I went out and got myself a bottle of apple vinegar from the Japanese supermarket, cheerily packaged and with all sorts of ‘fresh’ images, like water droplets, fruit splashing into glasses of iced water, blah blah.

Since I was assured of its palatability on several websites, I figured what isn’t killing them wouldn’t kill me, either. (Though I don’t have a stomach ironed-trained on raw fish and pickles, but friendly comfort food like cheese and potatoes…Oh…I’m so hungry.)

The one I chose was on the Best Seller list, being higher-than-average priced. And as a Singaporean raised on the blind mentality that whatever is priced higher must be better, I picked it.

The smell was rather pleasant. Appley, fresh, fruit-splashy, even. The first sip though tasted a hell of a lot like health food. By that I mean it does what you imagine vinegar would (no matter how dilute—it was in a 1:5 mix for mine) and burned all the way down.

I’d say it bleached my insides, but you know I hate speaking in hyperbole. It merely blazed a steaming trail from my lips all the way to my stomach, dissolving it in a longish minute or so. I only hope it doesn’t continue to burn through to the end. Ahem.

I also bought the sucralose version since I figured I might as well go the full way if I’m doing this for health reasons. Naturally, the sucralose left a lovely fake sugar aftertaste. Whoever said sucralose doesn’t leave an aftertaste was…probably a marketing guy and I believed him.

But the torture could be worse. If you clicked through the top couple of links, you’ll see that the vinegar bars in Japan make vinegar shakes. In modern lingo, that’s a vinegar frappucino. Yum. Thick, bubbled and citrusy—just like baby throwup.

It’s also supposed to curb your appetite. I only have two problems with this. One, I don’t know whether it’s ‘curb’ so much as kill. Secondly, I’m hungry. And pissed off.

• There are more combovers in church than in any other organisation, bar none.
• People in church cannot help but work archaic terms into regular speech. Like “vex”. Really, you were just troubled. Pek chek, maybe.
• Most abused, least understood punctuator: “even as”.
• Shunning weirdos in school and work is encouraged to preserve reputation and sanity. Doing the same in church, however, is frowned upon.
• The showing of skin in church draws looks from men and widespread scorn from the ladies. This is identical to the rest of real life, too.
• Tapping on your phone at work makes you look busy and hardworking. Doing the same in church makes you look inattentive and distracted. You probably are, anyway.