On Saturday afternoon I took an MRT to Tiong Bahru. Alfian Sa’at, playwright yang femes (and possible member of Perkasa, cawangan Singapura), had given in to my pestering and agreed to be my guide for the day. I waited for him at Tiong Bahru Plaza, the MRT station’s associated mall.
At the entrance, besides the sorry-looking smokers, where several sorry-looking elderly people, plying their trades for the day:
There was an uncle playing an er hu, to moderate degree of success.
There was an auntie with a head of white hair, selling from a wet-market cart little bouquets of plastic flowers and shelf-sized teddy-bears, wrapped in pink ribbon.
There was an uncle in a motorised wheelchair, missing one leg. He wore a stained Santa hat, and had a rainbow-coloured windmill attached to his right armrest. I’m not sure what he was selling. Perhaps nothing.
I was curious, but hesitant to approach, because these were not my poor.
The er hu player played the entire half-hour I was here. The other old people stared at me. The younger people never made eye contact; they were all rushing somewhere.
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When Alfian arrived he walked me to Books Actually. Along the way, we passed by rows of four-storey flats with art-deco fins and detailing. Some buildings where even curved.
I made a quip. I said: “Nowadays your government engineers would take one look at this and say, why curved? Wasting space only.”
(Can’t help thinking of Singapore as a machine city.)
Alfian tells me that these apartments were built by the British colonial version of the HDB, the Singapore Improvement Trust. He didn’t know whether rent-control was still in effect, to stem the oncoming tide of gentrification. One can imagine young, designerly types eyeing the SIT houses with a hunger. The houses certainly look very nice.
The shops here are very cool. Books Actually is the coolest. I bought four (!) books — including Christine Chua’s “The Law of Second Marriages” and K S Maniam’s “Haunting the Tiger”, which has a cover so tacky it’s awesome. Alfian paid for them; he pities me, I can tell, for being a poor Malaysian.
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There were hairstylists and photographers and fashionistas on Books Actually’s front step, doing an open-air snip-and-shoot. One of them, on cigarette break, complimented me: “Nice skirt,” he said.
Burmese longyi, actually, but few people know about Burmese fashions, I suppose.
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