This was how the thought process unfolded: Shortly before 8AM the hard slap of the flip-flops going past the house, a few words called out to someone going the other way. Ah! the plastic container man around on Onan Road…. The curious posture as he went along each morning uploaded lying on the bed staring at the ceiling. Highly unusual. Not done with the image, in the bathroom a few minutes later an inward smile was produced. Encountered later in the day around at Wadi or on Geylang Road the man didn’t bend like that, snout forward foraging as in the evolutionary charts. That particular carriage was only on the march to work in the morning, opening up the shop first thing on Onan where across the road a competitor could not be allowed to steal a march, so to speak. Back in the room following the ablutions some short while later the sequence concluded: ….By golly! You know what? Here in fact you had another Eurasian before you that in all this time you never ever ID-ed as such. Never an inkling; passed entirely under the radar. The man had been signalling Han Chinese pure and simple how many years was it now? when of course one close examination would have made the case perfectly clear. Chap had bought you a couple of teas, paid for them from his position in front in the queue. It had taken a year to return the favour, only the other week in fact succeeding. Never twigging. Some of the lads in a neighbouring shop said the man was loaded. If so it was old form money-bags, nothing whatever to indicate. Spoke good Bahasa as well as the Hokkien it must be. Somewhere in the Haig blocks behind he lived, never sat out in the evenings, neither at the market nor at Wadi or the other eateries. Perhaps you now knew why. The gait alone ought to have told you something. Particularly strange. This morning his passing was heard from the bed on the other side of the wall, window closed and aircon blowing. Breakfast had been a little earlier and the plastics man the other side of the fence was missed in the back garden. All the oldies roundabout would have known; the youngsters on the other hand perhaps no more than you. Possibly even his children if he had any might be in the dark.
Friday, November 30, 2018
Going Under Cover
This was how the thought process unfolded: Shortly before 8AM the hard slap of the flip-flops going past the house, a few words called out to someone going the other way. Ah! the plastic container man around on Onan Road…. The curious posture as he went along each morning uploaded lying on the bed staring at the ceiling. Highly unusual. Not done with the image, in the bathroom a few minutes later an inward smile was produced. Encountered later in the day around at Wadi or on Geylang Road the man didn’t bend like that, snout forward foraging as in the evolutionary charts. That particular carriage was only on the march to work in the morning, opening up the shop first thing on Onan where across the road a competitor could not be allowed to steal a march, so to speak. Back in the room following the ablutions some short while later the sequence concluded: ….By golly! You know what? Here in fact you had another Eurasian before you that in all this time you never ever ID-ed as such. Never an inkling; passed entirely under the radar. The man had been signalling Han Chinese pure and simple how many years was it now? when of course one close examination would have made the case perfectly clear. Chap had bought you a couple of teas, paid for them from his position in front in the queue. It had taken a year to return the favour, only the other week in fact succeeding. Never twigging. Some of the lads in a neighbouring shop said the man was loaded. If so it was old form money-bags, nothing whatever to indicate. Spoke good Bahasa as well as the Hokkien it must be. Somewhere in the Haig blocks behind he lived, never sat out in the evenings, neither at the market nor at Wadi or the other eateries. Perhaps you now knew why. The gait alone ought to have told you something. Particularly strange. This morning his passing was heard from the bed on the other side of the wall, window closed and aircon blowing. Breakfast had been a little earlier and the plastics man the other side of the fence was missed in the back garden. All the oldies roundabout would have known; the youngsters on the other hand perhaps no more than you. Possibly even his children if he had any might be in the dark.
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