During a pre-Halloween conversation teetering on drunkeness, Jax suggested a trip.

'Do you think four days is enough time to see Japan?' he asked.

With a (debatable) long weekend approaching, he was considering a whirlwind trip.  I state my doubt that four days was sufficient to see even Tokyo, but also that I would join him if he decided on going.  As our bottle emptied, other desitinations were suggested, including Singapore.  I recalled my parents telling me they'd walked from one end of Sentosa Island to the other within an hour.  Surely, with that trivia in mind, that would make four days ample time to explore the island.

We ordered pizza and watched <i>Suspiria</i> for the first time, though my mind must have been elsewhere, because I couldn't even begin to explain the plot today.  When I reaised the trip idea again this week as a more pressing issue, if it were to proceed, Jax seemed confused.  He checked the calendar app on his phone.

'Oh,' he said, still studying the results on the screen.  He had lost track of the proposed dates, and had not realised that next week is the one featuring a public holiday.  (Considering the minor nature of the holiday, and that so much alcohol was consumed during the initial conversation that he had repeatedly spilled whiskey onto my couch, I shouldn't have been surprised.)  Nevertheless, the fact remained that neither of us had plans for the weekend.

During my lunchbreak on Halloween, I flipped open a few travel websites, but found prices to be quite high - particularly for Japan, where flight times and durations also meant that the four-day trip would barely include two at the destination.  Jax had apparently undertaken the same investigation, and we exchanged some emails.  Watching for Trick-or-Treaters from my balcony that evening, I plotted a budget alternative:  A train ride to Ballarat, where one can stay at what is allegedly Australia's most haunted hotel.  The trip would come in at under a hundred dollars.  The hotel even plays host to an impressive and diverse line up of live music most nights of the week.

By morning - yesterday - the last-minute booking market had softened considerably.  By the time I'd sent Jax my haunted hotel itinerary, he'd identified a very reasonable rate at a hotel in the midst of Sentosa's casino and bar district.  This lead me to find an incredibly cheap airfare for a flight from Changi to Tullamarine.  Before lunch, we had found flights to Singapore, and were booked to travel.

Now I am en-route to the airport, leaving the conference I've been organising full-time for the past month or two to deal with itself for a few days, and hopeful the the stormy weather I'm expecting to fly in to won't cause any of Universal Studio's rolelrcoasters to close.