To Invent To Preserve

By Foo Soo Ling

We stop at The Commons. The temperature outside was rising, or at least it seemed to me, to have been rising when my fellow SWI Alumni and I were writing at the tables outside Keong Saik Bakery.

Taste buds were initiated to Chendol Cake and Attap Chee Cheese Cake at KSB.Do you taste the chendol in the cake? Wah… Attap Chee and Cheese! East and West. Isn’t that clever? Nice? No? Weird? Questions whisked themselves into a froth. Delectable? Disagreeable? Debatable. I had jotted down in my writing notebook. I still cannot decide. “Traditional Nostalgic Contemporary” – those were the three words on the Keong Saik Bakery Sign. William had got us asking ourselves at our SWI Writing Marathon starting point – Chinatown MRT Station, what re-invention meant to each of us. Attap Chee Cheese Cake – invention? Re-invention? Adulteration? The whisking of questions in my mind begins again. Frantic scribbles on pages. Frenzied thoughts. Maybe Rojak. The words tumble onto the pages of my notebook, quickly. It is as if I am afraid that in a split second, they will be gone, and I will not be able to capture them

In Working Class Coffee, thoughts are percolating as the coffee machine begins to grind…I smell the coffee beans. Some of the SWI fellows are settling down again to write. At the coffee machine, steam rises as a sudden spray of white gushes out from the steam baffle.

“The roaster is going, and that is me.” The man behind the coffee counter says grimly.

“Just too many cafes here,” he continues.

Yeah, that is also my observation. Except that he has just spoken out of having spent more hours counting time than measuring coffee here, and I have just got here to be told that this little oasis from the prickly heat outside with its thirst-quenching, inspiration-giving coffees and ales may not stay for long.

The SWI fellow in front of me gets her coffee. I place my order for a Ginger Ale. Quick exchange of cash. There was Yanti with Teh C Kosong served by two ladies with PRC accents; then Keong Saik Bakery with Attap Chee Cheese Cake, afterwards The Affogato Lounge with its almost serene stateliness, then we got here – The Commons with The Working Capitol, and inside it, Working Class Coffee that soon, may not be.

I sit down to my ginger ale and to write. William comes round to inform us that we will read to the rest at our tables. I let the words find their place on my page. It is a tight squeeze of cafes along Keong Saik. Some new. Some older. Chock-a-block. I write faster because in my head, a new idea emerges and then new words crowd out the ones before. There is a sputter of steam from the coffee machine. Then it evaporates. How do I capture what I have seen today? Create a poem? Do I need to invent in order to preserve?