There had been no rain the last couple hours, the lad at Nilla confirmed, only this morning. In the afternoon the canal had been shallow and dirty as usual, yet at dusk a good level of water had risen, drawing a number of people to the railing. The girl on Wong Ah Fook was absent. The night before she had sprung out of her doorway after a passing, shy but interested young fellow. (Confession: shamefully, pitifully, Bahasa numbering has continued to confuse even a decade later in the Malay world. The multiples were still elusive—tens, hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands & millions in the case of Indo Rupiah. It was wilful laziness. An aide-memoire was provided by this girl.) The lad had come past and no doubt given her a quick once-over. Casual & brief as it had been, walking on by as he did, the lass immediately caught the interest. Hard to get around her like that. Smilingly, she called out after him, Lima ribu!… Ah! Yes! Indeed. Lima was five; ribu the multiplier x tens. (RM50 — about sixteen Sing dollars.) Emergency love (passé the great Garcia M.) was affordable in ML.) Half a minute later crossing the bridge, sure enough the sweet had come up to the shutters further along, where the lad had stopped. Looked no-go on this occasion; anything less than fifty was not on. (For a White of course, the figure would have doubled, if not x 3.) Later in the evening the trannies further up by the first lane emerged. It would not be out of the question that for those add-ons the price may have been even a wee higher again. Odd how long it had taken the water to come down from upcountry. During brekkie the downpour had lasted under 20mins. For the second day the shutters were down on the Tamil provisions store around from the hotel, where the morning newspaper was bought. That was unusual. Did it mean the little cat there would go hungry? It appeared not. The couple earlier passes morning & afternoon had found it by the stairs by the back lane. Instead, tonight, there it was atop a more comfortable bed. Cardboard had value for many here—for emergency shields from the rain, to soften seating and more so again for the rough sleepers on hard surfaces. With the Tamils absent, some neighbour there had thought of the cat, providing both bedding & food too likely. Struggle town there in JB, stoic endurance, often good cheer. Like the red wheelbarrow, much depended on that little, thin, stray grey on Jl. Siu Nam. Rarely did any passerby fail to give it some kind of acknowledgement, if not sweetness. The core of the heartening, the source of the beneficence here was all with the stray, rather than the other way round.
Johor Bahru, ML
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