saying 'I am Singaporean' relates neither a racial nor national identity, it denotes a certain class. Singapore is a class concept like its airlines. The language is artificial like the smiles of the stewardesses.

Random Thoughts

The final insult, the late humiliation one could receive from the son, the uncle from his nephew who despise him for his financial situation when he has finally spoken about the loan. It does not matter if the son or the nephew is polite, whether if the son or nephew is willing to help. But to give him the opportunity to feel sympathy if not to say condescending things would be enough. But the fact is that he has not spoken. The nephew or the son remembers photos they have taken together. Photos of him when he was a young man and he is a baby, when he is a young boy and he is in his late twenties. The wedding, his wedding, the banquet hall (should I give the name?) of another four couples all marrying on the same day. No, they aren't friends, or related, it was an auspicious date, an auspicious day they said. Perhaps they all went to the same fortune teller. But it was a wedding nonetheless. To hear about his financial problem, or anyone of them (from that side of the family). I would say poverty, but financial issues plague them since, perhaps when their father started working in the bank, as a young man, and died leaving a cup of undrank hot Milo on the table, unmedically, he was told it was the phlegm in the lung, choked on a phlegm, he was told in the morning, he was told again, when his mother recounts, repeats the incident at different intervals of his life a la Robbe-Grillet, with different details. It is not just the difference in each repetition, but also the difference in the state of mind of the listener, accorded by age, mood et. al. that the story the kitchen, the night he slept as an adolescent and the man who is supposed to drink the cup of milo went to the hospital instead. He was not told which hospital, but he is sure that the it was the same hospital his wife passed away about twenty years later. I wanted to write the hospital that took her life. But doctors should not worry that this would be another accusation of them overcharging or another act of negligence, how I sympathise how mundane they live although some drama series portray otherwise, doctors can believe I am like many other jealous of you, of your salary, but doctors this is not even about you.  This medical idiot who told me, when she was relapsing, that she was reacting to my presence. Motherfucker, with Hong Kong accent English told me as calmly, as if to tell me I interrupted his break, he had to take a long walk from his desk to the ward to respond to my call. So the son of this man who left a cup of Milo unfinished, one of the many sons, had two kids and a flat with so many statues of Buddha. I have lesser interest in the religion than the class position, the cultural position, or more generally the cultural position it signifies. He was the man that did the drawing of the Goddess of Mercy that I erased a few lines and added mine so that it will look as if I am the one who did the drawing, to add to the realism, and as a matter of fact, I still feel no shame, about this for I am sure it was an act of indolence, of being lazy to draw than the lack of ability to, he was one of my drawing teacher, I did not how to contextualised it as appropriateion, I laughed at him when he was turning bald, or rather losing hair, thinning hair, now this is happening to me. I remember his sister telling me the two times he was robbed, he was the best looking and trendiest amongst her brothers. I remember he was the one who told me babies cry at birth because, according to the Buddhist teaching, they know they are born to suffer. But it is not as if he is dead now, it is just a belated reflection and memory of a person after hearing about what happened few days ago.

Saw a man, not Singaporean, paid for curry puffs at old chang kee this afternoon with coins from a fat wallet filled with other things than dollar notes (the cashier was a little impatient as it took him a while to dig out he coins with one finger). He added chili sauce to curry puffs. Another overreacting script about foreigners and curry and our identity? Thought about 19th century, of years that seem to have nothing to do with us, 1848 1870... Of Asia. Old chang kee is now 1.40 per puff. Read ignorant comments about race and how precious vehicles with flashlights are. Heard channel news asia news reader with educated accent addressing an injured or dead worker from Bangladesh as gentleman. I didn't know we are so polite. Read someone stupid but fortunate to say time-to-leave -the -country, as for the rest, think of the time to wake up for work tomorrow. 

Since last week, the daily encounter with digging and construction sites, neon colours reflective stripes, and helmuts, looking into the hole they dug on the road, breeding mosquitoes, I told a taxi-driver it is money they are digging for those who signed contracts for develpoment. I did not say corrupt. Since last week, I thought of a picture, a painting of them gathering around the hole looking down pensively at the hole, all of them are thinkers not workers anymore. Facing away from the viewers since they are mostly faceless.

Idle hands, for a fist, a middle finger from a hand that refuses work and forget the money home. 

I thought about friends near the area. I thought of friends now with expensive holiday overseas. I though about people who went overseas for low paying jobs, not an expat in HongKong or Shanghai. I recall now the myth of them being really rich when they reach their hometown after a few years. Long queue at the remittance, so old shopping mall permits them gathering outside, a woman intimate with two man, not because they are sharing an umbrella but the wait, three-person in bed, slippers and shirts not how a designer  friend defines cut, I wish to think like a self-gratifying Nietzchean with a general disdain towards humanity.

Another group behind the truck

Ugly Slave Child and 青玉案·元夕 - Xin Qiji 辛弃疾

"衆裏尋他千百度，驀然回首，那人卻在燈火闌珊處。" -《青玉案·元夕》
"Having almost exhausted my energy searching for that person (vague), I suddenly turned my head, and there they were, standing at the far end of the street where the candlelight is the dimmest."
"少年不識愁滋味，愛上層樓。 愛上層樓，為賦新詞強說愁。 而今識盡愁滋味，欲說還休。 欲說還休，卻道天涼好個秋。" -《醜奴儿》
In searching the feeling of sadness in my youth,
I liked to climb pagodas.
Climbed up the pagodas,
For the sake of writing new verse, I talked much about melancholy.
Yet now that I've known in full melancholy's taste,
I hesitate to mention it.
Hesitate to mention it,
Rather I blabber, the weather's cold, a fine autumn.

Hotel Almagro - Ricardo Piglia (Formas Breves, pp. 9 -12)

When I came to live in Buenos Aires I rented a room in Hotel Almagro, situated between Rivadavia and Castro Barros. I was about to finish my first book and Jorge Álvarez offered me a contract to publish and work at the publishing house. I was to prepare an anthology of North American prose from Poe to Purdy. With this salary and what I had earned in the university, I was able to settle and live in Buenos Aires. During this period, it was at the department of Introduction-History in the Faculty of Humanity, and I had to travel every fortnight to La Plata. I rented a room at the pension close to the bus station and stay three days of the week in La Plata teaching classes. I had a life divided, living two lives in two cities as if I was two different person, with different circles of friends in each place.

What was the same, however, was the life in the hotel room. The empty corridors, the lobbies, the anonymous atmosphere of those places where one is always passing. Living in a hotel is the best way to avoid the illusion of 'having' a personal life, and of not having anything personal to tell, except the traces left by others. The lodging in La Plata was an endless house converted into a kind of hotel managed by a 'long-term' student who sublets the rooms. The landlady was hospitalised and every month the chap  dropped some money into the mailbox of the hospital at Las Mercedes. 

The room I rented was comfortable, with a balcony facing the street and a high ceiling. The room at Hotel Almagro had a high ceiling too, and the window opens to the view of the back of the Boxing Federation. The two rooms have similar closets, the kind with two doors and shelves lined with newspapers. One afternoon, in La Plata, I discovered, at a corner of the closet, letters by a woman. I always find traces left by the previous occupants of a hotel room. The letters were hidden in a gap as if someone was concealing a pack of drugs. The nervous handwriting was illegible. I almost understood nothing - as always when I read the letters of a stranger, the allusions, and to really understand clearly to decipher the words but not the meanings or the passing emotions. The woman is called Angelita, she wasn't willing to come to live in Tranque-Lauquen. She had ran away from home and sounded desperate, giving me the feeling of someone rejected. On the last page, with another letter attached, someone had written a telephone number. When I tried to call it was the guard of a hospital in City Bell who answered. Nobody there knew Angelita. 

Naturally I forgot the matter, but after some time, in Buenos Aires, lying on the bed of the hotel room, I happened to get up and inspect the closet. On one side, between a gap, there were two letters of the woman from La Plata. 

I have no explanation. The only possible explanation is to think that I was placed in a parallel world, and there were other two, also placed in a parallel world, passed from one side to another like me, and by these strange coincidences that chance produces, the letters had coincided with me. It is not rare for one to meet a stranger twice in two cities, but it seems rarer to find in two different places letters of  the two person that were communicating, and which one does not know. 

The pension in La Plata still exist, and the 'long-term' student is still there. Now he is a calm old man who sublets the rooms to students and business travellers passing La Plata on their way to the south of the Buenos Aires province. Hotel Amalgro is still the same, and when passing by Avenida Rivadavia, towards the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at Calle Puan, I always walk past the door and remember those days. Opposite is the confectionary Las Violetas. Of course there is a quiet bar, and with good lighting as if one is living in a hotel room. 

Translated by Justin Loke

I am also writing in exile. Exile from my country that does not exist

I am also writing in exile. Exile from my country that does not exist

my English grammar is perfect, but my worldview is a mess

my English grammar is perfect, but my worldview is a mess