Snow-Drift (Equatorial)

Foot-slog of the second mall at City Square after lunch. Trousers, Lee jeans, various casual wear. One or two roomy possibilities found in the midst of all the tight skinny-legged whatnot. Sore with the slow recovery from this darn tinea and then the milling shoppers. Such numbers of extended Chinese families gliding through the aisles, strings of 7 - 8 like fish in a pond. Men emerging from change rooms in their white polos slashed with red and royal blue crests pulling at collars and needing the advice of mothers and wives. Cripes!... School hols. and Chrissy creeping on snow-drift quiet. Numerous fagged out shags on rocks waiting on couches. In one of the up-market stores—but then they were all up-market above the dirty street and canal—a plush apple-red Chesterfield chair held a shrunken Asian princess bargain hunter reminiscent of the skit in the Two Ronnies when little Corbert delivered one of his set routines. Polished tiles, bright colours, soaps, deodorants & perfumes. The species perfectly adapted to the environment, cruising like ice-skaters, even older heads who might have known better. Many were the recent generation of newly minted Singaporean of course crossed over for the plummeting ringgit. Poor Bangla lad coming down an escalator held his mop over the fixed stainless panel against the perspex like he was taught by the supervisor: tight, firm and applying pressure top of handle. The lad’s compatriots at the exits were dressed in fatigues almost and crowned with reddy-orange berets in some kind of compromise between security and couture. All of which almost entirely without looking, head down-nose clean, barely a single instance of eye contact. Flooding images overpowering regardless. In Malaysia mind, where on the streets of the provinces at least a social whirl of acknowledgements, greetings, abrupt enquiries after your nativity, smiles for miles and miles. The micro-climate of the mall on a Monday afternoon almost a fortnight to Christmas, sharia law about to be promulgated in one or two states to the north, flooding in various regions, the political class braving a torrent of accusation, mass weddings (one involving a fifteen year old and later in the week another national suicide bomber in Syria—thirty-eight thus far). Earlier in the morning a substantial procession of foreign workers almost to a man waving make-shift green flags down the middle of Trus toward Masjid India. Maulid, the Prophet's birthday, which in these parts really does seem to occur at least two or three times a year. And why had the author subjected himself to the trial, pray tell? Slogging through the mall?... Well, it does not befit one of the White race with Arts bureaucrats to engage shortly and then Immigration officials, to go about in what the old Australians would term "the arse hanging outta his pants." A dirty great tear in the seat of the outdoor clobber not a year old, purchased in the happy isle to the South. (Not the first shoddy product bought from Campers beside the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul on Queen Street.)