February 8, 2012

My dearest,

We are at dinner with your colleagues, a sort of post-Chinese-New-Year reunion for one of them who has just returned from Houston with his wife in tow. The first dish arrives – a platter of yin/yang prawns (half cooked in Marmite sauce and the other half in what resembles an oriental Thousand Island dressing) – and the inevitable happens. You take out our camera, a small but sizeable DSLR. You are going to photograph our food before we are allowed to consume it. Oh joy.

This time though, you may well have met your match. Your colleague Stanley fiddles with his rather large satchel and places on the table an even heftier specimen, giant flash attachments, macro lens and all. (Is there such a thing as camera envy?) It’s obvious he has the same idea as you. Oh double joy.

We are all used to this, of course, and resign ourselves to our fate. The two of you snap away.

“I feel like a celebrity,” your colleague Alvin says, “with my own paparazzi.”

“This is just the two of them,” I say, “wait till you find yourself at a table where everyone else has a camera and intends use it.”

Oh joy, oh joy.

Yours, ever and always.