Big Shots and Their Big Motors

Light veg., cuttlefish and fruit lunch on the usual corner. In this case sitting precisely on the corner, leaning against the last end pillar where with the crawl of the traffic the heat rose 2 - 3 degrees. A blast of 6 - 7 degrees too suddenly when a big shiny motor inched along. Razali the Indian convert here who runs the food-stall remarked yesterday on all the development in JB that had left behind the basic infrastructure from the days of his boyhood fifty years ago. A couple of months before Razali had complained about the big expensive cars parked illegally outside the mosques while the big shots ran in for their prayers. In and out all in a rush; nothing like what was intended for the mosque gathering in Islam. Once when Razali went to speak to a chap blocking the way double-parked an old grey-beard had unexpectedly emerged from the vehicle and Razali had to button up. It was not just heedless youth who didn’t know better acting in this fashion. Yesterday Razali was having radiator troubles with his own car. With five driving-age daughters still at home and a wife, a single vehicle was tough trying to conduct a business; on the narrow old pot-holed roads particularly tough. Finally some cloud moderating. A large crowd at the tea-house. Not all the big chariots here were from over the Causeway either; plenty of locals had made a packet of ringgit. Nearing 2pm for the meeting with the ThinkCity people around in Jalan Pahang regarding this projected chapbook featuring precisely this quarter of Johor Bahru. Five hundred copies distributed locally for free, funded by the urban regeneration group and its partners. Finding appropriate readers would be the problem it has always has been. Then photographs and design considerations. Aduh!

                                                                                                                         JB, Malaysia