geylang - where i don't feel out of place

today, after dropping hartini at the darul aman mosque at jalan eunos, i drove to geylang. parked my car somewhere near lorong 35 and walked up the road to the lesser lorongs. i crossed aljunied road and tried to look out for gosen restaurant at lorong 32. i was told that its closure was only temporary but there was no sign of its revival.

i somehow feel that i blend in nicely with the crowd at geylang. i do not feel out of place; the feeling i get when i am at orchard road or holland village. in fact, i feel quite at home at geylang. here you are with the ah peks, the retirees and the people who appear to have a lot of time at hand. every man there seems to be looking for something to perk up his life.

if orchard road and holland village are the young upper courses of a river, geylang is like the aging lower course of a river. here you get some riff raff, drifting along and making their way to the mouth of the river which empties into the open sea. i may not be the same kind as some of them but i am in the same age group.

at geylang, you get the feeling that you are still 'wanted' or even 'desired' (for your cpf money or whatever) when the china women looked your way. at least, you are still being treated as a prospect. not at orchard road or holland village. at these two places, the women treat you as a non-existent thing.

anyway, i went to the tanjong rhu pau shop at 351 geylang road, near lorong 21, and bought some meat pau and some char siew pau. this well-known pau shop started at jalan batu at tanjong rhu. with development and changes to the traffic flow in the tanjong rhu area, i had difficulty locating the original shop at blk 7 jalan batu some weeks ago.