Notes from the block

I write from Blk 812 Choa Chu Kang Avenue 7, mostly in the hours when the estate exhales — after dinner smells thin out, after the last bus sighs away from the stop, when the corridor lights hum and the lift makes its slow rounds. These are not dispatch reports. They are what a resident notices when the street returns to itself.

Some entries begin with a sound I cannot place. Others begin with kopi-o steam or a cat in a stairwell. All of them stay close to the ground: Keat Hong, the park loop, the laundry poles, the lift lobby where flyers curl at the corners. Read slowly if you like. The blocks are not going anywhere.