The Kambodja

Nearing half three after lunch back at the Teahouse where a good option has been discovered at Razali's stall—pre-packed mee noodles with a couple of veg. perfectly satisfying. There are now five or six alternatives at different places here in the old town, even Reaz offering vegetable briyani as a good alternative to their thick, oily nan. As usual too the appetite returned after lunch for another review of last night's revisions and the morning print. Truly the matter is an appetite: sometimes looking again at the work for the fifth or sixth time in a 24 hour cycle just cannot be stomached. Making the first journal note of the afternoon the kambodja happened to deposit a large, only partly yellowed leaf directly onto the shoe almost. Plop! audibly onto the old mottled concrete path under the Teahouse veranda where a familiar rusted drain-cover reminded of the one at Bab's outside her laundry window. On the raised concrete basin there over the drain Bab would wash the potato and greens from her garden for supper, catching the dirty water in one of her troughs and back into the garden. It had taken over forty years to identify the tree Malouf and the other Queensland writers of a generation past had delivered to the literary world down in the great Southern land: the handsome kambodja or frangipani, originating in fact from the other side of the world entirely in Mexico. Couple of sparrows here on adjacent branches that appeared from the ground as brittle as our backyard walnut; pendant dead flowers in November with small new blossoms of the coming season. The thickset new Indon waitress clearing the table pauses for a message on her phone that she carries against her cheek tucked inside her tight brown scarf. Something of some concern by the looks. Opposite at the popular bakery disappointed customers from Singapore who had been unaware of the half-day Sunday trade. On the other side the Fruiterer was awaiting the sale of the last of his goods, around a dozen various cuts in their plastic sleeves prepared at home by his wife. Another RM20 if the Fruiterer was lucky. Sundays were always a good trade.