Questions Of Routine

10 Ramadhan 1436

14.05

Spent the very early hours of the morning, in fact, the late hours of last night, in the Kickstart Cafe in Alor Gajah. Highly recommended as a place to chill, as they seem to say these days. I even enjoyed the music, mainstream as it was. Somewhat dozy-headed all this morning as a result.

Will soon have to bring myself in line with the routines of an ordinary school week. I've just been writing down my invigilation schedule for next week - we have exams for the first two weeks of term - and assessing how I'm going to cope when all the marking arrives. In the meantime I intend to keep chilling as much as possible over the weekend, or what's left of it.

20.45

Lots of goodies available for the breaking of the fast just now. That tends to be the way of things at Mak's house as everyone pitches in with their contributions. Mind you, there are a lot of young mouths to feed so I don't see much of a problem in terms of the wastage of the grub.

Noi and I went down to the big Tesco's in Melaka this afternoon and they were obviously doing a roaring business, if the milling crowds were anything to go by. This was somewhat reassuring, actually. There are signs that the economy here is not exactly in tip-top shape. We certainly do very well exchanging Sing dollars for ringgit. So seeing quite ordinary folk able to afford to fill their shopping carts did something to allay worries that people are beginning to feel the pinch. The problem is, of course, that crowds at shopping centres don't really prove all that much about economic health. I can't imagine that the recent imposition of a goods and services tax here has made things easier for those in the lowest income brackets.

The poor are always with us because that's the way we arrange things, methinks.