In Unrelated News: Umbrella Sales Have Plummeted

E@L has noticed, or their presence has been thrust upon him by the number of diversions and obstruction to his perambulations lately, sheltering awnings being constructed on footpaths (motorised-scooterpaths, motorised-skateboardpaths, shared-bikepaths) all around District 11 in recent months. He first noticed it when bus-stops were becoming linked to other bus-stops and to MRT stations with these rain aggregators and warm-air accumulators, and when very high shelters were being built over the driveways of condos and the petroleum dispensing convenience stores in his vicinity.

Rain aggregators? Because there is no guttering, the water falls in sheets from either side in drops larger than rain itself and, if there's a wind, it blows them onto the pedestrians (scooter riders, skateboard riders, bicyclists) with an enhanced density no matter where they traverse under the awning.

Warm-air accumulators? Because the hot sun blasting onto the roofs of these shelters warms them up like an oven to cook the scalps of passing alopeican pedestrian (etc.), while the exhaust from passing traffic gathers in its lees to makes the air taste stale and noxious.

And what happens when one walks in their umbrage, expecting an alleged degree of protection, as could possibly be the case, E@L concedes, in certain instances, and one had therefore left home sans umbrella and sans beret, but then, without warning, they stop. One becomes bereft of their shelter on exiting District 11, E@L supposes. E@L will tell one what happens. When the weather is inclement, or extra-clement as the case may be, one gets wet, and the bald ones get frontally, parietally, and temporally scorched.

Is this the Singapore one is comfortable (oh so comfortable) living in?

Add to this the luminal pollution! Singapore already has the highest light pollution score in the world, and when the many globes in these pathways are turned on at night, they will add (by reflection from the expanded areas of concrete beneath one's foot presumably) to this plethoric aura, it could jump a few places even higher!

By the way (way = path, geddit?), speaking of concrete, in order to foot (foot = walk, geddit?) the stands for this urban extravaganza, some of the paths do have to be widened, and so the council of District 11 (did E@L tell everyone he lives in District 11?) has decided it is an opportune time to build over many of the open drains which festoon the area. Shame! These rain-water runoffs do not sit filled with noisome stagnant "water" as in many other SEA cities (Bangkok, Jakarta, take a bow) but act efficiently when the downpour hits, and their lusty bubbling sounds are most restful E@L finds, from the shelter of his umbrella as he trudges in sodden sandals down the slight rise from Spooky Mansion* on Gilstead Rd. Hardly any of the children from the adjacent kindergarten fall in and get washed away, never to be seen or heard from again. Those open spaces are often the homes to well-rooted trees of prodigious size and they really add to the indiscrete charm of this bourgeois part of town. E@L will miss them (the trees, the gutters, the bourgeoisie), as he often does, fortunately, when rolling home mostly inebriated and partially disoriented from a night at various pub trivia events (his sole social encounterings these long, wearying days).

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But E@L's sense of outrage is actually more of political and economic nature, and the prior observations are demonstrative of mild (indeed hypothetical) inconveniences to himself. Grumpy E@L Syndrome. Something akin to the infamous existential angst the great German writer Thomas Mann experienced when confronted (y-fronted) by the inconvenience that No.4 size underpants were too small, and No.5 size underpants too big. "Acid indigestion and constipation!" he exclaimed.

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The true cause of E@L's adversarial stance to these structures is their demonstration of the outlandish profligacy of governmental expenditure - viz: it must cost a fucking fortune. Yes, surprise surprise surprise, the Singapore Gahmen has shit-loads of money. Obviously. Money to spend on completely unnecessary projects like these. (Take a fucking umbrella, people. You live in the fucking tropics! It's either going to be fucking hot, or fucking hot AND fucking raining at 2pm!)

Point being: they could be allocating this money elsewhere - especially social welfare (how many aunties and uncles cleaning up after in hawker centres for a pittance because they have no other income, or a living pension, or family support?), and a minimum wage... The Gahmen can complain about the loss of billions on bad investments, yet still have money floating around to fund grandiose extension to the MRT systems (already brilliant) and these dicky-little footpath covers. Jaysus!

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Singapore political blogger Yawning Bread recently asks the question as to why would a country feel proud that hawker food is really cheap, and answers that it should be a national embarrassment that many Singaporeans don't make enough money to afford anything more elaborate. Hawker food for Singaporeans could be thought of (if it wasn't so brilliant) as the equivalent of what Maccas is for the indigent and for poor families in other countries. YB's issue is that lack of a minimum wage is screwing the spread of income, and income disparity is the underlying reason for cheap food in hawker centres.

Maybe we ought to be ashamed of our hawker prices and food court scene. The contradiction between the wide demand for cheap food and the high per-capita GDP suggests something really wrong with income and wealth distribution in Singapore.
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When E@L hit the town in 2004, he purchased the most brilliant laksa he had ever had for $2.50. Now, 15 years later, in certain stalls in certain hawker centres, he can buy an equally damn good laksa for, maybe, $4.00. The YB link above cites a mothership.sg article on a hawker stall where the $1 price of a nasi lemak has remained unchanged for 32 years. You can't tell E@L that costs of producing this deal of a meal haven't risen extortionately.

And people says there's such a thing as progress!

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Mind you, since certain changes *cough* have progressed (regressed?) at work, E@L's salary is not a million miles/dollar from what it was in 2004, and in fact it is a tad reduced from those yawning heights, plus he doesn't get business class flights on long hauls anymore. Even so, he remains a (slightly less) ridiculously overpaid expat, dragging away employment opportunities from locals, and he can go to Woolies and rack up a $200 bill in a heart-beat. (You can too, rich reader!)

Or E@L can get a taxi to a hawker centre, as has often done, which may seem perverse ($15 ride to get a $10 feast - including a large Tiger) when the MRT and buses are so cheap and convenient.

There is a bipolar wage level in Singapore... Income disparity. Do we blame capitalism, fascism, the PAP/Gahmen/Lee family, cult of personality, Thomas Picketty, Obama, Reagan & Thatcher & Malcolm Fraser, cultural Marxbrothersism, libertarianism, communism, Ismism?

Or do we blame "foreign talent" such as

E@L?


*Spooky House.

Rain

It is raining; a long "shhh" that is both distant and near. There are memories dull and deep that this sound evokes*. It is hard to place where the "shhh" comes from, the present or the past. I turn my head this way, that way. The rain's loud hushing is coming from everywhere, everywhere outside that is; the trees and bushes and flowers, from the pool surface, from the paved paths, from the air itself. The rain's hush is so loud, so continuous, so all-enclosing that it takes an effort to hear it, to realize that there is a sound. Water for fish.

Golf is out of the question, I guess. Did I bring my full set for nothing?

Thunder grumbles loudly, ignoring the rain's request for silence. I want to write something, I want to sit outside while I write it. On the balcony, pebbles have been laid in white in a single large floral pattern, maybe a tree shape, against brown background pebbles. Half the balcony is exposed to the weather, half sheltered under a rendered-concrete, not quite terra-cotta, more peach-coloured roof. There are four narrow windows in the wall at the left side, spaces between columns of the concrete. The wooden chairs and their single green, square cushions are wet however, as is the wooden table. Even though the furniture is several feet from the rain, splashes from the large drops that fall from the edge of the balcony's roof onto the pebbles are leaping back at the table and the chairs, or they sneak through those narrow open spaces between the columns, hopping from the pebbles on the floor of the balcony next door. The roof-drops make a cracking sound as they explode against the pebbles, a sound like turned-back knuckles. There is no rhythm to these drops, they fall at random. After I wipe the water away with my bathroom towel and pull the table and one of the chairs even further away from the open half of the balcony (hardly a balcony really as the three steps at the end take you down to pool level, there must be another word for it - porch?), I move them toward the glass door to my room.

The splashes continue to leap at the table, at me where I sit, even at the laptop. There are splashes like tears on the screen as I type. You should see them. It is raining heavily now, then it becomes softer. The "shh" is almost a shout, almost a whisper.

Thunder rolls from the clouds like a god turning in his giant creaky bed and the rain picks up again, heavy and inevitable, like death, like metabolic syndrome.

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I wanted to write today, if not on some novel or short story at least in the blog. Be funny, be grumpy, amuse, but nothing comes easily this morning so I describe things. When I am not writing, internally heard passages of fiction-like observations come into my head, but I have no chance to write them down as I am walking or shopping or drinking beer or eating or getting a blow-job in a massage parlor. I can never remember them later. Mostly.

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"Is it off season in the back-lanes of Hua Hin around the Hilton? The many beer bars are sparsely populated, only a few customers in this bar, one in that bar. Many bars are empty. The girls who are still awake, who have not given up hope at 10pm, these girls call to me, bar after bar. (Are there more bars here than last time?) Hello, they call. Welcome. Hey mister, come in.

Some girls are pretty, most are not.

Taxi!"

~~

"The blustering wind scatters leaves like seed on barren ground, it bends the trees in supplication. I stop the cross-trainer, take a breather, look out the gym window to the road by my flat. I see a yellow bird, a small-to-medium sized bird. The strong yellow, makes it easy to find and see it skitter from a branch on this tree to a branch on that tree. A yellow bird. How beautiful.

Maybe it eats its own weight every day. Steven Wright wonders: how does it know how much it weighs?

I start the cross-trainer again. My heart rate is displayed. It is in the fat-burning zone."

~~

"The roar of cicadas, I notice this roar finally. It is amazing, it has built up so gradually that I didn't notice it, like a frog in heating water. It is deafening: If I was talking to someone, if I was with someone, I would have to shout.

The eye-burning vapour of eucalyptus leaves. I walk on soft sand that has been spread across the prepared walking path through Litchfield park. Hardly natural up here on the top of escarpment. Scrambling across rocks not strictly on the trail to get a better view I observe the thin waterfalls, the deep pools at the base of the cliffs. There are safe cascades sometimes, where girls in bikinis and men in surf-shorts bathe languidly. Dry season, low water, no crocodiles. It is safe for those sybarites in the pools. No-one will be eaten today.

I did not bring my bathers, my togs, my swimmers on the drive from Darwin (speed limit 130kms/hour! Outstanding in a rental!) The bathers are in my room. I berate myself as the dark water looks so cool, is so inviting."



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"Under my big toe, on the ventral surface of my right hallux, something feels uncomfortable, a slightly piercing pressure, a princess's pea. When I lift my foot and prod under the breach at the font of my sandal there only a small leaf caught underneath, a soft and innocent leaf. Soft? The neural sensitivity is returning, perhaps; a leaf like this shouldn't bring such pain. Maybe the drugs are losing their potency in my system. This makes me a little bit sad, makes me a little bit angry. The drugs stabilise my mood as well as try to kill the pain. Every emotion is a little bit."

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"The siren sounds and everybody - 100,016 everybodies - take a large breath in. How can so many people be suddenly so silent? It is like a film, unreal and false, believable despite its cruel unbelievable essence. Some players fall to ground and lie on their backs to stare at the sky. Clouds are gathering, I wonder if they notice. The players who are still standing place their hands on their heads and walk around in a stupor. Some are crying, some blank-faced. Even the players lying down have their hands on their heads. Why? Is this the response to frustration, to disbelief, to resignation, to the realisation that 140 minutes of grueling, body-breaking effort, of continual effort, of hard non-stop running up the extensive playing field (amazing fitness), of leaping and crushing and fast twisting, turning, slipping away from the ball-hunger of the opposition team keen to bash you down and steal the Sherrin - all this has been in vain. OMG, has all that hard physical and psychological preparation of the entire year been wasted? A draw in the Grand Final? It cannot have happened, yet it has.

Rain falls within a whipping wind as we walk home from the ground. Appropriate."

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I am still getting splashed by the rain. It's heavier again. The roar of the hush continues everywhere around me, like cicadas in the bush, like the birds (are they yellow) in the trees on Orchard Rd.

I wonder what to write about.

E@L

* plagiarised from Ogawa's "The Diving Pool" which I am currently reading while not typing this.