Mornings at the One North food court is like participating in a strange tableau. People of vague ages sit around, with only a handful of them actually ingesting anything. Others are napping, or waiting. To partake in this ritual leaves you feeling odd and calm. A place of limbo, where various people act out their waiting; a transitional place.
Perhaps waiting for the day to fully start, waiting for the gear to engage, waiting for reanimation.
I walk off, leaving this tableau behind. That surrealist feeling trailing after me like tendrils seeking something to grasp.
I walk on in the direction of my office. The wind from the previous night cools the heat of the morning sun on my back.
A dustbin the height of a 10-year-old child is overturned on its side. By the neighbourhood cats? Quite an unusual sight, yet not peculiar for a quiet, half-abandoned neighbourhood.
I enter the path flanked by coconut trees. Imagining this could be a mini forest with cicadas? grasshoppers? chirping incessantly.
“…as soon as possible.” A lady’s clipped and mildly impatient voice chimes over the neighbouring school’s PA system.
Do grasshoppers chirp?
Joyce Chen 
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