upgrading upgrading.
i get awakened at 8.45am in the mornings by the pounding staccato of a jackhammer. it's quite unpleasant and i can't drown out the noise with pillows. but recently it's stopped cos they've finished retiling the floor downstairs. but i hope they only resume after i've left. waking up to loud noises cranks me up.
anyway, see the picture? that's what i see when i look out and downwards from my kitchen window. see the dug up trench behind the digger? well they've dug up till the grey cement area where the drain covers are, to lay some pipes or something. so see this is what happened, the other day my mother was cooking in the kitchen and i walked in to see what she was cooking. she left the stove and went to the kitchen window and glanced down and then she said, "boy, come see! fire!"
i don't really know what happened, but my mother said one of the workers had come running out of the tunneled out area of the trench where the drain covers are and flames followed. so well, there was the chinese guy who ran out of the tunnel, two foreign workers, and i guess the foreman or site supervisor. they all stood around gawking at the flames merrily (don't you like happy fires?) burning on the dug up soil area. and if you considered it, it had to be some gas or flammable liquid like petrol or shit like that. soil doesn't burn. at least it doesn't seem like it can. so the chinese guy scampers off into the digger and proceeds to scoop up dug up soil around the place to cover up the flames with, which of course filled up the tunnel. what a waste of hard work. anyway the foreman guy tells one of the foreign gawkers to go get some water in a bucket to put the fire out. and so the guy does it. repeatedly pouring water over the magical flames which never go out.
the chinese guy dumps more soil. flames become smaller.
the foreign guy dumps water. fire spreads and becomes bigger again.
repeat repeat repeat.
i felt the increasing need to go downstairs and punch them all in their faces. in my mind i envisioned that some gas pipe had sprung a leak and now the flames had eaten into the pipes and were shooting up all the gas pipes in the block and there would be some spectacular explosion as every unit gets blown to pieces. and the next day the newspapers will report that "police have ruled out terrorist action".
so the foreman guy just stands there nonchalantly looking on at the asinine efforts, scratching his head and neck. and the other foreign guy just saunters off somewhere. i was thinking maybe for an extinguisher, but his gait suggested something more like a coffee break or a nice nap against a pillar somewhere.
more soil gets dumped.
foreign guy no. 1 goes back to the water pipe and proceeds to wash his hands and take a drink from it.
flames dance.
foreign guy no. 1 takes a breather.
more soil is dumped.
flames look close to dying.
foreign guy no. 1 fills up the bucket and dumps more water.
it's comedy in real life.
well finally, somehow or the other, by the grace of god and jesus and elvis and whatever other deities, the fire dies out. but foreign guy no. 1 isn't satisfied. he fills up the bucket a few more times and splashes more water around the area for good measure. good show old chappy, you're up for a raise soon, maybe a nice shiny new helmet, seeing how your superiors are boneheads too.
oh well, upgrading continues.
i fear for the safety of the neighbourhood.
i just heard Suzanne Jung say "and later Melvin Yong will get financial".
whoah, i didn't know newscasters were allowed to be so hip with their language. maybe in the future when the censors let up, she'll add the requisite "on yo' ass" to the sentence.
"and later Melvin Yong will get financial ON YO' ASS. But now, on to the main headlines of the day as i get all FACTUAL ON YO' ASS." (of course to make this sentence work, the second "on yo' ass" must be said professionally with a slight head tilt forwards, after a short pause, after the word "factual".)
"whoah Suzanne, that's some language you're using."
"you'd better believe it, Henry. just as you'd better believe all the news i'm reading off the teleprompter. i can't believe you guys forgot to bring the laptop for my table. i don't get paid to shuffle papers, you know. i get paid to click around aimlessly with a mouse on a laptop. i had a paused game of solitaire from yesterday's show. and that game better still be paused where i left it. seriously, people, you got to get wit' da program here. seriously."
"right...and on with the sports news today, man u ate muff toda...ok who's been fooling with my script again?"
guess what's on today. rockfest and chingay at the same time.
chingay. i remember going to one with my mother when i was little. she brought me to the front of the crowd and sat me on a road curb and told me to stay put as she went to burger king to get some food for me. so i sat there watching the procession. and after a while this policeman came and told all the people around me to move in so that they could shift the barricade. me, being just maybe 5 or 6 i think, just followed the people and soon i was stuck in the middle of the crowd looking at people's knees. so i think that's when i started to cry, wondering where my mother was. according to my mother, i was wandering behind the crowd and whimpering "mummy, mummy." i don't deny her account of it. but i was soon placated by fries and some stuff from burger king. sometimes i wonder how come my mother was brave enough to just leave me alone in the crowd. probably an attempt to ditch me.
chingay. in secondary 1 i made many new friends. and amongst them was this guy called freddy tan. he had small eyes, neatly combed hair with a side parting and was one of my talk cock buddies in class. he sat near me. so came the time of year when chingay was looming around the corner. and freddy one day very wittily started calling me yap chingay when i think i brought up the subject. so he loved the name, probably cos it's a good diversion from people calling you freddy the frog. but with a name like freddy, it's bound to happen. he loved the name he made for me so much he wrote it on my pencilcase. or it could've been this other guy but i can't really remember. ironically, whenever he got into the mood he would hop up and down from one foot to the other and chant "yap chingay yap chingay". it's ironic cos he really reminded me of a cartoon frog when he did that. but i was nice. i never called him freddy the frog. 1. cos it's one of those stupid nicknames. like when you have a name like aloysius and people all over your life call you alloy thinking it's horrendously witty and that you'll think so too and you're damned to a life of people trying to be witty (and of course due to pck there's a new way to impress people who are named aloysius). 2. well...there's no 2. it's just a stupid nickname. i never really spoke to freddy after secondary 1 after we went to different classes. i don't even know where he is now. but he'd probably call me yap chingay if he ever saw me on the streets now. maybe he'll even get into the hopping act. he really loved it.
anyway, regarding the stupid nicknames thing. i'm not bitter about it. i'm like way over that. i'm 22 fer feck's sake. that's practically middle-aged already.
yeah watch me bust this move now c'mon. yeah check this. like the jackhammer drill downstairs my house now pounding the beat. yeah dig this. faster than jaco's fingers. smoother than jaco's lines. it's all erratic now. yeah c'mon. it's the beat of drums and cymbals. its tradition versus technology. it's the peeling of oranges inside a lion's head. c'mon spew it. spew it. watch this. dig this move. hear the shoulders pop. feel the beat drop. solid.
