A few months ago, when I first told L about the best friend moving to London, she remarked about how everyone seems to be coming to our part of the world now.

At that time I was sceptical, but now I’m convinced – although I do have to interpret ‘our part of the world’ to mean United Kingdom and sometimes Europe, or anywhere within convenient weekend-trip travelling distance.

So, the best friend arrives tomorrow with plans to conquer the world through creativity, and also start an experiment in domestic familiarity with his legal-eagle. Another friend of ours is already here and was showing her work at London Fashion Week, and has had her heart conquered by an architect ex-neighbour residing in London. Someone I’ve known for a long time, but have never met up with properly, is going to settle in the Midlands with her boy.

Do you see a recurring theme? Apparently, from my small control group, anyone above 25 who comes to my part of the world does so either for work or love, or both, but they may not occur simultaneously. And also, sometimes life imitates art imitating life (case in point, our fashion designer and her ex-neighbour and the Taiwanese film Turn Left, Turn Right).

But still, I’m delighted to have more people around. It means I’ll have a greater variety of people to talk to, and invite to dinner parties (conversations with other students usually leaves me with a great desire to talk to someone more interesting, but maybe I’m just being conceited). It also means that I get to speak singlish more often, because sometimes it’s just really tiring to speak proper English all the time and all I want to do is slip into my patois, except of course, I can’t because it is quite unintelligible to anyone else.

Anyway, what all this means, really, is that I will be having the best friend round for dinner tomorrow, and I will be making grilled salmon with julienne vegetables and rice. But in the meantime, it also means that I really ought to get started on that damned essay which has to be finished by 3pm tomorrow or I’ll never get it in by Tuesday morning.