One Saturday Morning

I went to Ang Mo Kio on a Saturday morning and found a clown sitting by the post boxes in the void deck. He had a baby sparrow feather in his woolly winter hat, curly salt-and-pepper hair, and a thousand-colourful-mirrors shirt complemented with a wacky black-and-white-smileys tie. On his feet he wore black Crocs and from his bag out stuck a pair of cheap plastic clubs wrapped in aluminum foil (from NTUC?). What are you doing? I asked. I'm waiting, he said. And then he whistled Tian Mi Mi, ending vibrato style. That was nice, I said. You're welcome, he said. Is the aluminum foil from NTUC? I asked. No, he replied, it's from Sheng Siong; they have an offer on aluminum foil every second tuesday of the fifth month of the zodiac year of the rabbit. Oh yes, I recalled, my grandmother once told me that.I invited him for tea at the kopitiam but he said, I only drink kopi-o or teh-o. Me and those like me  are lactose-intolerant. Oh, I thought, this is the most important thing I learnt this weekend. When I went back to work on Monday, I decided to be lactose-intolerant too so that I could be more like him and those like him. After 33 days, my boss fired me for non-conforming behavior.My gynaecologist gave me some good advice so I went to Mongolia and became the first vegetable farmer there. All my smiling meat-eater neighbours came to buy my kang kong and sweet potato leaves and learnt from me. I made sambal kang kong and became the richest vegetable farmer in Mongolia. One day, I was sitting in my ger tent knitting a turquoise scarf when I heard someone whistling Tian Mi Mi outside. It was a hot day and the infinite grasses looked thirsty. I parted the cream-coloured cloth and there stood the clown from the Ang Mo Kio void deck. He looked exactly the same but carried a huge lemon-yellow backpack that looked like it could have made 500 glasses of lemonade that hot day. What are you doing? I asked. I'm waiting, he said. For what? I asked. I think I'm ready to start a life here with the infinite grasses and the blooming clouds, he said. Okay, I said, we can do this together. Okay, he said. We went in and chomped on celery slathered with American peanut butter dotted with Chinese raisins. It started to drizzle outside. We smiled at one another and I shared with him the secret of growing kang kong in Mongolian weather.