Episode 1068: Nobody Does Local Like BooksActually

Met Shirley for books and coffee before cell. Managed to find enough stuff to buy to use up all my BooksActually vouchers, and the store now has a permanent 20% discount when you buy three or more books, which I think is great. Cyril Wong came into the store just as we were about to leave, and I could have asked him to autograph the pamphlet of his which I'd just bought, but I didn't in the end. Quite pleased with my purchases from BooksActually, as usual, but especially of Cherian George's Singapore: The Air-conditioned Nation. Mr Purvis brought it up so many times throughout my JC years, I feel slightly silly for not having sought out a copy sooner and reading it. Coffee was at The Plain, which like Forty Hands where we had coffee with Claudia the last time, is one of those niche cafés that've popped up in Singapore as an alternative to chains like Starbucks. I'm not much of a coffee connoisseur, so to me, places like The Plain are more about the chilled ambience than the coffee anyway!