Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Frank Sinatra - On a little street in Singapore
That familiar feeling returned the moment I stepped off the bus.
Geylang in all its grimy glory, a sensory treat for the esoteric and a fitting reminder of what I will be missing in UK. The pungent smoke that filled the air came from the burning paper offerings, a custom of the Hungry Ghost Festival meant to placate wandering souls, global warming notwithstanding. The usual smell of automotive exhaust was somewhat overwhelmed though the attendant din was at full force, at times augmented by passing vehicles with boomboxes pumping out unintelligible pulses at the lowest end of the audible frequency range at obnoxious volumes. It was either that or the roar of a turbocharged engine being revved more to fulfil exhibitionistic tendencies than a need for speed on a road where you’re only as fast as the car in front of you.
I'm pretty sure this wasn't the "little street" that Frank Sinatra was referring to.
Stepping away from the bus stop and into the walkway, the sights and smells of the food outlets in the shophouses were unavoidable. The Indian man making prata alternated between flipping the flattened dough in the air to stretch it paper thin and standing behind his teriyaki-like hot plate, lathered with oil and sizzling furiously when the stretched dough hit the plate. At the Teochew porridge stall, pans containing a myriad of dishes of proletarian fare were stacked 3 high across the counter which stretched across half the shop. Not exactly a sight for the indecisive, who aren’t taken to very kindly by impatient stallholders with hungry customers to serve.
The early dinner crowd had already gathered in the coffeeshops, some accompanied by women who wore their occupation on their sleeves (or lack thereof). Bottles of beer and buckets of ice served to counter the evening humidity as they conversed in a variety of languages and dialects, punctuated by guffaws and the slamming of hands on tables. The more sedate ones nursed their beer in silence as the rest of Geylangs’ denizens went on with their lives.
In between the ground floor units there were entrances to a staircase going up to the second floor. Some were dark, dank and smelt of something ripe and fermented that wasn’t wine, while others were dimly lit in a colour that indicated their line of business. A few of them had their….proprietors and employees standing in the doorway, presumably to welcome customers. After squeezing past the crowd standing in the walkway choosing from vegetables displayed outside a grocery store, I jaywalked across the road (as is the norm) to my destination.
A seafood dinner with pals from my first foray into the Singapore blues scene was one of the few farewell gatherings from my circle of friends. Above the noise from the evening traffic on the road beside us and the din from other tables, we recounted the gigs we played over 6 years as we peeled crustaceans and quaffed beer, cursing the lousy ones and laughing at the funny and memorable ones. All the characters we met along the way were recalled with varying levels of fondness. Apart from reminiscing about the past, there was also a fair bit of speculation about the future ahead, in particular my activities in Manchester outside of academic pursuits.
Suffice to say, que sera, que sera.
Geylang in all its grimy glory, a sensory treat for the esoteric and a fitting reminder of what I will be missing in UK. The pungent smoke that filled the air came from the burning paper offerings, a custom of the Hungry Ghost Festival meant to placate wandering souls, global warming notwithstanding. The usual smell of automotive exhaust was somewhat overwhelmed though the attendant din was at full force, at times augmented by passing vehicles with boomboxes pumping out unintelligible pulses at the lowest end of the audible frequency range at obnoxious volumes. It was either that or the roar of a turbocharged engine being revved more to fulfil exhibitionistic tendencies than a need for speed on a road where you’re only as fast as the car in front of you.
I'm pretty sure this wasn't the "little street" that Frank Sinatra was referring to.
Stepping away from the bus stop and into the walkway, the sights and smells of the food outlets in the shophouses were unavoidable. The Indian man making prata alternated between flipping the flattened dough in the air to stretch it paper thin and standing behind his teriyaki-like hot plate, lathered with oil and sizzling furiously when the stretched dough hit the plate. At the Teochew porridge stall, pans containing a myriad of dishes of proletarian fare were stacked 3 high across the counter which stretched across half the shop. Not exactly a sight for the indecisive, who aren’t taken to very kindly by impatient stallholders with hungry customers to serve.
The early dinner crowd had already gathered in the coffeeshops, some accompanied by women who wore their occupation on their sleeves (or lack thereof). Bottles of beer and buckets of ice served to counter the evening humidity as they conversed in a variety of languages and dialects, punctuated by guffaws and the slamming of hands on tables. The more sedate ones nursed their beer in silence as the rest of Geylangs’ denizens went on with their lives.
In between the ground floor units there were entrances to a staircase going up to the second floor. Some were dark, dank and smelt of something ripe and fermented that wasn’t wine, while others were dimly lit in a colour that indicated their line of business. A few of them had their….proprietors and employees standing in the doorway, presumably to welcome customers. After squeezing past the crowd standing in the walkway choosing from vegetables displayed outside a grocery store, I jaywalked across the road (as is the norm) to my destination.
A seafood dinner with pals from my first foray into the Singapore blues scene was one of the few farewell gatherings from my circle of friends. Above the noise from the evening traffic on the road beside us and the din from other tables, we recounted the gigs we played over 6 years as we peeled crustaceans and quaffed beer, cursing the lousy ones and laughing at the funny and memorable ones. All the characters we met along the way were recalled with varying levels of fondness. Apart from reminiscing about the past, there was also a fair bit of speculation about the future ahead, in particular my activities in Manchester outside of academic pursuits.
Suffice to say, que sera, que sera.
# posted by BloozeGit @ 2:34 pm 
