I had the strangest night recently. No, it was none of that spooky Halloween stuff. Rather, I found myself baking cupcakes at 2am. It was on the Saturday night of a long weekend in November when most students headed home for some family time. My dorm at the University of Toronto became an eerily quiet place. All you could hear in the empty hallways was the whistling sound of heaters. With no one in sight, boredom and loneliness can creep up on you as you stay alone in your room. I was just making some tea and staring blankly at the pile of reading for the week ahead when there was a knock at my door. To my surprise, I found three classmates standing in the doorway. They were armed with baking utensils and cupcake mix. Seeing the eager expression on their faces, I chuckled. 'Hey Liz, wanna come bake cupcakes?' they asked. I looked at my watch. It was the depth of night, yet here they were, ready to do some baking. My books could wait, I decided. 'Sure, want some tea?' I replied. What better way to spend a lonely Saturday night than in good company with some hot tea and a fresh batch of cupcakes? My acquaintances and I glided towards the kitchen, where we were soon glorifying in our homemade processed-cupcake-mix creations. Our icing skills proved less adept - horrifying, in fact. Once our work in the kitchen was done, our crew assembled in my room. We invited more friends on the phone and before long we had more than 15 people squeezing into my room. We were sitting cross-legged on the carpet and munching ugly-looking but delicious cupcakes. It turned out I wasn't the only lonely soul that night in the dorm, after all. We chatted, shared stories of embarrassment, had heart-stopping laugh attacks and recounted family tales from back home. As I looked around my room, I felt happy. Finally my lonely place was filling with the blissful sounds of conversation. 'You know your room is so cosy, it feels just like home,' one friend commented. 'Yeah, and it doesn't smell like dirty laundry, like my room,' said another. We all laughed. Baking cupcakes at night - who would have thought that a simple activity at such an unlikely time could be so much fun?
