Simply Resting

Curious sight of the day: on my way to prayers at the Darussalam Mosque in Clementi, around 12.50, scattered around the void deck of the HDB block nearest the mesjid at the back, four guys well asleep, stretched on the concrete floor. No great mystery though - in fact a few weeks back there were more than four, probably as many as ten. The guys are labourers, busy, when they are busy, at work on improvements to the HDB blocks and surrounding car parks. At the moment a lot of the parking lots are being dug up and re-done.

At the time I walked by them it was very warm, well hot really, in the way that Friday afternoons in the tropics have of being gloriously debilitating when you get the chance to walk out in them. I wasn't going to be too long in the mid-day sun myself, and the workers clearly knew the best place to be, and what to be doing, at that time.

There was a touching vulnerability and trust about them as they slept. And an odd strength. You need to be tough to grab some zzzzz's on the old concrete. I suppose they considered themselves to be invisible, as blokes who do this kind of work here seem to be, in social terms.

By the time I made my way back from prayers they'd managed to disappear.