I said in my last post that I needed to get back to studying my current location a bit more. That’s paraphrased, it was a long post and it held a lot more depth than that. But all the same, how timely it was that a few days after sending that out into the big beyond, Vesak Day (Buddha’s birthday) came to these shores. I failed again, sadly. I could have got the bum boat back to Pulau Ubin and watched the little temple on that funny mangrove-laced Singaporean relic light up with celebrations, as reported in a fellow blogger’s diary, but instead I went for a run.

Of course nothing here is ‘normal’ for long, and as I crested one of the few hills on that route, I saw an elderly local man running towards me holding a large Olympic-style flame (lit). We exchanged running smiles and carried on. That was the only sign for me that something was going on, apart from the hairdresser being closed and various people making the most of the holiday by leaving the island and the condo falling very quiet.

I still haven’t researched that eerie torch sighting, mainly because odd stuff happens here all the time. To prove the point, a few days before that I had walked under a tree and narrowly avoided being hit on the head by a falling mango (which came down with a huge crack) as did a little lady just in front of me. Neither of us picked it up and took it home, it was quite squashed, in any case I was more interested in jotting down this strange happening than fishing around for a spare plastic bag. The other day I was waiting for the school bus at the condo gate when I saw a girl carrying a huge parrot down the road. As you do. And in January on a daytrip to Sentosa, we saw a woman with a Brahmani kite on her arm. I only ever see those in the zoo or on tropical islands far up in the sky. ‘Exotic’ doesn’t really cut it.

The point is, I really don’t have to do much to experience a feeling of extreme distance from London and all that was previously familiar. It’s all around me, enough material to fill countless iPad Note pages, and I know I won’t have to wait long before the next Weird Thing happens.

For now, I’m going to put the laundry out on the deck as the lightning risk has passed after this morning’s tropical storm. Once that’s done I must find the ant gel and deal with the latest infestation in SM’s bedroom, before checking the cucumber plant out front, which is shooting up faster than anything ever did in our muddy UK window boxes.

#postcardsfromthehedge