Creaming

Porsche drivers have no need to look out their windows. There’s nothing as fascinating as their own selves inside their curvaceous capsules, what have they got to look at? We do the rubbernecking. Occupied with biz, meetings & events, they keep their focus straight ahead where they are going, no time to lose, no vacant mooning. Sometimes you get young guys roaring down the streets in their red & burnt orange models, but it’s the oldies who do it right in their plain whites and creams, who do it most regally, like practiced regents on the thrones. They don’t have to have the latest cuts or dyes these guys, necklaces, chains or rocks. Smooth and perfectly steady the chap in the older model stopped at the lights on Jalan Besar this afternoon, nondescript, if not positively ugly (rather in the form of Godard).... Has there ever been sighted a female driver in all these years? Why have they all gravitated to those other, lesser coupes? So long you assumed they were French, before a Bavarian g-friend corrected.

Transnational

Almost biblical proportion locusts in East Africa, storms in Brazil, the China virus, quakes and eruptions in a number of places, and down in Oz where the fires continued high 30s/40s forecast on the weekend. And this was forgetting for a moment the wars that were unceasing. There had been not the merest mention of the latter in today’s paper. It had been Mr. Modh. from Joo Chiat Complex, going back to his digs on his bicycle, who had reminded to add them to the list of concerns. In one of the newspaper articles a volunteer fire fighter in New South Wales reported flames crowning 150m above tree tops and embers the size of grapefruit…. After eight years here amid all the new fruits intro-ed to the palate and the brain, it was actually impossible now to visualise a grapefruit. It would simply not come back. Neither the size nor the texture. Was there a large seed within like for an avocado or mango? Had grapefruit been roughly the size and shape of a persimmon, or the smaller sour sop? Pomelo or durian, even smaller ones, were unlikely. Jackfruit of course was out of the question. Five hours later it was still a complete blank. Grapefruits had been missed if they had ever sat on the shelves of the supermarkets here; certainly there were none at Geylang Serai market. You had been a transnational from way, way back of course. All the way back to the beginning. Now you were a right proper one. (And weren’t we all.)

Helter Shelter

To be fair, one could not accuse the government of failing to deliver; that would be unjust. Deliver they most certainly do, in spades often. Sing’ can-do spirit; Chinese tiger variety. A couple years ago billboard announcements of two hundred kilometres of additional sheltered walkway to be erected on the little red dot hot spot. Duly accomplished it seemed. This afternoon Tufail the Kashmiri had messaged from his office in Toa Payoh, “finally some rain.” The mountaineer had felt the lack. It had not even been hot; the usual mild January. In Lt. India after lunch there had been no sign. From Rowell Street craning round in the chair at the Cyber nothing doing, nor any darkening either. Oh well, lucky you young Tuf. Wending back on the bus shortly after, after the finest of sprays footing across to Lavender, suddenly, belatedly, a proper pelting. Road noise and the aircon had made it inaudible at first. Gee! And no payung. It had looked all clear setting out. Well, a pisser getting stuck at a stop waiting. Bugger. Damn. There was work waiting. Can’t gripe now, steady on. One had Fanon in the bag. An excellent companion, come rain, hail or shine. Into the last quarter now, tremendous lyricism, of the kind that could only be delivered by someone with sizeable stake in the matter. Skin. Sartre’s Preface had been excellent too. Another volume Zainuddin had foisted. The Tariq Ali novel of Muslim Spain had immediately preceded; pretty crummy in that case, apart from the intriguing history delivered. So many gaps in the knowledge. It had been the battle of Poitiers that had stemmed the Muslim tide on the Western half of the continent; that show all over and resolved before the Eastern half had even gotten properly under way. Seven hundred years the Alhambra had lasted. Even Greece had only been occupied six hundred. Constantinople. Vizantium. Kosovo Field. Tzar Lazar… A Montenegrin found much of interest. Was Tariq in fact a gay man? Published thirty years ago, a great deal of concentration on that element. Not that it mattered either way. Dreary sex scenes—pine tree metaphors, coconuts &etc. Like in Tzarist times, slave girls/serfs taken willy-nilly brought Count Leo to mind. In Tariq A. a beautiful lass had avoided the attention of the young master of the house by pleading her menstruation. Girls raped and torched in India in the news again. Tufail’s parents were searching for a suitable wife in Srinigar for their boy. In his late twenties, it was becoming dangerous for Tuf being confronted by all the uncovered flesh in  Singapore. A week ago the lad had escorted a Batam lady over to the market during a downpour. First time girl under my umbrella, Tufail reported back. It had not rained in fact since that day. Decent pour now. When the doors opened at the stops the strength of it was conveyed. Damn! Nuisance… But, hey! Wait on a minute. No. The 197 this was. Yes; it was not the 7 that continued along Sims Avenue. Here we were then, a ride on offer right the way round to Tanjong Katong Mall, where the recently completed sheltered walkway from the stop for your convenience… Not to fear. Cover virtually unbroken right the way to the doorstep. Thirty metres from the Mall to Geylang corner. At the join to the section fetching East for some reason a panel overhead was missing, one metre square only. Duck left there. Thirty plus thirty plus thirty metres—three stab passes of the football, that included a crossing of the service road  for the carpark. The overpass at the Haig crossed the four lanes of Geylang Road—up, down and around by the stop. The market. The row of shops. Out the back by Block 10. It helped to know the way, otherwise it would have been a merry dance. Were one headed to any one of the 14 Blocks, you were home and hosed without a single drop on your person. Sheltered all the way; entirely cloistered. In this particular case, needing to reach a “landed property,” a bungalow, there was a final twenty metre dash. By Block 9 the high eave of the adjacent utility building gave shelter. Mind the pigeon droppings there! Pavers with good grip in order to reach the tree on the corner. From which point it was 15-20 metres to the front veranda of the house. Ha! Walk in the park. A breeze. Easy as pie. It was often said, by dainty girls in print dresses in particular, If it were not for the PAP, we’d be like Indonesia or Malaysia. In the sun and rain of the unforgiving Tropics, man had triumphed over adversity and obstacles like nowhere else.

 

 

                                                                                                Geylang Serai, Singapore 2011-2020

Soggy, Unappetising Lunch at the Haig

10-15min. sitting you wondered at the blare. Seemed to be emanating from the toilet block, unusually. Nuisance of a thing pumping like that, golden oldies forever and a day without let up. The place could not possibly function without this syrup dished up for the populace. It was a conspiracy that could be managed in a small city-state, far more effective than traditional propaganda. The supermarket would need to be abandoned altogether shortly, it was simply unendurable within those walls. One day before you knew it you’d find yourself tearing down the aisles swinging your arm through the shelves one after another. Horrid vomit-inducing 60s piddle that sent you reeling, —well, that truth to tell one had kinda liked in junior years before some little shafts of light had penetrated the mental thicket. That was one thing, the particular genre; in the supermarkets the added on top was the chipmunk announcers sledgehammering and pulverising with their patter. Murder most foul and dastardly. Seemed almost inhuman. Imagine a boy or girl in school back in the day squeaking like that! Sounded like radio, when in fact it was produced by the chain specifically for in-store broadcast…. Don’t fooor-get tooo re-MEM-ber me. You actually sang along with that lollipop once upon a time, you did, you did don’t deny it; or at least in your head you did after it had stuck there like gum to your shoe. I STILL re-MEM-ber you…. They caught you out here, forced you to recollect your primordial, pitiful self.... Eventually the true culprit responsible for the broadside at the last Haig row here swung by to reveal himself, an old dapper Malay of the usual form, though in this case an unfamiliar in that neighbourhood. Recent trim and coal dye; mid-seventies passing for early or just-turned. New barely laundered black polo bearing lustrous gold braiding. Got himself a fancy fold-out bicycle the dude and a sound system that would demolish a housing tower were it deployed on one of the Voids. If he had won the lottery obtaining a driving license was outta the question for this old cowhand. Chap escorted his shiny wheels like a fine lady on his arm, by the front table and slowly ambling up the path. At that first table two or three heavy Batam gals in their long gowns were being shared by the crocs on the stools. Whisperings, squeezed out modest smiles, waiting and hanging chiefly along there in the usual way. As the songster drew one foot after another by the group pulling his wheels, the man turned toward the general assembly and like the crooners of old, like the old uncles on the talent shows and the faded stars on TV reprising their hits of yesteryear, the Uncle here gleamed ivory bright. Some of the old men had retained their own choppers and almost uncannily perfect condition (it was often difficult to pick the falsies). With the benefit of that radiance Unc here mouthing clearly and unmistakably the more plangent segment of the old song’s refrain, —AND the love…. that USED…. to be. Uncle had numerous former loves near at hand in memory, none had slipped. Judges on TV talent shows exhorted contestants to put more feeling into their performance, pour out the heart’s burden like they really meant it. This uncle channeled without trouble all the sweets he had collected and given over the years with deepest conviction, the most jaded judge would have credited. The volume of the music box was too loud to attempt challenge (r ocket-ship class batteries); even a professionally prepared younger throat might have failed in that regard. The miming here would have been impossible for a viewer to discern on any kind of screen. If the man had meant the lyric for one of the Indo ladies she would need to make a claim herself in order to seize as Unc had cast into the general body of the hall, well over the heads of the near group.