So the first week of spring break draws to an end, and I have been indoors for so long that I fear it’s only a matter of days until I mutate into some kind of godforsaken subhuman creature with twelve fingers and an allergy to sunlight. I must admit, though, that I’m savouring the luxury of going to bed only when I can’t stay awake any longer, and then sleeping in until whenever the hell I feel like – it’s like a candy store for insomniacs! In the meantime, I have developed a definitely unhealthy five hours a day television habit, all the while overlayed with a stomach-churning mixture of panic about the impending doom of exams and guilt over the revision of which I most certainly have not done enough. It’s a no-win situation: cracking open the books only serves to bring home exactly how much of the syllabus I have already forgotten, while taking time off invariably results in a boredom and hysteria-induced drooling coma in front of Dr Phil (oh, the vagaries of daytime television – and it’s not as if I’m being held captive by raw, edgy, compelling programming either, but it seems like you sit down to watch the countdown on Rage and then suddenly two and a half hours have passed and you want to throttle the host of Ready Steady Cook but you just can’t seem to tear yourself away from the screen anymore…). On the bright side, I think I’m gradually weaning myself off the disgusting habit of shuffling around the house in the same set of pyjamas 24 hours a day, seven days straight – until the next laundry day, where the same revolting cycle begins anew with a fresh set of PJs. (I think I’m down to around 14 hours a day now – go girl, go! It’s merely a matter of time before I fully reaccustom myself to the fact that pyjamas are only for sleeping!)

I’m ashamed to admit that venturing outside the front door only to collect the mail and to restock my ever-dwindling supply of three-minute noodles has become my modus operandi – I swear, by the time we all go back to school, I shall be rendered completely unrecognisable due to the undead skin which has not seen natural light for weeks that I am soon to acquire, and the 15 kilograms I shall have gained from subsisting solely on a diet of instant soup, three-minute noodles, apples and milk. But I digress. Anyway, on the rare occasions that I have actually proceeded beyond the front gate, the experiences have been far from encouraging, and have deterred me from human contact for a very long time.

On another afternoon snack run to the shops, it was such a lovely spring day, what with the cherry trees in bloom and the sun shining and the obese sparrows trying to peck each others’ eyes out on the pavement and everything, that I had taken to the streets with a little bounce in my in step and a generally cheerful countenance. I had progressed not a hundred metres from the safety of my humble abode when, before I realised what I was doing, I accidentally made eye contact with two unsettlingly wholesome young men in identical white shirts and navy and white striped ties. The taller one tilted his head infinitesimally in my direction at the other, and the two of them strode towards me with earnest smiles and hands outstretched. I frantically looked around for escape routes, but, finding none, had no choice but to shake the proffered limbs.

“Hello, I’m Mark,” said one.

“Hello, I’m Jonathan,” said the other.

“Hello,” I replied. A pause. Sensing that I had no further intention of introducing myself, they forged on.

“Do you speak Chinese?” asked Jonathan.

“Ah… no,” I replied, shooting envious glances at the other passers-by, who had not been accosted and were free to go as they pleased. My three-minute noodles increasingly receded into the distant future as the seconds ticked by.

“Oh really?” asked Mark, “You don’t look like you’re from around here.” (…And this is coming from a guy with a fully-fledged, in-your-face Oklahoma twang. And as offensive as a comment like that can be, and as much as I hate being patronised by someone than whom I very probably have a far better grasp of the English language, coming from this guy, it sounded unusually friendly and inquisitive, as opposed to bigoted and condescending. Probably a skill they teach you at Mormon-recruiting school.)

Nervous laughter from yours truly. Maybe it was the rising sensation of panic or the fervent desire to escape, but as they kept asking me questions, I found myself telling them my life story, just short of the coordinates of the place where I was born and my mother’s maiden name. So this Mark guy asks me if I had heard “of a person named Jesus Christ”, to which I reply, wanting to end the conversation as soon as possible, “Yeah, I actually go to a Christian school.” BAD idea, as I found myself unable to contain the verbal diarrhoea, and pretty soon they and every mouth-breather walking past knew exactly where I spend eight hours of my day, five days a week.

Even telling him I was Buddhist failed to deter him from his mission to enlighten me about “what we believe is the true translation of the Bible… have you heard of the Book of Mormon?” I briefly toyed with the idea of telling him that, actually, I wasn’t really a Buddhist and in fact spent my leisure time worshipping Satan, but decided it would have been cruel – and also, an impromptu exorcism probably would not have gotten me out of that conversation any sooner either.

So as he came to the end of his Mormon-advocating spiel, I shrugged apologetically and told them again that although it all sounded immensely interesting, I was a Buddhist and so was not going to be converted any time soon. “That’s okay,” said Mark, “even if you don’t believe in Jesus Christ you can still pray to Him and He’ll listen to your prayers.” Fundamentally logically unsound as that statement was, the debater in me was sorely tempted to enter into a theological argument about the existence of God for non-believers and the implications for their eternal salvation according to Mormon interpretations, but the three-minute noodles were exerting a greater pull on me so I simply smiled and nodded. “So where can we find you later?” he concludes.

“Uh…” I reply most eloquently, buying time to think of something evasive. At last, I fell back on the old casting couch standby: “How about I come to you?”

Then he hands me a little slip of paper with this picture of a statue with his arms outstretched on the front, and wholly Chinese text on the back (which was really useful, seeing as I had told him that I don’t speak Chinese). “The Sunday service is at 9 a.m., and this week we’re actually going to celebrate the mid-autumn festival. Do you know what that is?” (Nice going, buster, way to refrain from condescending to an Asian. And in a bona fide suburban Chinatown no less…) And with a final “hope to see you there!”, I was free to purchase my mee goreng at last.

So sue me if it’s wrong, but I had pretty much tuned out what Mormon Boy was saying halfway through that ordeal. As he was telling me about the Book of Mormon and blinding me with his freakishly white teeth (resplendent with the ardour of religious passion – and a good floss and brush routine – no doubt), I hope he didn’t realise that I wasn’t so much paying attention to what he was saying as I was staring at him. Unwittingly, nay, unwillingly I had begun to think that, as much as I am reluctant to admit it, but damn, Mormon Boy was CUTE. A little bit TOO creepily wholesome, perhaps, but he would have been seriously my type if he hadn’t been so... well, you know… Mormon-y. This got me wondering if that wasn’t the reason they made him do the recruiting rounds – people are probably more open to door-knocking conversion tactics from someone fresh-faced and rather easy on the eye…

This leads me on to the other conundrum of why they chose to attempt to convert me, out of all the random lunatics they had walked past on the sidewalk. Perhaps my weather-inspired good mood had caused me to look slightly less insane than usual, or maybe it was my rather more covered-up than is customary attire for the temperature and the sun (emerging from the sub-zero confines of my dank indoor lair had not prepared me overly well for the pleasant surprise of proper spring weather). Mormons are conservative dressers, aren’t they? Perhaps it was something about my person that they leapt on, the vulnerability of a solitary girl wandering the streets, or an unconsciously gullible expression on my face? Or maybe I just looked like… a heathen?

(I’m not sure I like that last suggestion much at all – what are the distinguishing features of the modern heathen anyway these days? Besides, I am pretty sure I had left all my pagan tribal costumes and devil-worshipping paraphernalia at home when I left the house…)

I am told that this is not the first time that clusters of Mormons have been sighted wandering around my little patch of suburbia. Perhaps next time I leave the house I shall don my most revealing top and the shortest skirt I own and hope like hell that they don’t recognise me if I ever happen to cross their path again. But then again, lecherous old men and hunchbacks in trench coats who inhabit the science fiction section of the local library become an entirely different and possible more alarming problem for the scantily clad. Now there’s another can of worms I definitely don’t want to open…