What Is This?

From a distance looks like a tennis court and the snot-green some kind of scorched grass. The enclosure had been passed only once in these three and more months. Whatever kind of game they played there had never been witnessed. The first young fellow coming from the lift did not live in the block, but knew the matter. Old people play. Malay dude; not surprising he did not know what was almost certainly a Chinese game of some kind; or at least adopted by the Chinese. An old man with little English did not know the name either. To the display of imaginary vertical sticks striking balls, he gave assent. Something of that kind, like croquet, adapted for the colonies. It was however a deeper mystery that had directed attention to that corner opposite the lift at section D. The area was roughly the size of a tennis court; perhaps more square than rectangle. Dark young lad labouring within the wire. Since lunch-time the fellow had strung up three or four lines of flags and mounted more larger ones along the cyclone fencing. The red and white flags with the crescent moon and stars that five years earlier had been mistaken for some kind of Muslim insignia. The emblem of Malaysia perhaps in this quarter, it had been guessed. (An Australian football fan almost broke into song: Cheer, cheer the red and the white...) There were probably 5-6 more string lines to be erected and larger flags around on the fencing on the Haig Road side. Many hundreds and thousands more were to be hung from the balconies of the HDBs through the city-state. Some years past householders were issued the flags; after some lack of enthusiasm it seems, in recent years the government had contracted various companies. A week out from National Day, there was still much to do. North Korea, Cuba possibly, perhaps some of the newly independent countries of the European continent, and such-like, were the only counterparts.