shopping

Moving through the centre of the city, past 101 and the shopping precinct which surrounds it, the place deserted in a way that I've never seen, not even at night. Melodrama decrees the unspooling image of cycling through a film scene, a horror based upon some unexpected plague, not necessarily brought by aliens, but maybe if I squint my eyes tower block can pretend to be spaceships, masks breathing apparatus...


Dumping the bike I enter the MRT and find that it's the same down here, it's early afternoon on a Saturday the place is normally packed, the carriages, by this stop, standing room only and best if you don't attempt to breathe, but today the seats are empty, the carriage almost vacant and those within it keeping their distance from other travellers. Arriving at Ximen, again one of the busier places, a hangout and shopping area but, today, it's also empty, a few small groups gathered, lingering at bus stops or orbiting empty shops and stalls, handwash upon counters masks behind.


In the supermarket the shelves aren't as bad as I'd expected to find them, certainly not as ravaged as reports from the uk tell me's happening there, no pulses and little pasta, no noodles and a scarcity of tinned goods but, to my relief, cheese doesn't seem to be high on the list of priorities here and so I exit with my stash and a loaf of fresh bread whilst glad that I have a tin of chickpeas back at the flat...


Taking another bike and cycling a different route through the city there are people around, just not as many as you'd normally see. But in the parks it's different, there are gathering wherever there's space here it seems, a shame that these spaces are being sold off to developers, that the green is turning into concrete wherever you go. I'd always thought of this as short sighted, as foolish, that we need places to recharge even, or especially, in this digital world that we've come to inhabit but, now, it seems that it's a necessity, a safe(ish) place for gatherings at arms length.


Later, we decide to wander along to the fish place, when we arrive only two others eating inside and it's already after seven, but outside a group of regulars are sitting around a table in the street, others are spaced out along the pavement, filling up before the vacant tables inside, people choosing to avoid the confinement but still gathering, the new slightly abnormal normal....