A breezy day. Just the right temperature of cold. A light drizzle that just wouldn’t go away. It was the last day of 2021. “What a wonderful feeling to end the year with. It would be great if we could get more days like this.” I drifted off in hopes that the weather wouldn't be too hot when I woke up the following morning. Good weather was what I often hoped for every night.

On the first day of 2022, I woke up with a sore throat. The kind you'd get after smoking too many cigarettes. It was unusual because I hadn't been smoking for a while. What could have possibly caused this? I grabbed my phone from the bedside table and scrolled through the news, Singapore is expected to ring in the new year with cool and rainy days over the first two weeks, with temperatures dropping to as low as 23 degrees Celsius.

It was what I had hoped for. But it seemed like it came with a cost. The cool and comforting chill at the cost of a sore throat. Perhaps this was the reason for the sore throat. A few minutes later, I felt a fever slowly boiling. What a hindrance. I tried to shun it. With a cup of coffee, hoping it’ll help.

Later in the evening, I was on the phone with my good friend, Jan. I told Jan that I had recently read that Malaysia was experiencing large floods due to the heavy rain. I wondered if Singapore would experience the same too. Jan told me that it was freezing in the Netherlands at this time of the year, and he just wanted a little bit of heat. He hoped for a sunny day. But always wound up waiting for summer to arrive. Sometimes he would receive a little bit of heat for a day, but the weather would revert to the bleak cold.

As I was on the phone with Jan, I kept looking at this board that ran along the lowest part of my walls. It went along the frame of my door. “What was the point of this board?” I was no longer able to concentrate on our phone call. I got distracted. I reminded myself that I should listen to Jan, but told him that I had to end the call because of ‘a work thing’.

I googled what this board was. It was called a skirting board. It was meant to protect the interior walls of houses from any damage. Some walls are particularly vulnerable to knocks and scuffs around the base. So the skirting board acted as a barrier that prevented the base of the walls from being cracked or broken. A layer to protect the structure of your home from things that could damage. A layer to protect your home from yourself.

I then stumbled upon a page that looked like the forum section of The Guardian. On this page, people were discussing skirting boards. A person named Richard Lindley wrote that there was little point in skirting boards anymore, and people still had them ‘for sentimental fondness’. Richard continued to add that the incompetent mass market house builders still installed these skirting boards in houses as they allowed for a higher speed of construction and a poor standard of workmanship. Richard also argued that the skirting board protecting the walls from damage was also “rubbish”, and suggested that “it is much better to avoid hitting your house in the first place”. I guess Richard must have been a minimalist architect.

I stopped reading and went to look through the images I had on my phone. I often revisit my collection of images just before I fell asleep. Maybe I have a phone addiction. I had two images in my phone that showed some swaying lamps. The images were taken by a stranger and they were published on a Mothership article about Singapore experiencing some tremors due to the earthquake in Sumatra. But the longer I looked at these lamps, I could’ve sworn I’d seen them before. I think I was in IKEA, and I entered the light and lamps section. I vaguely remember seeing this German Temde-Leuchten ceiling lamp lookalike. But ended up getting the Melodi. And as I entered the next section, I was faced with a display of skirting boards. Was it a coincidence? But I couldn't remember most of the details of these images. I couldn’t remember what was happening when I took these images. I could never remember the reasons why most of these images were taken. Bizarrely, they gave me a little bit of guidance as I looked through them. Perhaps serving as a reminder from the past. Every time I revisited these photographs, I slowly gathered what could have happened. But they could have all been made up as well. So these images gave me a glimpse of how I navigated around certain structures that were in my environment. That certain moments happen, end, and new ones emerge. Like how the light from an IKEA lamp is a convenience until it sways. Or maybe a cup of coffee is only an ease until it spills. Perhaps one sunny day doesn’t make a summer. Perhaps a breezy day doesn’t make winter.