Fuckheads (Feb25)

You choose to stay in a Love Hotel, you wear the consequences, accept the goings-on all hours and no complaints. Clacking up the stairs and along the corridor 2AM, water gushing either in the floor, or down the walls. First few minutes after entry and then twenty minutes later. TV & music piping. Half-through the three month term management introduced a midnight - noon promotion, Weekdays ONLY. Sunday two-hourly for the foreign workers was peak earner—Indo & Filipina domestic helperd and Indian & Bangla construction workers. 10AM through early evening before they all needed to return home. Nearby a dozen Karaoke bars lined the street either side, all plastered with notices warning no soliciting on the premises, STRICTLY. Last night there was a Hollywood B-grade stick feature, volume off the dial. Lady had been laying it on thick, giving the chump his money’s worth. (Past the Karaokes the red-light district, legal and non, stood a short distance off.) Single syllable concatenations of over half minute duration, something like Memememememememe. Jesus lord! There had been a weak impulse to rise from the bed and draw back the curtains on the back lane. Was it a dying cry for help in a foreign language; girl crawling hands-and-knees toward the drain in a trail of blood? It ought not really be ignored... Soon the lady achieved the effect alright, pulling the mug along the cliff-edge and hurling down to the rocks below, where he would dash out his pea-brain in sticky globules for the gulls to gobble. Good job. Again too, the fellow could not manage more than the single syllable, certainly more raucous than his queen. At the topmost peak a long pointed dagger had been plunged deep into his aching heart to finish him off properly. Tortuous hallelujah of fulfilment, seemingly sung in the corridor directly outside the door. Could you be bothered the pair might have been caught on the stairs five minutes after the second ablution, the Fuckheads, just for the sake of the files.

 

Chauffeur

Picture news-story, in the brief tag a point of interest.

         Fire in a condo car-park, The Arcadia near Adam Road. Showing was a late model SAAB discoloured by the blaze. 
         Seems the fire emanated from/or at least occurred "near a resting room for chauffeurs of condominium residents".
         Aduh! 

         One knew of "bomb shelter" spaces of 2.4 X 1.6m housing maids & foreign workers; laundries the same. Corridors it looked like too the other evening going back to the hotel room through the rear lane, judging by scattered bedding in the rear of a shop-house under renovation. 
         Rest rooms for chauffeurs was something added. These would be worth a peek if a Security Guard might be persuaded—perhaps Yana possibly late-night. Yana was due to start at a large condo in Geylang adjacent a busy red-light district that had made the man uncomfortable. 
         A recent walk through an unvisited Lorong showed surprisingly high-walled rooms at The Waterina, illuminated interiors filled with large screens, chandeliers & furniture from the newspaper advertising. 
         About my brains! Sneak a photograph somehow, hopefully.

         
                                                                                                             Straits Times, Home, p. B6

5 Days Short of 2 Years (Review of Recent Oz Pol. Theatre Mainly)‏

Gee, that's a pisser Tone missing out by a whisker like that on, what, $55k annual did you say? Just a measly five days. Could that be right? Singapore here I could well believe. They remunerate the best and brightest nicest here. Otherwise how would you get anyone pulling on the guernsey for the public good. Me mate tonight over teh reported the same re: loyal Tone, Smokin Joe &etc. How much smoother is Mal though immediately? The pics alone show it. They've both got duck-bill mouths, but it might be Mal's hair-cut. Makes the most of his thatch, lotta style and shaping gone into that North Shore number. You don't get that at the corner barber. Think Tone has receded a bit since I've been gone. Asked you once was he colouring but you didn't answer. Here it's all the rage, jet and coal. Some of the lairs go for rusty tints, but usually trad. like their granddads. Virility. If you're grey and white limp-cock doesn't cut it, fagged out has-been. It's funny, pumpkin heads unable to afford nips, tucks and even good moisturizer sporting glossy mop-tops. Lottsa wigs too, a not bad one today at my Indian place reminded a bit of Mo was it? of the Three Stooges. Gave the fella lotta confidence leaning an elbow on the register talking to the sari. Tried to get the waiter to turn up the fans in the corner for some fun fella wasn't game, worried about being cuffed & put on the first plane back to Chennai.  Reminds me: did Tone give up swimming as PM? All the while no sign here of the budgie smugglers on ABC online. Saw Julie mistin up a bit with Karl Stefanovic (whoever that ancestral cousin might be). Tough for Jule knowing Margie and the daughters and all, worse than bombing Syria, specially cos Tone was so loyal to everybody. Made it hard no doubt the Vice-Captain's call.

         My Security mate was job hunting here today. Someone snapped him again shut-eye and dreamin, showed the boss and that was that. (Yana thinks the Super arsehole.) His earlier boss was gunna take him on straightaway, but the gig had to be at some kinda brothel quarter. Haven't got the details yet, meeting for lunch tomorrow. Sounded like a bad-ass whorehouse where pimps beat up girls or clients got rolled or something. Yana didn't fancy. A carpark guarding Mercs and Saabs wasn't so bad, but not that. Lining him up for a teaching gig meantime. Chin painter I know chucked her teaching job to set up a painting school. She's OK Helen if you ignore the $$$$ grubbing and big-noting. Been on Chin TV, real Chin, like she's talking Beijing. Sold out shows here, few grand each the abstract high-colour splashy things she mainly does good for condos. She's "BIG ARTIST", told me many times. I can be big writer if I join up with her, she's well connected. Wanted me to write her life story. If I did it would be the making of me. Jap husband she loved dearly died early and left her with 2 boys to raise. Eldest kept death of his dad from everyone, everyone at school, in the neighbourhood. Helen had to whisper. What else there was to tell I never found out. TOO TOO busy Helen, sorry. For the blockbuster true-life novel and also the teaching. Thought of Yana. Might be able to get $120 an hour maybe, an easy ride with cashed-up Mainlanders, just to help them shop and get around. We see how.
Keep me posted on developments down there, ear to the ground.

Salam

P

                                                                                                                                   17 Sept 2015

The Laboratory

published by Map Literary March 2018

The local P. O. has been relocated from the spaceship beside Paya Lebar MRT and was now housed in the new mall opposite City Plaza. (Another older and more modest mall.)
         The treacherous tiled forecourt needs to be traversed, where the row of water-spouts in that narrow passage remain unused. (At the first sign of rain the Ride-on Mopper comes out working sometimes with a second.) Here the retail art takes the form of a giant sculpture of an invoice stamp raised on its side and against the glass a sports-car on a platform awaiting lucky shoppers.
         Toast Box left and Superheroes sharing the right front with Starbucks. The girl at bellapierre cosmetic counter obligingly directs you to Level 3.
         The first number of times wading through the candy colours, the playground decorations and pumped perfumes with a sense of going under. LollypopLollypopLollypop either side whichever way one goes. Hanging out the tongue one could collect sweetness from the corridor without having to pay just from the luscious tints. Yankie Candie — reading at first as Candle—blows a gale into the passageway.
         Keep right. The marker to look for is I. POISE JEWELS (pronoun; not numeral), diagonally opposite the escalators. Up is around on the other side—hooking through a nameless shoe outlet that has taken advantage of a narrow passage.
        Blundering at Level 2 introduced Sliming Sanctuary, Old Hollywood Market and numerous F&B outlets. White picket fence and rustic cardboard brick elsewhere in the same tint. 
         Nearest other Post Office was up on Aljunied corner about a kilometer and half away.
         The P. O. itself was unobjectionable. (How odd to actually miss the spaceship platform at Paya Lebar. Control Tower. Do you read me, roger? Who would have thought?) The same markers on the floor for queuing, giant-sized arrow-heads for the visually impaired; rather like the flight of geese on Australian living-room walls a generation past.
         The problem lay elsewhere; not at the Post Office. Close-by the problem lay.
         On the first sortie Level 2 below in the same corner discovered this strange assortment that had been passed more quickly.
         Heguru could not be deciphered at first whichever way it was turned. Completely stumped by Heguru.
         Juzmusic, then Ingenium and globalart. 
         globalart’s crooked second “l” stood in the shape of an old-fashioned rocket-pencil like we boys favoured in Primary School down in the Great Southern land. One had become used to the local creole; the moveable signage worn on the tees had been a particular study. Expats made a great deal of money tutoring bureaucrats and management, straightening the crooked tongues. Even official government signage could make bloopers. It was perfectly understandable. Where else on the planet had a foreign language been foisted upon a populace with main force like this? One of the fascinations for a curious-minded traveler and student of culture.
         This was a rocky road in this particular corner of the new One KM Mall on both Levels 2 & 3. Something unexpected in the hunt for the post office.
         Within globalart with the rocket-pencil second "l", naive-painted on an inner corridor wall, a worrisome Mona Lisa floated in a cloud of sunflowers and geraniums. Understandably the smile had created difficulties. A gallery of some kind this was not.
         WTF? What sweet Jesu truly? Even a pattern was not immediately apparent, a commonality in the cluster. A mature-age wise-head standing around open-mouthed and staring.
         Mind Champs. And beside globalart, Total English Learning Centre too failed to read immediately.
         No product visible anywhere made it harder.
         Really, it was only the small print that finally, properly revealed the mystery. 
         Heguru sold the promise of "Photographic Memory" and "Extraordinary Thinking Power". Sold more too. Added to the accomplishments available behind the glass at Heguru was in unmistakable English writ large: "Great Personality". 
         Great Personality. They had "Great Personality" brewed and bottled here on a shelf in an assortment of colours, twist-top or pop.
         As the Messengers in the epics declared at the high points in the sagas: May the Lord's thunder-bolt strike if I speak false.
         Jazmusic delivered the Suzuki Program and "Junior Playtime for 2 1/2 Year Olds" in the back corner of One KM Mall on Level 3. There was a high-polish black mini baby-grand against the glass inside.
         Ingenium could "ignite (the) innate". Delivered "science by scientists". At the eatery table later over the teh the laboratory came of itself to mind with XXXS dust-coats, bunsen burners and petri dishes for the next generation Louis Pasteurs on the Equator.
         Aduh! No drinking fountain in sight.
         One or two parents delivered children to TV-bright front-of-house girls in uniform; a maid her charges. One or two little faces were glimpsed as they marched along. A mite at her colouring-in table in front of one of the places waited to get picked up after her session. 
         The mail becoming grubbed in the hands now. There seemed little point suddenly. The lifts stood near-by. 
         On the other side of the passage from English Learning Centre that had eschewed Lollipop and presented a corporate shop-front, Citibella Beauty Club & Atelier. Mothers popped in during their wait; maids could attend to the shopping in the basement supermarket and immediately opposite the cluster Gelare offered ice-cream. There was a logic at work. One or two business concerns operated all these stores, on both levels; the cosmetic counters and Yankie Candie too, all integrated. 
         The Singaporean educational model, like the urban planning model, the business-friendly climate and low taxes, the cleanliness and security regime, were widely admired and copied across the region. On the other side of the globe replicas of the Republic were mushrooming. India would be building an entire city from scratch with Singaporean expertise. How well they had done after all. None could hold a Yankie candle to Singapore. A foreigner could not recall the open sewers, the flooding, rats like in Malaysia and Indonesia. The wonderful security: women walking the streets into the wee hours without a thought in the world. It was impossible to overstate the importance of cleanliness in the broiling Tropics particularly.
         Reports arrived subsequently of eight-month-olds enrolled in Enrichment classes and others attending 3-4 times a week after school.
         Singapore was a parable; the existential contemporary drama nakedly revealed.

        Someone must bear witness. A Superhero scribbler in tight costume had taken the pledge and would keep faith. The story must out. Take one's place in the queue quietly and that was all.

https://archives.mapliterary.org/pavle-radonic-the-laboratory1.html

Pap (updated Sept23)

Campaign heating up here for the general election later in the week. The lorries were circling the streets and the market every fifteen minutes this morning. Open-backed lorries such as are used for the transport of the foreign workers returning to their dormitories late at night. (Large looms the issue of the number of foreign workers, and also the projected population that will be drawn to the Republic in coming years.) The campaign lorries this morning carried fluttering PAP flags three either side, amplifier and broadcast speakers. One kilometre off they could be heard on the approach, two men in the cabin donned in the party white polos, with the thunderbolt insignia on the breast. Chaps had the windows wound down and the jockey in particular the role of rallying all and sundry on the streets to the banner. A kind of meet-and-greet on wheels, fellow smiling and waving like a lunatic, one thought at the first encounter. At least that was a newcomer's reflex. More practiced citizens like the aunty this morning rolling her shopping trolley back from market, receive the friendly greeting from the truck in their stride and immediately return the same. It is possible the truck jockey is one of the candidates; more likely a volunteer from the ranks. One of the candidates featured in the newspaper was pictured jogging between housing towers in order to save time for door-knocking; another rode a bicycle for the purpose. (Workers Party critics maintain the ruling PAP members on near a $100k a month would not have the foggiest idea of public transport, let alone footslog and bicycles.) A great deal of newspaper attention is being devoted to the event and a fair spread allowed to a number of opposition groups, in what has been a single-party government in the half century since Independence. Finally, too, the uniform cricket white/choir-boy attire of the PAP was explained by a mention in a recent speech of the PM's. Purity and incorruptibility the point. Often a smart half-eleven in the Group Representative Constituencies descends upon kopi shops and housing towers at election time. (A manipulation by the rulers, the GRC's, critics charge.) In the local neighbourhood the Joo Chiat ward, which almost fell to the Opposition last time round, has been incorporated into the East Coast GRC. (According to some another manipulation.) 
         May the best team win. (Oddly, this time round the election is being held on a weekday for some as yet unexplained reason. Public holiday declared.)

NB. PAP — People’s Action Party. Mostly fondly lampooned as Pay-And-Pay, when of course tax rates are famously low and draw a good many expat avoiders from their own countries to these shores.

Trekking (Refugees) updateJan25

 

 

Musta told you I met a number of cyclists on the Montenegrin Riviera on the last trip down from Italy and Switzerland. But the meeting that took the cake was with the young Frenchman Louis-Pierre or something, coming up around a bend. It was easy to tell the fellow was a foreigner: light skin tone, pointy features, unkempt bushy-hair. Almost a soft Genet-rogue footing along. No way he was a local. A stranger could walk 10-15 kms a day through a two month stay, but everyone could tell I somehow fitted. Odd, but not foreign. This kid? No way. Hey, fella. Hallo. Ya, Hallo. Hallo.... He'd walked from France. You what?!.. (Check the map if you must.) Why?! The question stumped the kid...Ah...Ah... Well Monsieur, I was trying to give up smoking. And, well... I thought this might help... Hope he didn't get run over by a lorry. Told the fellas today at the breakfast table how the Syrians were going to walk to Germany. They hadn't been following the news last few days (One of the chaps a visitor, Cambodian-Chinese, well-acquainted with flight)...1,000's of them along the highway heading north outta Hungry. Course they were going to walk. After the Mediterranean crossing, what was a walk in the park like that? It brought back Maria Popov from the neighbourhood in Spotty. Maria and her hubbie Stefan. (Son was Pavel born in the camps; daughter Lydia Australian soil.) Maria looked like Boris Yeltsin in drag—like a lotta Russian Marias and Borises interchangeably. Without ever raising her voice like our mob did, she managed to project strong force & spirit. Maria was a giant. We Montenegrins and Herzegovinians were tall, brick shit-house size. Dalmatians too. And then in our circle, in Bab's circle, we had Maria Popov as an add-on. It was a feature of our little colony. Bigger than Boris, Maria. A Holden or Datsun wasn't gunna fit Maria & Stefan when she had to pile him drunk into the back seat in order to get home. Maria P. had a Chevrole; pink with pointy fins. At that time, still pre-pubescent, pre-Beatles & pre-TeeV (at least in our house), there was no kinda word received of Americano fantasy wheels. There were few cars of any sort in our street and what there was matchbox scale. The JP Mr. Sheema had an Austin that rarely left his driveway. Mr. Broadway a Morris something. Cars were uncommon; many of the men rode bicycles with the front handle-bars turned up and the Gladstone bag nestled between. When Maria visited and parked her chariot in front of the house it stretched the width of the block and almost down to the bottom of the street. Pink inserts on white, fins behind mounted with a round dot indicator, if I recall. At least on one occasion I rode with Maria & Bab must have been there. The heavy door and the saloon-like roominess stick, and more still the wheel-turning rounding corners. Having to swing out wide for the long tail, Maria's thick forearms lapped over each other like in a workout. Turning the battleship would have been beyond many less well-equipped. Spotty, Yarraville, Williamstown, even the people on the other side of the river in the mid 60's could not have seen the like. God knows where she got the beast; maybe a Ruskie contact somewhere in Detroit. Maria was halfway through a course at Moscow U when the war broke out. Then the German retreat presented a chance to escape. Large numbers following in the wake of the departing Nazis. Footslogging of course, like the soldiers. Moskva to Berlin and the Free World in 4 – 5 - 6 months, Bab reported to our visitors. (She was proud of her new friend.) AustRA-lia, Spotswood, Kernot Street near Blackshaws corner. Like ours, the Popov place had a bungalow in back where boozy weekends Stefan & Maria entertained. Bab got by in the Slavic stream somehow; pretty amazing how the pair managed. With the Ruskies the local Poles mourned their fate too; they were welcome at Kernot Street. Think I only attended one boring/retrospectively fascinating gala supper—laden table, vodka, there might have been an accordion or record player. Old Pan Stefan sang a song. The Poles sang and cried in their cups, if not that night certainly on other occasions in our neighbourhood. The heaviness of spirit of Pan Stefan and some of the others sitting around the table was clearly projected. Maria herself had not succumbed. Maybe the women saw less horror than their husbands. Don't think Stefan lived long after they moved to the Gold Coast. Don't think he was ever completely sober. Maria might have been the wage earner. In the Chevvy Maria and Babi went see Ruskie movies at the kino. 1965 – 6 - 7 our Babi in darkened picture-theaters fixed on the big screen. At the time it was a bit hard to actually comprehend a kino—some kind of foreign arrangement for émigrés, one assumed. There was one cinema on the Western side of town, but that opened later. Maybe, just maybe the pair watched Tarkovsky & Eisenstein. (There is a vague memory of Babi once mentioning Ivan Grozny. Ten years later seeing the film with Veki at Valhalla in Victoria Street, Richmond there was some odd sense of replay or continuance; and more again twenty years later again when I took Georgi and his Babushka to see A. Rublev at Cinematheque. When Georgi's Babushka said after the screening that she knew in advance Rublev was mochni—powerful — the vibration echoed. Back in St. Petersburg there had been first-release Tarkovsky, but not Rublev.) The Moscow Circus—lions, trapeze artists, Cossack dancing, Bab reported back. From memory it was six months walking to Berlin. The Frenchie met five or six years ago on the hillside resembled the young ragamuffin Rublev who was given the responsibility of casting the great bell for the cathedral. 

 

 

Chindian (?)

Opposite and one across. You couldn't be sure of course outside your racial and familiar groups and all that. Sometimes "pure" Chins have taken quite a caste here on the Equator, say three-four generations. The dribble making you choke—luckily food not arrived as yet. Sikh luncheon companion must have been juicy loaded, eager licking his bum-hole clean as you like. Oh! FFFF me dead! Has to be a contract on offer with lottsa zeroes if only he can suck hard enough. Would be great to tape secretly, kidnap the bloke——No! Wait for a family dinner when the kids and their partners were gathered and hit PLAY. Peppering laughter. Oh, shiite! a churchgoer. Is good lah, some spiritual. Verbatim. Nothing invented. Wife was a Muslim he seemed to have said, they strike a balance, foot in both camps can't hurt, monotheism after all and lottsa the Prophets shared—good to get some spiritual into the mix, jazz things up; earning can drag a soul down. Reminded of the Indian the other morning at the City Plaza Buddhist shrine along the side of the building facing the river. Not often you saw that. Fella knew what he was about, no first-timer: smoking sticks onto the forehead waving. Chins you often found in the Hindu temples covering their arses: not other way round. That was a first in fact. Luckily none of the Hindutva hardliners were around, fella might have ended in the drink with sinkers wrapped tight. I'll be frank with you.... Dye, scan, strokes in the family opened the door to the church and conversion most probably. Smells the blood closing in on a deal. HeeHaw, HeeHaw. (If there was a joke author musta dozed off.) Landed property the other, five room place brought gasps and head-nodding. The $3,000 a sq.m. figure? Poor old Sikh charmed by the admiration and envy making him into a Maharajah. Learn something from you.... Chap's sheer bodily presence and aura, being caught in his orbit, delivers a valuable Masterclass for a man still climbing the crowded middle rungs; Dale Carnegie small-fry by comparison. There was a big Sikh on his handphone in his Roller from the No. 67 coming out. This guy similar size but less fattie; might not have a wad like the earlier. In fact, shall we make a move?... Sprinted to the register to pick up the $10 tab. Earlier fellow had the audacity to term the place (the author's all-time favourite mind).... How shall I say? Rustic.... The other KV on Serangoon Road had aircon. They have it here too but.... too open. Socks and polished lace-ups made it tougher proposition. Musta bin the Turban's choice and he went along. Contract on the back seat of the car, hopefully he can strike while the iron's hot.

Hot Under the Collar

Woman outside the Pawnshop toward Onan Road here on the weekend. A casual glance made one stop a few paces ahead after she had been passed. Busy couple of days running out to the dock at Pasir Panjung meeting a relative on a short stopover, not really any time to linger.... The woman had been forgotten and returned again to mind waking early Tuesday morning, retrieved of herself from the dust-pile of disused matter from the days.
        Bent almost double just beside the doorway of the shop; husband had kept upright. A soft cooing might have drawn initial notice, audible even over the traffic. Middle-aged Chinese, English-speaking with the gentling she was giving a ginger tab there just beside the doorstep. In order to leave passage along the pathway the woman had turned against the wall. Certainly it has been proved over all this time that the ginger cat in particular draws a stronger response from the people here; the women and children fan base. Specifically, the unremarkable pale or reddish common ginger. Is it some kind of unaccountable psycho-colonial throwback of an odd and twisted kind?
         Hot  morning, at the eateries clustering around the pillars where the fans were mounted. Crowded walkway, the pop-up hand-cream table out and the Indon maids thronging.
         Husband had merely lent forward a little and something in his tone and posture suggesting he was delicately attempting to draw his wife up and away.
         The woman was patting the cat. Usual thing. She could not keep one at home for whatever reason. (This was a good, amenable fellow, the husband, merely firm on this single point.) Out in the field the love flowed unrestrained; poured a bit indeed. Patting was one thing, nothing remarkable. But in this instance the woman was stroking, patting and wiping beneath the chin and along the side of the neck with a tissue in her hand. It seemed to be a Wet One, wet tissue, one of the larger, bonus size it appeared in her hand. Doubtful that the moisture had come from the mopping of the cat. Hot as it was—and the woman's action showed her intent—the coat of the cat could not have given off that much moisture.
         Poor ting. Feels the heat so bad, how can it not? (Huskies and Alsatians were sometimes kept here even in condos.) She could comfort it if nothing else. Like the human traffic often, the poor Sweet must have stopped beside the doorway of the shop to collect some of the cool from the aircon within. It had likely been chased out from the shop before; out on the pavement it had a right like all others. The Pawnshop gave off only low-level breezy cool; you needed to pass hard against the wall and slow in order to collect anything at all. (Nothing like the booster freeze NTUC or the Malls pumped twenty metres in their siren call.... Try putting your hand on the rail by the checkout for example.) Doubtless perfumed, the tissue sagged from the woman's hand either end—feline was feeling it alright. Scent was an added boon for the poor distressed creature.
            Goochey, goochie, goo. Poor love. Hus slightly embarrassed at the diverted tenderness you could tell.