Ramadan

Three hundred and eighty five a week at a rundown hotel in a dowdy old quarter. Dorm bedding between eight and twenty available in the vicinity for $25 per night, mostly catering for travelers. A room of a similar size not far off in a newly renovated house that the landlord has turned into a small hostel offers savings of about eight hundred and fifty a month, housing mainly ex-pats on work contracts. A  prudent decision pending the last fortnight.
         Aircon, phone and ensuite sizeable luxuries at Hotel Joo Chiat. Peeling paint, holes in the bed linen, toilet roll for tissue paper. A couple of lights out, bedside wired with the one-speed tractor-cooler. The large window brings a refreshing morning breeze when the sun isn't blazing early.
         A multi-level commercial carpark immediately adjacent and supermarket adjoining. On the other side a wide grassy field where someone feeds birds in the morning. Like all grassland on this side of town, the ground is usually completely empty. The little park beside Guillemard sometimes finds some Indians on the bench seats. Last night the French horn player from the HDB block above City Plaza blew the overture to Aida, back turned to the dirty water in the canal. Young foreign workers make out on their free Sundays in the field beside Paya Lebar MRT; otherwise the heat does for the traditional recreation even where there are trees.
         Supermarket delivery truck at four alternate mornings and Indian night-shift crews carting the steel framing for the tenting being erected on all sides. The last few week the lads have had the look of circus performers shimmying up the posts barefoot for better grip; up on the peaks fifteen and twenty feet in the air the plastic cover is hoisted by ropes like a sail on a dhow. 
         Ramadan at the end of the month promises a large affair, visitors from Malaysia and Indonesia to be expected.
         Thus far one other Westerner encountered in the corridors at Hotel J. C., an older Dutchman who with his wife makes sure in Asia they stay away from Western tourists. No doubt the pair knew the significance of the green arrow on the ceilings in the rooms. In 233 it points toward a utility hatch of some kind, for the electrical wiring it was more or less presumed. When Neil and Emily visited Em was unable to sleep under a directive of that sort and immediately made the discovery. (The kiblat indicates the direction of Mecca, in the case of 233 turned to the south toward Australie.)
         Geylang Serai is the Malay quarter in Singapore, somehow miraculously guessed by Nance Ong as the most congenial for the newcomer. Indonesians are the largest part of the clientele; thus far no terrorists.