Sungei Road Sunday 9 September 2007 My earliest memory of Sungei Road Thieves' Market is someone yelling 'Mata! Mata!" and a guy immediately making off down the street. I sometimes wonder if my memory is really of that location or of somewhere else. No way I can check because Singapore has changed so much in the intervening 30-plus years: what memories I have do not correspond to anything currently existing.

Today, Sungei Road is still a location for people selling odds and ends: from old CDs and clothes to assorted obsolete mechanical parts. Stalls are mostly just piles of odds and ends laid out on sheets. It's a ramshackle flea market that doesn't fit the national branding. In a way it feels like a location for the other Singapore - the Singapore that isn't supposed exist. They might be settings for novels like Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere.

Besides the late afternoon market that closes with sunset, there is also the Sunday night Indian cinema for South Asian foreign workers. Along with the film screening come enterprising vegetable sellers and the occasional booth promoting social services for migrant workers.

You can also see Little Herons fishing in the Rochor Canal and fishermen (I'm surprised at the number of fish in the Canal!). However, one wonders what will happen after the Marina barrage is completed and both Kallang Basin and Singapore River become one large freshwater reservoir. I noticed dozens of dead fish in the Canal recently, I hope the end hasn't began already.