As part of my recent balanced diet plan, I’ve been eating a lot of cereal lately.

I’m up to my ears in cereal. I eat cereal for breakfast, lunch and tea break. Not every single day, but enough to make me a cereal killer.

(I love cereal, but since I have to avoid the sugary kinds and opt for the healthier variety, instead, eating cereal has become less exciting by half.)

Last Saturday, I had an early cereal breakfast at 6:30 am, after which I went for a 7 km run, and then had a second cereal breakfast at 9:30 am.

When it was time for lunch, I decided I’d had enough of cereal. There’s a Cafe Cartel 12 minutes from my home and that’s where I wanted to go for lunch.

It was a leisurely Saturday for me. The Goonfather was having weekend classes and I didn’t have a lot of work to do at home, so I brought a book with me to the restaurant.

I kind of went off my diet a little by ordering a pan-fried sambal macaroni (one of the restaurant’s specialty and my favourite) but I figured I deserved it.

After a relaxing meal and several chapters past my book, I got up to pay for my meal.

That was when I realised that my wallet wasn’t in my bag.

That meant one thing: It was probably sitting around at home, though I couldn’t imagine why.

Getting hot-faced as I frantically rummaged through my bag, I told the cashier, “I can’t find my wallet.”

She didn’t seem to understand me. She went off to get a colleague, another lady who walked towards me with a questioning look.

Still rummaging, I said, “I can’t find my wallet. Can I come back later to pay?”

Surprisingly, I received a very benign “okay” with no questioning, no suspicious narrowing of eyes, no instruction to leave behind a pound of flesh as collateral.

I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised.

I am always unwittingly pulling stunts like that, forgetting my wallet, or forgetting I don’t have money in my wallet. Yet, of all the times I’ve had to apologise for not being able to pay on the spot, none have provoked instant arrest, so that’s kind of heartening.

The trouble was that, now, I’d have to walk home to get my wallet (12 minutes), walk back to Cafe Cartel again (12 minutes) and then back home again (12 minutes).

Adding the initial 12 minutes to the mix, that was 48 freaking minutes of walking in total, just because I was dumb enough to forget my wallet.

Of course, that’s nothing compared to my 75-minute walk under the hot sun just to get a Subway sandwich.

But it’s still a lot of walking, considering that the 75-minute walk happened just one day before. Add into the equation the fact that I had already run 7 km in the morning, I think I deserve a medal for grievous stupidity.

It must have been the diet gods punishing me for the sambal macaroni by covertly teleporting my wallet back home while I was eating.

I suppose the good news is that I must have burnt off most of the sambal and macaroni with all that walking.

One can only hope.