People's Park · Errand
An Hour Lost in People's Park
I went to People's Park to buy one thing: replacement hinges for a cupboard door that had been sagging since April. The hardware stall is on level one, near the escalator with the squeak. I know this. I have been there before. That is what makes the hour I lost afterward feel especially unplanned — I had a map and ignored it anyway.
The hinges took four minutes. Uncle wrapped them in newspaper without being asked. I paid, put the packet in my bag, and then — instead of leaving — I drifted into the main hall where the stalls sell everything that does not belong in a single category. Phone cases next to dried mushrooms. Slippers next to scissors sharpened while you wait.
I walked without touching wallets. Looked at abacuses I will never buy. Watched an auntie bargain in three languages and win without raising her voice. A teenager tried on sunglasses indoors and checked his reflection in a polished wok. The ceiling fans moved the same hot air around in circles. Nobody seemed in a hurry except me, and I was pretending not to be.
I sat on a plastic stool at a tea stall and ordered grass jelly because the queue was short. The cup was colder than expected. I drank slowly, letting the hour expand — not wasted, just unaccounted for, the way afternoons behave when you stop treating them like spreadsheets.
On the escalator up I passed a pop-up selling socks in packs of twelve. On the way down I passed the same pop-up from the other side and could not remember whether I had already seen it or whether the building loops better than I think. People's Park has that effect — corridors that fold back on themselves until time loses its usual edges.
Near the fabric stalls a tailor measured someone's arm without asking her name — tape, chalk mark, nod, done. Two floors up, a record shop played old Cantopop at a volume that did not quite reach the escalator. I listened for the chorus and missed it when the doors closed. Small losses like that do not bother me. They belong to the hour the way gaps belong to a conversation you overhear without context.
Outside, Eu Tong Sen Road was bright and loud in the way main roads are at two in the afternoon. I could have gone home directly. Instead I walked one block along the five-foot way, then another, letting the building release me slowly rather than all at once. By the time I reached Banda Street the hinges were still in my bag and the grass jelly was only a memory of cold sweetness.
I left with hinges in my bag and grass jelly on my breath and no other purchases. The cupboard at home got fixed that evening. The hour stays unfixed — loose in memory, a turn I took after the errand was done, proof that even a shopping centre can become a walk if you let your feet disagree with your list. People's Park is not a park in the grass-and-bench sense. It is a maze of commerce that rewards aimlessness if you arrive without impatience. I arrived without impatience that Saturday. I may do it again when the next small repair sends me there.