Blowtorch

Swan through NTUC en route to the bakery down past Masjid Khalid, two minute slow-stepping along the aisles. A saviour like a cave in deepest summer where ice could still be found. (Suchlike existed in the Montenegrin hills only a couple of generations ago.) In the Fruits Mr Wenli Wei suddenly popped out from the scrum. The old Mandarin Lit. teacher from Beijing had approached the kopi table a few days before to enquire about the incessant activity. Writing, always writing. Sight for sore eyes for a man who wrote poems himself, read a lot and with his wife looked after his young granddaughter. Marvellous on the second encounter to be able to gift the man Li Po & Tu Fu too into the bargain. You’d like to know when the old bibliophile had received this pair on his rambles about the place. The latter especially, incomparable old TuF, made the heart glad. Something about the moon and a L-O-V-E-R, — the poet’s secret squeeze presumably up at the heights. (Wei would be far better acquainted with the biography, or folklore at least.) Are you lonely? wondered Wei, immediately direct and venturesome, knowing something of the vocation’s costs. There had been no lovers for Wei, only his wife, hesitating there over her purchases. The son had graduated from Beijing’s Science & Technological University twenty years ago, come down to Singapore to advance his career. Unable to hack the weather on the Equator, the daughter-in-law kept to the homeland and lottsa to-and-fro. Farewell, farewell, the poetic gods would bring us together again. At the corner haberdashery the old China Uncle sat in his fold-out chair as usual; rarely was the man up on his feet nowadays. In his hand a dark, square piece of something that he was rubbing over his knuckles…. Aduh! The ring and stone was out of sight. It reminded of the tales of the gangster era in the kampungs; in lieu of dusters sharpening the points might have been the way back in the day. Working the thick emery paper while he breezily chatted to passersby. Kinex, former One KM (one always made it a point to forget the branding of the malls in particular), offered the auto entry-doors more often than not. Ah!... Reviving zephyr! No need a close pass—along the front garden-beds one could take the coolness from fifteen metres there, sometimes both doors one after the other. Crossing Tanjong Katong and wending now through City Plaza—phones, shoes, massage chairs, gold shop—out the side and back onto Geylang past the bus-stop. There was little cover Southside at 1PM; across the street full-on furnace right along to Guillemard. Once the crossing was made beyond, however, the trees provided cover and along Sims Ave sheltered walkways virtually right the way to Kwan Inn. Laksa like at Kwan under $10-12 one was never going to find on the Southern continent. ($4 at the Buddhist.)