On the Road to Singapore

(Part four)

Wednesday, June 30, 1999

5:30am (Singapore time)

It is five thirty of Wednesday morning. I am sitting in the dark at the table by the window, wearing my Japanese robe, eating the remaining peanut M & Ms I bought last night and sipping warm Coke. The window is open, a slight breeze is coming through along with the sounds of traffic below as the city begins to wake. The only light is from the screen of the laptop. I have awoken after a vivid dream.

We had a good thunderstorm around three this morning. I awoke to what I thought was hail striking the window, but was only fat drops of rain blown by strong gusts of wind. Then it came harder, in sheets of heavy rain accompanied by occasional lightening and rolling thunder. I raised the blinds and opened the window for a minute, the rain blowing in against my chest. It was a warm rain and the wind that carried it was warm as well. I left the blinds up and the window open an inch and went back to bed.

In the dream which had awakened me, I was sitting in a room with others at a conference table in a large room that seemed to be the common room of a place where people hold weekend retreats. Sister Deborah was sitting next to me, whatever meeting we were part of had just wrapped up and the dozen or so others at the table were collecting their papers and starting to leave. I gave Sister Deborah my notes on the sponsorship packages for Dan's book. She tsk'ed over the amount of money and effort it is going to take. We gathered our things and stood, preparing to leave.

I heard a woman's voice in the other room, loud and high, a good-natured voice. "Who would have thought it," she was saying, "that you would end up with an archeologist specializing in Pre-Columbian Indians of the Illinois Valley?" I hurried into the other room where she was. She was in her late thirties, a little overweight (aren't we all by then?) and looked like a mixture of so many friends of mine. I introduced myself and told her I had overheard her and just had to come in as my mother had also been an archeologist specializing in Pre-Columbian Indians of the Illinois Valley. She said, "Oh, that's nice." I told her my mother had worked quite a bit with Stuart Streever, expecting some reaction to the name. He was the top man in that field back then. She drew a blank. I realized that that had been over thirty five years ago.

Prior to waking I also dreamt a plot for a mystery. Like so many others it begins with the private detective attending a high school reunion. He is approached by one of his classmates who made good, making a fortune in industry. The old classmate, they were never friends, not enemies, just never friends, wants him to discover what really happened the night of a storm and a firefight thirty years ago in Vietnam when his best friend was killed. All these years he has disbelieved the official account of death from enemy fire. He is certain that one of their platoon members did it and used the battle to cover it up.

Ah, phooey, it is ten minutes to six, the M & Ms are all gone as is the Coke. I think I will try to sleep another hour.

Wednesday, June 30, 1999

7:15am (Singapore time)

It is a quarter past seven in the morning now. I am partially dressed for work, will avoid putting on my shirt and tie until it is time to leave, no reason to get hot and sticky too soon.

Yesterday, after returning to the apartment, I went to a small grocery store. I bought the M & Ms mentioned earlier, a frozen Sara Lee chocolate pound cake to share with Suppakorn and Soo Chin (Helen's real name). I also bought a package of two small frozen cheese pizzas and a few apples. When I returned, Suppakorn was sitting at the dining table eating something that looked like soup with large chunks of meat and vegetables floating in it. I cooked my pizzas in the microwave (couldn't get the oven to work), put the pound cake on a plate and sliced it and carried both to the table. I had intended to eat in my room and work, but thought this might be more polite.

We watched "Touched by an Angel" as we ate. About the time we were finished Soo Chin came in. She had already eaten but accepted a slice of pound cake. I took a picture of them with the digital camera, though I suspect the room was already too dark. Soo Chin is from Shanghai and is the company's representative in China. She doesn't speak much to me, someone explained that her English is not very good. In the brief conversations I have had with her, she seemed to handle it well, but in comparison with Singaporeans I can see why she might feel this way. Suppakorn is responsible for our sales in Asia and Europe.

After dinner and washing up I went to my room. In spite of the air conditioner's best efforts, it was still too hot and sticky to sit and type. I forced myself to change into my swimming trunks and went down for a swim. It was after eight by then and about half a dozen people, adults and children, were in the pool.

I swam for half an hour, enjoying the coolness. Once, on surfacing, my water-bleared eyes were caught by a bright light, a streetlight I thought. On clearing them, I found that it was the full moon, just risen over the horizon. It was larger than I have ever seen, brightly luminous with soft light, not harsh and white, but tinged with pinks and blues from the wisps of clouds drifting before it.

After leaving the pool I stopped once more on the balcony outside the apartment and stared again at the moon. The woman who lives next door and seems to be always hanging up or taking down laundry paused in her chore and looked at it too. She doesn't appear to speak any English, but she nodded at the moon and smiled. I nodded and smiled in return and we both spent a few more moments looking at it.

Back in my room, I changed into my Japanese robe and started writing. I tweaked two poems I have written while here, both originating first as titles while on the plane trip. The first is a bit contrived, but cute. The second is silly yet with an intentional sardonic (but not bitter) tone throughout. I like it. Both are really performance pieces, not suited for plain text, so I will not include them here.

I then tacked the soccer moms. It has been far too long since I worked on it and the longer I delayed the more difficult it has become to return to it. Part of the problem is that it is supposed to be a light comic mystery, but that requires a like frame of mind in which to write, something lacking in me the past couple of months. Well, enough delay.

I spent an hour on it, not adding a large quantity of text, mostly cleaning and tweaking. I did manage to finish two scenes of dialog to my satisfaction, scenes whose endings had eluded me before.

Well, it is just past seven thirty. Time to finish getting dressed, pack up the laptop, and trudge through the heat to the office. I will send this out sometime this morning, I hope.