A Holland Village epiphany

I’ve been spend­ing more time than usual at Hol­land Vil­lage, and at one of my favourite cof­fee shops. The one that sells roast pork, chicken wings and pretty decent drinks.

A few after­noons ago, I sat there nurs­ing my sec­ond Tiger mug of iced cof­fee because I had been thirsty enough to order but not drink two. At 2.30 in the after­noon, Hol­land Vil­lage, as you know, is still pretty busy with slow mov­ing cars and slower mov­ing peo­ple. And it was such a blaz­ing after­noon, peo­ple were mov­ing even slower than usual. Even the Jack Rus­sell ter­ri­ers being taken down the street to the vet/petshop weren’t as spritely as they ought to be.

And as you know, Hol­land Vil­lage is always chock full of Ang Mohs of all nation­al­i­ties. So much that the anti-terrorist bar­ri­ers are still in oper­a­tion between 7pm and 7am on some of the more pop­u­lar Ang Moh streets, where Cof­fee Leaf and Tea Bean and the likes are located: “There will be no ter­ror­ist activ­ity between 7pm and 7am on these streets because the ter­ror­ists are not allowed to vault over this flimsy metal gate between these hours”, says a sign that doesn’t exist. But ought to be there. So ter­ror­ists would know. Bomb­ing is not allowed. There is a gate. It is locked.

But any­way, that after­noon, at the cof­feeshop with me were two Ang Moh men, sit­ting at sep­a­rate tables, mind­ing their own busi­ness, which wasn’t much. The first man was seated fac­ing the back of the sec­ond, and was mulling over his Tiger mug of Tiger, and the other, seated one table away from the first was por­ing over some book.

Then it hap­pened. The sec­ond man leaned to his left so that half his back­side was off the plas­tic chair. And let out a god almighty audi­ble fart. It was a toot long and loud enough above the traf­fic noise to star­tle him­self and the peo­ple at the cof­feeshop. There was a very preg­nant pause as every­one, cof­fee stall owner, char­siew, roast pork stall owner and chicken wing man, all turned towards the direc­tion of the sud­den noise. The Ang Moh sit­ting behind the Tootler was already chok­ing on his Tiger try­ing to sti­fle his gig­gles. Then every­one burst out laughing.

The poor bugger-who-thought-this-big-one-would-be-a-silent-stinker sat frozen, prob­a­bly not able to decide whether to acknowl­edge his audi­ence, or get up and flee.

Iced Cof­fee also comes in Heineken mugs

Sorry. Reflex. Noth­ing to do with this post. Not bad though.

the mr brown show 26th April 2005. Or via sub­scrip­tion here.