2006 °   The weekend was spent at Melaka putting on weight. A week before, it was the same few of us watching the Zidane headbutt finals - while having Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and half the run of "Swing Girls". Yesterday we went for "Re-cycle" - starring Angelica Lee - and expectedly the King would doze through the show, much like how he had no idea about the red-card on the previous Sunday, until all was over and lost. And instead of a Portuguese tart, it was a chocolate cheese one that won the day, apart from the chendol and laksa and the balls of chicken rice if not the stingray back at JB, and the Ramli specials. who knows when the next breeze will be - watching sparrows in the Puri; or just lazing in the cafe playing daidee; or trying to peep into 55 Heeren Street when it is all locked up; or just plain wandering with no care, on streetscapes of red, this blistering summer; or flying through the limbo of unlit highways, semi-conscious, only to be roused by the occasional slo-mo pauses across toll gates.

And the laughter of that old Heeren House innkeeper, of course, lingering in some nearby space, as if memory is saved in cubic inches.

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