It was a dark and stormy night.
As the gates at Terminal 2 of Changi Airport, Singapore opened for London-bound passengers, the image of a tall, dark stranger could vaguely be made out in the distance, against the backdrop of the palm trees which stuck out in the indoor setting like, well, palm trees in an airport. He cut an imposing figure, and the crowd parted for him as he silently strode forth, like the sea for Moses.

His long strides brought him to the gates, but his reluctance to make this trip made him feel like a lamb to the slaughter. He reached the front of the check-in counter, and perfunctorily slipped his shades down to the edge of his nose as he surveyed his surroundings. The gleam in his eyes, that wry, enigmatic smile, they were all unmistakable.
It was time for Jonny Baby to bid goodbye to any semblance of humidity for a good 10 months. Even the lady behind the counter seemed captivated by him (or so he thought. Which wasn't unusual).

He was smitten with this perfect female specimen in front of him. This must surely have been the Creator's intention when he first crafted Woman. She was no more than 21 (not her age, his ranking of her appearance on a scale of 1 to 10), tall, leggy and blonde.
And then he put down the magazine with Paris Hilton on the cover and proceeded to hand his passport to the relatively unattractive lady behind the counter. To be fair, she did resemble Paris Hilton. After being run over by a bus, and beaten with a baseball bat.

"You've been to quite a few places recently, sir." She quipped.
"I can take you to places you've never been," came the repartee he felt was rather witty, accompanied with his best cheeky smile.
Unsurprisingly, she was not impressed.

Had he really been places? He cursed his selective memory. He kept getting lapses in his memory, like that time when the 50 dollars Mother had given him for groceries had managed to disappear on the way and he'd returned home, having magically acquired a new pair of boots en route.

And then, bit by bit, the memories of his Indian summer came flooding back.

He had traversed the far corners of the world, if by far corners one means London, bits of Italy, Singapore and Australia. Or rather just the pitifully disappointing Melbourne.

He'd witnessed the triumph of evil over good, of ugly football over the beautiful game as Greece first fired a broadside to the other teams at Euro 2004 by conquering hosts Portugal, then claiming the scalps of France, favourites the Czech Republic and then hosts Portugal (hmm I remember typing this before) en route to lifting the Championship trophy, all this while playing the sort of defensive football their German counterparts would have beamed at and yet failed to produce.

And he'd embarked on his great self-improvement scheme.
The Jonny Baby Cultural Revolution had taken off with his 15-day whirlwind tour of Italy where he had taken in such awe-inspiring sights as the 5.2-m high David by Michaelangelo as well as his legendary work in the Sistine Chapel (read: Il Volta, The Last Judgement, et al) , Sandro Botticelli's The Birth of Venus and Allegory of Spring, Da Vinci's Last Supper in the Cenacolo Vinciano, and some mouth-watering Gelato shops, the last of which had left a most indelible impression on him. All of this was to some extent an information overload for the Philistine, who couldn't distinguish between a Caravaggio and a Raphael, an I.M.Pei from a Gustav Eiffel, a Sprite from a 7Up.

Not to be deterred, the valiant Jonny Baby had returned home and continued his enrichment programme by watching the high-brow likes of The OC and Joey, and he decided he liked art.

Before he could continue on his globe-trotting exploits, however, the hurdle that is the LSE Singapore Society lay in wait. And so it was that amid much bloodshed and carnage, the inaugural LSE Freshers’ Camp was conducted to some success. There he met the pretty girl newbies (he was happy) and the handsome boy newbies (he was threatened).

And with that, rid of his obligations, he'd heaved a sigh of relief. Oh, and popped on a plane to Melbourne, which he'd expected to be mind-numbingly boring.
To his chagrin, Melbourne didn't fail to disappoint, living up to its billing of being one of the most sleep-inducing destinations of the weary traveller.
Nonetheless, he'd celebrated his 18th birthday for the 3rd successive year there, an accomplishment which baffles scientists to this day.