THE CITIZEN

A SIMPLE MAN IN A WORLD OF LIES

  1. It is 2.22pm when the policeman catches me scratching my crotch in public.
  2. The doctor looks at me, pokes my side and listens to my breathing.
  3. My life: An anthology of defeat. 
  4. My wife Joanne welcomes me home with a post-it pointing to a half finished bowl of curry flavoured maggi mee (she’s on a diet), while my nose detects a curious after-stench of shit in the bedroom.
  5. It’s 3pm in the afternoon.
  6. It is 6pm on the same day and my flat smells of shit again.
  7. It is 9am in the morning.
  8. Who, or what is a Robert Sebastian Cheong, you say?
  9. I sit on my desk situated opposite Robert Sebastian Cheong and glower at his hair.
  10. One may surmise that the home of the revolutionary is buzzing with ideas and passion.
  11. It's 3am.
  12. I leave the office for lunch early, avoiding the gaze of the office women...
  13. I return to work with a newfound confidence.
  14. I wake up with the remains of a horrible dream lingering in my head.
  15. Home as physical place and psychic state of mind...
  16. I come to in a bare room, handcuffed to a chair. 
  17. My soul is a bird trapped in a gilded cage.
  18. The years of Lee Kuan Yew's life, transposed onto a copy lived by my namesake, buried in a secret tomb in the middle of Bukit Brown cemetery.
  19. The Marina Bay Sands is overbooked.
  20. The first thing I feel upon opening my eyes is the light touch of an ant crawling along my forearm.
  21. Yesterday, I took a photo of a national serviceman sitting in the train.
  22. The Toa Payoh Seu Teck Sean Tong: the last place I saw Jack and Rose.
  23. “How are you today?” Robert Sebastian Cheong says to me.
  24. It was the sweat, he tells me.
  25. “They’ve left,” Tan Vee Bun tells me, “Jack and Rose have left.”
  26. It's 2.45pm.
  27. All of us, Pinky, Morpheus, Jardin and I, we would hang around the Our Glorious Dead war memorial at the Padang.
  28. It's 11.43pm. 
  29. We dance our way from the early morning to the sunrise, reveling in the space between the night and the day.
  30. We are now firmly ensconced in the regime of the daytime.
  31. We walk unseen in the two metre deep drains along the BKE.
  32. I take the MRT back to Geylang in air-conditioned comfort, a gift from the government to keep us compliant...
  33. I walk along a storm drain, looking down to the water, where a family of otters swim past.
  34. Jia Sen? Jia Sen? Li Jia Sen?
  35. And so I make my way to the Toa Payoh hub.