Another beautiful Sunday morning, I got up at 5:00 AM in the morning. The whole night I was not able to have a good night sleep and it was bothering me horribly I have been delaying something I need to get it done without further delay.
I made a quick cup of black coffee, oh how hard it was to make black coffee, I remember in India I once asked for a black coffee at a cafe and the guy asked me sar “milk and sugar normal?”. I was visiting my cousin’s place once and there she asked me what I wanted to drink and I said a black coffee. She gave me an odd expression and asked me how to make it, “You mean just water and coffee?” On a good day, not for me but for my son, he would eagerly make black coffee for me even if I didn’t want any. Remember, on a good day that is.
I Finished my coffee and decided to leave home by 6:45 AM. Checking my wallet to make sure I had everything I stepped foot outside. It is about 2.2 KM from my house to the police station where I need to sort things out urgently, so it made sense to catch up on some steps along the way, so decided to wear my walking shoes just to really put myself in the fitness mood this morning.
The temperature was about 26 degrees Celsius , l there was already a crowd that had built up on the road and I desperately wanted to quickly finish what I had been intentionally delaying so that I could get back home. In the lift again I double checked that I had everything that I needed before I got to the ground level and started walking fast. At about 1.8 KM cross the road on Sengkang East way, just a few more steps, see this coffee shop? It was rather empty for a Sunday morning, and I was craving something naughty as my brain had managed to convince me that I deserved it after my healthy meal last night so I decided to follow my heart and sidetrack to the coffee shop. Before checking the food, I checked the time and the map, I was less than half a KM to the police station. I had promised my wife I would call her from the police station if things don’t go as planned so she must be waiting for my call, but then my eyes saw the crispy coin parata, and it had been ages since I had this form of parata, that too on a Sunday morning! Thus I ordered the coin parata with specific instructions not to put the curry on the top and walked to the shop next to the coffee shop, to pick up the Straits Times. Found a socially distanced table and set there with the paper, the headline says “PM Lee Hsien Loong’s crisis Cabinet a mix of continuity and change” started going over the list of minister, most unexpected one was changing the most successful education minister. By then my crispy coin parata arrived. I continued reading the paper whilst enjoying the parata with one eye searching for the drinks aunty to order my coffee. I guess she was waiting for my eye contact too as it is easy to order black coffee with the drinks aunty. When you say ‘kopi o kosong’ she exactly know what you need with no further questions asked or explanation required. My phone beeped and it was my wife, asking if I managed to sort out the things at the police station without any issues, I did not want to share my parata stop with her at that time so I promised to call her after meeting the officer.
With the ‘kopi o kosong’, crisply coin parata in my tummy I skipped the next few pages on the paper,which was full of praise for the new lineup of ministers, and instead went to the page A10. It had the most interesting and encouraging title “Singapore could start vaccine human trial this week” the vaccine developed by Duke-NUS Medical School and United States pharmaceutical company Arcturus Therapeutics.
By now I emptied my plate and the cup, I knew I needed to get going but one can’t stop reading the paper without looking for some juicy gossip so I turned to the life page and it was about Beckham the baker and the beekeeper. While his fans will claim it is news, to me it was simply gossip because everyone was doing the same, baking, cooking and gardening.
It is time to leave, it’s been nearly 60 minutes that I’ve created a distraction to my originally planned activity. Just another short walk and I would be at the police station. After completing the safe entry check-in, temperature taking and and took the queue number. I had about three people in front of me, I don’t like to listen to what others are saying to the officer, so I took my newspaper out and went to the sports section, “Runners find ways to race, virtually” I ended up learning about the new app Strava, an app that allows runners to interact with each other.
It was finally my queue number, I walked to the counter, handed over my documents to the officer and explained to him the reason I was there. Luckily he was quick to understand, and after keying in a few things into the computer, he went nearby and printed out a few documents, asking me to confirm a few things before signing them. After that he turned my IC and pasted my new address onto it and gave it back to me. He told me to checkout and then I left. I was glad it was quick, and after checking out I proudly messaged my wife and told her I got out of the police station without getting into trouble.
IC still in hand, I looked at the address behind it and started recalling exactly how times I’ve had my residential address changed in the past 20 years. Going through each year one by one the final count in since year 2000 is 9 address changes throughout 5 different countries.
