By the time Wingit got to Karikan’s Curry Powder Stall, Dirty Tortoise was already waiting for him patiently while chewing on a tea leaf, beside a tarpaulin covering a large pile of something. Sonky was nowhere to be seen, but they could hear the sound of Qicak sobbing away inside her cage, all locked up in a cabinet at the far corner of Karikan’s stall.
“Ah, Wingit! Right on time! Quick we have no time to lose. I’ve already told Qicak what we’re doing, but she can’t seem to stop crying. Sonky has already finished half his mission and will be with us shortly to save Qicak,” he said. “Anyway, I reckon we have only about two and a half or so human hours before the next phase of my plan kicks in, so we need to work fast if our plan is to succeed.”
“Jolly good, my dear tortoise! I’ve got the secret beef jerky-making powder you wanted. It was a glorious mission, one that I managed to pull off without a cinch!” proclaimed Wingit proudly, conveniently glossing over the fact that he was THIS CLOSE to giving up on the mission, and would have come back empty-handed if not for the help of Jasper the Talking Hamster. “So what else would you have me do?”
“Since we can’t rescue Qicak until Sonky returns with Maniam’s lock picks, we shall proceed with the part of the plan where we try to kick Karikan out of the Wet Market first then,” said Dirty Tortoise. “See this tarpaulin over here? This is where Karikan keeps his BIG pile of curry powder. Now come, help me pull the tarpaulin off… but be careful! We don’t want to disturb the pile. Our plan depends on Karikan NOT knowing that it’s been tampered with.”
With that, Wingit took off, circled around the mound looking for a good landing spot, and landed gently on the top, so gently that the tarpaulin hardly stirred. Grasping the top of the tarpaulin with both claws, he lifted it slowly, ever so slightly, just so that it was elevated above the mound of curry powder, and Dirty Tortoise slowly, and gently pulled the tarpaulin off from the side with his teeth. Little by little, inch by inch, with Wingit flying to and fro lifting different parts of the tarpaulin to minimise the movement of the powder, they managed to get it off.
“Ok Wingit, now make a hole at the top of the mound, and pour Texas Jerk’s secret beef jerky powder inside the hole,” instructed Dirty Tortoise. After Wingit had done that, he then directed the cherry eagle to dry his feet, and then stir the mixture of powders around inside that hole, while taking care not to disturb the entire mound.
“Ok, once you’re done, fill up the mound, and come back down! I see Sonky coming back… we need to cover up the curry powder mound with the tarpaulin again and move one with our plan!”
Sonky arrived just as Wingit landed on Dirty Tortoise’s back, and together, they covered the curry powder mound with the tarpaulin once again (it was a lot easier because at least one of them had hands this time, though they had to keep reminding Sonky to stop dancing more than once.)
“Now, on to Phase Two of my plan – rescuing our friend!” declared Dirty Tortoise. “We have even less time this time, because Sonky has now triggered the old police alarm that the Very Important Politician used to have when he was still Wet Market Administrator. The police will be here in about 30 minutes, so we have to hurry and get Qicak out before that!”
With that, he instructed Wingit to fly up to the rafters to keep an eye out for approaching police cars, and told Sonky to use the lock pick on the large but cheap pasar malam lock that Karikan used to lock up the cabinet in which he kept all his valuables – including Qicak’s cage.
(Now, before you start wondering how Sonky knew how to pick a lock… well, he doesn’t. All he knows about picking locks is watching Maniam open a cabinet drawer once in Chiu’s stall, by simply sticking the lock pick in and shaking it about until the lock opened. Maniam’s other lock-picking ‘skill’ involved sticking the lock pick in the keyhole and shaking it around so violently that the lock broke. Then he would tell the unfortunate owner that the lock was faulty and that the whole drawer would have to be forced open, thus charging even more money for his services).
Sonky stuck the lock pick in the lock, and pausing for dramatic effect, began to shake the lock pick around the keyhole violently; so violently in fact, that Qicak, trapped inside the cabinet with no clue about what was happening outside, though that they were having a fight outside. Even Dirty Tortoise grew worried after a couple of minutes of Sonky’s violent ‘lock picking’, as time was running out and the police would be arriving anytime now.
Just as he was about to go into plan B (which pretty involved throwing in the towel and hoping for the best), they both heard it – a satisfying ‘KECHUK!’; and the lock SPRUNG open triumphantly!
Hurriedly, Sonky opened the doors of the cabinet, and took out the cage in which Qicak was trapped in.
“SONKY! DIRTY TORTOISE! Am I ever so glad to see you all!” cried Qicak in a high pitched voice mixed with relief and excitement. “I was beginning to worry that I was going to be trapped in there forever!”
“Hello again, dear Qicak! Now let us get you out of that cage so you may stretch your legs!” said Dirty Tortoise.
With the help of Sonky, the friends managed to open the door of the cage just wide enough for Qicak to crawl through, and then the funky monkey put the cage back where they found it and locked the cabinet door once again. As the doors slammed shut, Wingit flew down from his lookout post, and announced that the police cars had arrived at the Wet Market entrance.
“Ok everyone, let’s wrap things up! We’ve done what we came to do, so all we have to do now is to sit back and let events unfold by themselves!” said Dirty Tortoise.
“You guy’s are a great team! You would give the A-Team, the B-Team, the Inglourious Basterds, and all those other TV teams a run for their money!” said Qicak.
“Er, the Basterds were never on TV, Qicak,” said Dirty Tortoise.
“Whatever. Now let’s get out of here before we get caught!”
With that, the four of them scurried, climbed, flew and plodded their way back to their respective corners of the Wet Market; and not a moment too soon – as soon as Dirty Tortoise got home, the Wet Market front entrance was forced open and the Wet Market was soon filled with torch and gun-wielding policemen looking for signs of criminal activity.
WORD COUNTER: 7732 words
Friday, 6 November 2009
Thursday, 5 November 2009
Chapter 05: Missions In The Dark
As soon as Dirty Tortoise had briefed Wingit and Sonky, the two co-conspirators headed off on their respective tasks – Wingit heading towards the Meat Market, while Sonky went back to the Fruits and Flowers Market. As for Dirty Tortoise, he had another tea (leaf), and steeling himself for the task ahead, he climbed out of his little drain, and trudged his way to the Spice Market. He knew he was slow, and so he needed a head start to get to Karikan’s curry powder stall just in time to meet his co-conspirators when they returned from their respective ‘assignments’.
Unlike in the day, the Wet Market is usually all quiet at night, with not a soul to be seen around the entire building. The sounds of Maniam the 24-hour locksmith cum mamak stall owner, locking up his stall (located just beside the entrance in front of the Fruits and Flowers section) and closing the big grey doors of the Wet Market could be heard in the distance.
As soon the doors slammed shut, Sonky (who had been hanging around in a rafter right above the doors, humming the theme to Shaft quietly to himself), quietly swung into action, quite literally. Swinging down from his perch up high, he landed on one of Maniam’s mamak stall plastic tables with nary a sound. (Funky monkeys are generally very light-footed and quiet creatures – it comes from all that dancing to Sly and the Family Stone tunes). With one smooth, swift motion, he picked up a fork from the plastic cutlery container on the table and leaped of the table towards the old wooden cupboard Maniam used to keep his belongings. Jabbing the fork into the keyhole of the second to last drawer, Sonky jimmied the utensil around like he had seen Maniam do a thousand times before, and heard the satisfying ‘click’ that indicated that the lock was successfully jimmied.
Opening the drawer, Sonky rummaged around the debris that Maniam kept in his ‘treasure’ drawer, stopping briefly to stare and snort in disgust at a Fall Out Boy CD, and finally, triumphantly emerging with the item he had been after – Maniam’s old lock pick kit, which he had discarded after he bought a spanking new electronic lock picker that didn’t so much pick locks than smash a hole right through them.
“Ah yes, this is what Dirty Tortoise wanted me to get,” thought Sonky to himself, allowing himself a little jig to celebrate before heading to his next destination - the management office of the Wet Market that overlooked the entire hall, where the Very Important Politician used to sit in when he was not yet a politician, but was still the Wet Market Administrator.
Meanwhile, over in the Meat Market, the cherry eagle was circling around the Beef Jerky Stall. Owned by a Texan immigrant who self-depreciatingly called himself The Texas Jerk who used to be a beef jerky connoisseur before the Great Obesity Plague (an outbreak of a virus that transformed human fat into liquid and turned you quite literally into a walking pile of wobbling jelly) hit America and forced the entire nation of fat obese people to turn into vegetarians. Unable to face the prospect of not ever eating beef jerky, he migrated to Temelo where he started his own beef jerky business in the Wet Market, and got rich by conning the locals into thinking that anything from the US of A was better than anything made in their own factories.
Texas Jerk was not very popular amongst the Wet Market denizens. Oh, they got a long with him fine, but they had to try very hard not to get on his bad side, because he could be a really asshole at times, especially to those who he thinks are trying to steal his business. He even tried to sue the dried bak kua seller once for ‘stealing’ his secret beef jerky recipe and making a ‘fake Chinese imitation’ out of chicken meat (the judge laughed it off and told Texas Jerk that he wasn’t bribing him enough to risk his reputation on a case as frivolous as that).
Anyway, because Texas Jerk sold dried meat products, he had to find a way to keep his products dry and away from his Meat Market peers who were always drenched in blood and water. So unlike the other stalls in the Meat Market, the Texas Jerk’s Beef Jerky Stall (which was situated right at the corner) actually had four walls and a roof. The door into the room was grill door with cracks that were just wide enough for a cherry eagle to fly through.
And so it was that it was towards Texas Jerk’s beef jerky stall that Wingit was swooping down on now. Going into a glide, Wingit swooped gracefully down towards the door, and just as it looked as if he was about to crash, he turned his body ninety degrees, and JUST managed to slip through a crack in the bars, with barely a millimetre to spare.
Landing on one of Texan Jerk’s many jars of beef jerky, Wingit proceeded to look for the one ingredient that Dirty Tortoise had told him to look for… Texan Jerk’s secret ingredient for turning a wet, piece of meat into a hard, piece of jerky in instantaneously.
Wingit knew the Texan Jerk hid that secret ingredient somewhere in plain sight amongst his wares. Dirty Tortoise had told Wingit to use his keen sense of smell to sniff out the one jar among the hundreds that had the strongest scent of Texan Jerk.
“I would have asked Meg the miniature chicken fox to help me with this task,” said Dirty Tortoise to Wingit at the briefing earlier. “But she would not have been able to fit through that crack in the gate. And besides, you, Wingit the MAGNIFICENT CHERRY EAGLE, are much suited for this mission, because you are the BEST flyer in the Wet Market, and you are also SO WELL-ADEPT with your claws and beak that stealing that jar of Texan Jerk’s secret ingredients wouldn’t be a problem for you!
“Now, here a little plastic bag for you to put the ingredient in after you’ve found it, and bring it to me after that, ok? I’m counting on you, oh magnificent cherry eagle!”
His pride sufficiently fed, Wingit had flown off immediately to Texan Jerk’s stall. But now, as he looked around the hundreds of jars in the stall, he knew this wasn’t going to be as easy as he thought.
Wingit searched through the jars futilely (even opened a couple of them to make sure the beef jerky inside was not fake) but to no avail. But just as he was about to give up and return forlornly to Dirty Tortoise to admit defeat, a small voice piped up, “It’s that small, transparent, lime-green jar on the top-most shelf – the one that says ‘Beer Jerk’ instead of ‘beef jerky’.”
Surprised, Wingit turned his head around, to see a tiny hamster look up at him from Texan Jerk’s cash register. It was not a very big hamster – only about one inch in size, small enough to hide behind a stack of 50 sen coins. IT was dark brown in colour, but it’s most distinctive feature was a white patch on its side that looked like the Nike swoosh logo.
“Why hello there, little fella! I don’t think I’ve met you before. I never knew Texan Jerk kept pets as well!” he said.
“He doesn’t know I’m here. I’m just squatting here until I can find a more permanent place to live in,” said the hamster. “The name’s Jasper, by the way. I’m really just a normal hamster, but my former master use to call me Jasper the Talking Hamster because the sounds I make sounded like I was speaking Hokkien to him.”
“Well, thank you for your help, Jasper my boy! I would love to stay and chat, but I have a mission to accomplish. But rest assured, upon my honour as a cherry eagle, I will not forget your help tonight!” said Wingit, before taking off for the top shelf.
Spotting the lime-green jar marked ‘Beer Jerk’ there; he swooped down and landed on the lid of the jar. Grasping the lid with his claws, he curled his beak around the other side of the lid and gave a strong TWIST, and POP! The jar lid came open.
Carefully, so as not to accidentally swallow some of the secret ingredient and get turned into a cherry eagle jerky, Wingit scooped a couple of beaks full of the powder into the little plastic bag, and when he had enough, he kicked the lid of the jar down to the floor of Texan Jerk’s stall (where it landed with a loud CLANG), and gripping the plastic bag with his claws, he took off from the ledge, soaring through the air towards the gate.
“Farewell, magnificent cherry eagle!” cried Jasper the Talking Hamster from his perch on the cash register.
“See you again soon, little hamster!” replied Wingit, as he swooped out of the gate and headed towards the Spice Market and his rendezvous with Dirty Tortoise.
WORD COUNTER: 6551
Unlike in the day, the Wet Market is usually all quiet at night, with not a soul to be seen around the entire building. The sounds of Maniam the 24-hour locksmith cum mamak stall owner, locking up his stall (located just beside the entrance in front of the Fruits and Flowers section) and closing the big grey doors of the Wet Market could be heard in the distance.
As soon the doors slammed shut, Sonky (who had been hanging around in a rafter right above the doors, humming the theme to Shaft quietly to himself), quietly swung into action, quite literally. Swinging down from his perch up high, he landed on one of Maniam’s mamak stall plastic tables with nary a sound. (Funky monkeys are generally very light-footed and quiet creatures – it comes from all that dancing to Sly and the Family Stone tunes). With one smooth, swift motion, he picked up a fork from the plastic cutlery container on the table and leaped of the table towards the old wooden cupboard Maniam used to keep his belongings. Jabbing the fork into the keyhole of the second to last drawer, Sonky jimmied the utensil around like he had seen Maniam do a thousand times before, and heard the satisfying ‘click’ that indicated that the lock was successfully jimmied.
Opening the drawer, Sonky rummaged around the debris that Maniam kept in his ‘treasure’ drawer, stopping briefly to stare and snort in disgust at a Fall Out Boy CD, and finally, triumphantly emerging with the item he had been after – Maniam’s old lock pick kit, which he had discarded after he bought a spanking new electronic lock picker that didn’t so much pick locks than smash a hole right through them.
“Ah yes, this is what Dirty Tortoise wanted me to get,” thought Sonky to himself, allowing himself a little jig to celebrate before heading to his next destination - the management office of the Wet Market that overlooked the entire hall, where the Very Important Politician used to sit in when he was not yet a politician, but was still the Wet Market Administrator.
Meanwhile, over in the Meat Market, the cherry eagle was circling around the Beef Jerky Stall. Owned by a Texan immigrant who self-depreciatingly called himself The Texas Jerk who used to be a beef jerky connoisseur before the Great Obesity Plague (an outbreak of a virus that transformed human fat into liquid and turned you quite literally into a walking pile of wobbling jelly) hit America and forced the entire nation of fat obese people to turn into vegetarians. Unable to face the prospect of not ever eating beef jerky, he migrated to Temelo where he started his own beef jerky business in the Wet Market, and got rich by conning the locals into thinking that anything from the US of A was better than anything made in their own factories.
Texas Jerk was not very popular amongst the Wet Market denizens. Oh, they got a long with him fine, but they had to try very hard not to get on his bad side, because he could be a really asshole at times, especially to those who he thinks are trying to steal his business. He even tried to sue the dried bak kua seller once for ‘stealing’ his secret beef jerky recipe and making a ‘fake Chinese imitation’ out of chicken meat (the judge laughed it off and told Texas Jerk that he wasn’t bribing him enough to risk his reputation on a case as frivolous as that).
Anyway, because Texas Jerk sold dried meat products, he had to find a way to keep his products dry and away from his Meat Market peers who were always drenched in blood and water. So unlike the other stalls in the Meat Market, the Texas Jerk’s Beef Jerky Stall (which was situated right at the corner) actually had four walls and a roof. The door into the room was grill door with cracks that were just wide enough for a cherry eagle to fly through.
And so it was that it was towards Texas Jerk’s beef jerky stall that Wingit was swooping down on now. Going into a glide, Wingit swooped gracefully down towards the door, and just as it looked as if he was about to crash, he turned his body ninety degrees, and JUST managed to slip through a crack in the bars, with barely a millimetre to spare.
Landing on one of Texan Jerk’s many jars of beef jerky, Wingit proceeded to look for the one ingredient that Dirty Tortoise had told him to look for… Texan Jerk’s secret ingredient for turning a wet, piece of meat into a hard, piece of jerky in instantaneously.
Wingit knew the Texan Jerk hid that secret ingredient somewhere in plain sight amongst his wares. Dirty Tortoise had told Wingit to use his keen sense of smell to sniff out the one jar among the hundreds that had the strongest scent of Texan Jerk.
“I would have asked Meg the miniature chicken fox to help me with this task,” said Dirty Tortoise to Wingit at the briefing earlier. “But she would not have been able to fit through that crack in the gate. And besides, you, Wingit the MAGNIFICENT CHERRY EAGLE, are much suited for this mission, because you are the BEST flyer in the Wet Market, and you are also SO WELL-ADEPT with your claws and beak that stealing that jar of Texan Jerk’s secret ingredients wouldn’t be a problem for you!
“Now, here a little plastic bag for you to put the ingredient in after you’ve found it, and bring it to me after that, ok? I’m counting on you, oh magnificent cherry eagle!”
His pride sufficiently fed, Wingit had flown off immediately to Texan Jerk’s stall. But now, as he looked around the hundreds of jars in the stall, he knew this wasn’t going to be as easy as he thought.
Wingit searched through the jars futilely (even opened a couple of them to make sure the beef jerky inside was not fake) but to no avail. But just as he was about to give up and return forlornly to Dirty Tortoise to admit defeat, a small voice piped up, “It’s that small, transparent, lime-green jar on the top-most shelf – the one that says ‘Beer Jerk’ instead of ‘beef jerky’.”
Surprised, Wingit turned his head around, to see a tiny hamster look up at him from Texan Jerk’s cash register. It was not a very big hamster – only about one inch in size, small enough to hide behind a stack of 50 sen coins. IT was dark brown in colour, but it’s most distinctive feature was a white patch on its side that looked like the Nike swoosh logo.
“Why hello there, little fella! I don’t think I’ve met you before. I never knew Texan Jerk kept pets as well!” he said.
“He doesn’t know I’m here. I’m just squatting here until I can find a more permanent place to live in,” said the hamster. “The name’s Jasper, by the way. I’m really just a normal hamster, but my former master use to call me Jasper the Talking Hamster because the sounds I make sounded like I was speaking Hokkien to him.”
“Well, thank you for your help, Jasper my boy! I would love to stay and chat, but I have a mission to accomplish. But rest assured, upon my honour as a cherry eagle, I will not forget your help tonight!” said Wingit, before taking off for the top shelf.
Spotting the lime-green jar marked ‘Beer Jerk’ there; he swooped down and landed on the lid of the jar. Grasping the lid with his claws, he curled his beak around the other side of the lid and gave a strong TWIST, and POP! The jar lid came open.
Carefully, so as not to accidentally swallow some of the secret ingredient and get turned into a cherry eagle jerky, Wingit scooped a couple of beaks full of the powder into the little plastic bag, and when he had enough, he kicked the lid of the jar down to the floor of Texan Jerk’s stall (where it landed with a loud CLANG), and gripping the plastic bag with his claws, he took off from the ledge, soaring through the air towards the gate.
“Farewell, magnificent cherry eagle!” cried Jasper the Talking Hamster from his perch on the cash register.
“See you again soon, little hamster!” replied Wingit, as he swooped out of the gate and headed towards the Spice Market and his rendezvous with Dirty Tortoise.
WORD COUNTER: 6551
Wednesday, 4 November 2009
Chapter 04: A Gecko In Distress
One week after Qicak came to him for help, Dirty Tortoise still had not come up with a plan, even though he could clearly see that Qicak was growing more distraught by the day. This wasn’t really his fault. You see, this was a rather complicated problem for mere animals to handle, and required a hero of some sort. And although most of the animals in the Wet Market regarded Dirty Tortoise as some sort of hero (mostly because of the part he supposedly played some years back in saving the Wet Market from being burnt down, which is another story for another day); he was actually not a very heroic sort.
In fact, if he were a human superhero, he’d be called Procrastination Man, because he moved so slowly, and was always putting things off until the very last minute. This time though, because it was his good friend Qicak who was in trouble, he managed to think a lot faster… where it used to take him two weeks to come up with an idea, this time he managed to take only a week.
That he managed to get a plan so quickly was thanks in part to Ah Choi’s current obsession in the newspaper’s reporting of Temelo politics; and his fervent and impassioned debates with Baw Ang the onion seller next door about how inept the Very Important Politician actually was.
Apparently, there was trouble brewing in the world outside the Wet Market. The Very Important Politician was having trouble controlling his cronies, who were engaged in a power struggle for the post of Second-Most Important Politician. In the end, the Very Important Politician had managed to sort things out by kicking the one person who was causing trouble in the party.
“That’s my plan! We will kick Karikan out of the Spice Market, like how the Very Important Politician kicked his enemies out of his party!” proclaimed Dirty Tortoise proudly when Qicak came to visit him one day.
Qicak narrowed his eyes, stared straight at Dirty Tortoise, and asked, “Gee whiz, you think so? So HOW DID the Very Important Politician kick his enemies out of his party anyway?”
“Oh, Ah Choi never read me that part. But I do know how WE are going to kick OUR enemy out of our Market. But first, I need the help of some of our other friends. Hop on my back, Qicak, and we shall go visit Sonky the Funky Monkey and Wingit the Cherry Eagle!”
“Er… No offence, Dirty Tortoise, but wouldn’t it be faster if I went to fetch them here instead, rather than you plodding your way to them?”
“Oh… right. Yes, yes, go fetch them, my good friend! In the meantime, I shall have some tea (leaves)…”
And so, as Dirty Tortoise pottered off to Ah Choi to get some tea (leaves), Qicak scurried over to the Fruits and Flowers section of the Wet Market, carefully avoiding the throng of tourists walking hurriedly down the North South Yellow Path as fast as possible to avoid the smell of the Meat Market.
When she got there, she saw Sonky the Funky Monkey sliding around the Banana Stall on banana skins, apparently recreating the Jamiroquai Virtual Insanity video for Chiu’s amusement. Not wanting to disturb his routine, she headed over to the Apple Stall, where she found Wingit the cherry eagle cleaning his feathers in a soup bowl.
“Hey Wingit, Dirty Tortoise and I need your help to get rid of the mean curry powder man in the Spice Market. Can you come over tonight when the Market is closed so we can discuss Dirty Tortoise’s plans?” she asked.
“Why of course, my pretty little gecko. I would be glad to,” said the cherry eagle. “And I am glad that it is I, Wingit the magnificent cherry eagle, whom you have turned to in your hour of need, so that I may be your eagle in the sky, soaring to meet your enemies, and defend your honour when you are under siege by…”
“Yes, yes, that’s nice, Wingit. And bring Sonky along as well. Tell him we’ve got his favourite banana flavoured tea leaves,” said Qicak.
“WHAT??!!?? You will have me, Wingit the magnificent cherry eagle, work alongside that… that… funk music loving non-bird? I will not have it, no ma’am, for I am too magnificent a creature to be working with that degenerate four-limbed animal!”
“We’ll have apple flavoured tea leaves as well, Wingit.”
“Oh? Well alrighty then. See you later, my dear gecko!”
Feeling mighty good about herself for accomplishing her mission (geckos are very uncomplicated creatures – they get satisfied very easily), Qicak began her journey back to the Vegetable Market, half skipping as she scurried along the North South Yellow Line. She was so happy and wrapped up in her proud achievements that she failed to heed that fleeting sense of danger she got just as she crossed the Big Yellow Crossroads. By the time she felt it, it was already too late. Her surroundings went dark as a large hand swooped down on her, and grabbed her by the tail, lifting her off the ground!
The hand lifted Qicak higher and higher, as she squirmed and flailed around in vain (Oh how she wished she was like her household gecko cousins, whose tails could break off when in danger!) until she could look right into the eyes of her captor. It was Karikan, the mean curry powder man!
“OOOH WHAT IS THIS?” boomed Karikan. “A LIZARD in the MARKET? How do we allow these PESTS in the Spice Market? Come with me, you little pest, I have a nice little cage in my stall reserved for pests like you!”
And so, off he went back to his stall, with Qicak still struggling in vain to escape. When Aunty Wu Qian saw that he had Qicak, she pleaded with Karikan to let the little gecko go, but Karikan refused steadfasted-ly, proclaiming, “ANIMALS HAVE NO PLACE IN A MARKET. THEY WILL CONTAMINATE OUR SPICES!”
Upon hearing that, Aunty Wu Qian burst into tears, but still Karikan refused to give Qicak to her. Instead, he walked straight to his stall, took out a steel mousetrap from underneath his chair, and threw Qicak inside, locking the door after her.
“YOU WILL STAY THERE UNTIL I FIGURE OUT WHAT TO DO WITH YOU IN THE MORNING,” he boomed. “NOW I NEED TO GO HOME AND WATCH THE MANCHESTER UNITED GAME.”
And so, Karikan closed up his shop with the cage inside, and headed home, ignoring Aunty Wu Qian’s crying pleas on the way out.
Unknown to both Karikan and Aunty Wu Qian, there was someone who had seen what had happened – Dirty Tortoise, who had been trudging his way through the drains to the Spice Market when Qicak was captured. He had been prepared to wait a bit longer to execute his plan, but once he saw what happened, he knew they could not wait any longer. They HAD to get their friend out of danger and make sure Karikan did not harm anymore animals in the Wet Market.
That night, when Wingit the cherry eagle and Sonky the funky monkey turned up for the meeting, they were greeted by a very determined looking Dirty Tortoise, and no Qicak. They knew immediately that something was wrong.
“Sit down, gentle animals,” began Dirty Tortoise. “We have a very grave situation that requires immediate action. Qicak has been captured by the mean curry powder man, and it is up to us to rescu..”
“Where’re my banana-flavoured tea leaves?” interrupted Sonky (who was never very bright in the first place.
“WILL you be QUIET and listen to our esteemed general, you lunk-headed four-limbed mammal,” scolded Wingit, sending Sonky into a sulk.
“Thank you, Wingit. Where was I? Ah yes, the rescue. I have a plan, but for it to work, I need you two to help me get a couple of things…”
WORD COUNTER: 5006
In fact, if he were a human superhero, he’d be called Procrastination Man, because he moved so slowly, and was always putting things off until the very last minute. This time though, because it was his good friend Qicak who was in trouble, he managed to think a lot faster… where it used to take him two weeks to come up with an idea, this time he managed to take only a week.
That he managed to get a plan so quickly was thanks in part to Ah Choi’s current obsession in the newspaper’s reporting of Temelo politics; and his fervent and impassioned debates with Baw Ang the onion seller next door about how inept the Very Important Politician actually was.
Apparently, there was trouble brewing in the world outside the Wet Market. The Very Important Politician was having trouble controlling his cronies, who were engaged in a power struggle for the post of Second-Most Important Politician. In the end, the Very Important Politician had managed to sort things out by kicking the one person who was causing trouble in the party.
“That’s my plan! We will kick Karikan out of the Spice Market, like how the Very Important Politician kicked his enemies out of his party!” proclaimed Dirty Tortoise proudly when Qicak came to visit him one day.
Qicak narrowed his eyes, stared straight at Dirty Tortoise, and asked, “Gee whiz, you think so? So HOW DID the Very Important Politician kick his enemies out of his party anyway?”
“Oh, Ah Choi never read me that part. But I do know how WE are going to kick OUR enemy out of our Market. But first, I need the help of some of our other friends. Hop on my back, Qicak, and we shall go visit Sonky the Funky Monkey and Wingit the Cherry Eagle!”
“Er… No offence, Dirty Tortoise, but wouldn’t it be faster if I went to fetch them here instead, rather than you plodding your way to them?”
“Oh… right. Yes, yes, go fetch them, my good friend! In the meantime, I shall have some tea (leaves)…”
And so, as Dirty Tortoise pottered off to Ah Choi to get some tea (leaves), Qicak scurried over to the Fruits and Flowers section of the Wet Market, carefully avoiding the throng of tourists walking hurriedly down the North South Yellow Path as fast as possible to avoid the smell of the Meat Market.
When she got there, she saw Sonky the Funky Monkey sliding around the Banana Stall on banana skins, apparently recreating the Jamiroquai Virtual Insanity video for Chiu’s amusement. Not wanting to disturb his routine, she headed over to the Apple Stall, where she found Wingit the cherry eagle cleaning his feathers in a soup bowl.
“Hey Wingit, Dirty Tortoise and I need your help to get rid of the mean curry powder man in the Spice Market. Can you come over tonight when the Market is closed so we can discuss Dirty Tortoise’s plans?” she asked.
“Why of course, my pretty little gecko. I would be glad to,” said the cherry eagle. “And I am glad that it is I, Wingit the magnificent cherry eagle, whom you have turned to in your hour of need, so that I may be your eagle in the sky, soaring to meet your enemies, and defend your honour when you are under siege by…”
“Yes, yes, that’s nice, Wingit. And bring Sonky along as well. Tell him we’ve got his favourite banana flavoured tea leaves,” said Qicak.
“WHAT??!!?? You will have me, Wingit the magnificent cherry eagle, work alongside that… that… funk music loving non-bird? I will not have it, no ma’am, for I am too magnificent a creature to be working with that degenerate four-limbed animal!”
“We’ll have apple flavoured tea leaves as well, Wingit.”
“Oh? Well alrighty then. See you later, my dear gecko!”
Feeling mighty good about herself for accomplishing her mission (geckos are very uncomplicated creatures – they get satisfied very easily), Qicak began her journey back to the Vegetable Market, half skipping as she scurried along the North South Yellow Line. She was so happy and wrapped up in her proud achievements that she failed to heed that fleeting sense of danger she got just as she crossed the Big Yellow Crossroads. By the time she felt it, it was already too late. Her surroundings went dark as a large hand swooped down on her, and grabbed her by the tail, lifting her off the ground!
The hand lifted Qicak higher and higher, as she squirmed and flailed around in vain (Oh how she wished she was like her household gecko cousins, whose tails could break off when in danger!) until she could look right into the eyes of her captor. It was Karikan, the mean curry powder man!
“OOOH WHAT IS THIS?” boomed Karikan. “A LIZARD in the MARKET? How do we allow these PESTS in the Spice Market? Come with me, you little pest, I have a nice little cage in my stall reserved for pests like you!”
And so, off he went back to his stall, with Qicak still struggling in vain to escape. When Aunty Wu Qian saw that he had Qicak, she pleaded with Karikan to let the little gecko go, but Karikan refused steadfasted-ly, proclaiming, “ANIMALS HAVE NO PLACE IN A MARKET. THEY WILL CONTAMINATE OUR SPICES!”
Upon hearing that, Aunty Wu Qian burst into tears, but still Karikan refused to give Qicak to her. Instead, he walked straight to his stall, took out a steel mousetrap from underneath his chair, and threw Qicak inside, locking the door after her.
“YOU WILL STAY THERE UNTIL I FIGURE OUT WHAT TO DO WITH YOU IN THE MORNING,” he boomed. “NOW I NEED TO GO HOME AND WATCH THE MANCHESTER UNITED GAME.”
And so, Karikan closed up his shop with the cage inside, and headed home, ignoring Aunty Wu Qian’s crying pleas on the way out.
Unknown to both Karikan and Aunty Wu Qian, there was someone who had seen what had happened – Dirty Tortoise, who had been trudging his way through the drains to the Spice Market when Qicak was captured. He had been prepared to wait a bit longer to execute his plan, but once he saw what happened, he knew they could not wait any longer. They HAD to get their friend out of danger and make sure Karikan did not harm anymore animals in the Wet Market.
That night, when Wingit the cherry eagle and Sonky the funky monkey turned up for the meeting, they were greeted by a very determined looking Dirty Tortoise, and no Qicak. They knew immediately that something was wrong.
“Sit down, gentle animals,” began Dirty Tortoise. “We have a very grave situation that requires immediate action. Qicak has been captured by the mean curry powder man, and it is up to us to rescu..”
“Where’re my banana-flavoured tea leaves?” interrupted Sonky (who was never very bright in the first place.
“WILL you be QUIET and listen to our esteemed general, you lunk-headed four-limbed mammal,” scolded Wingit, sending Sonky into a sulk.
“Thank you, Wingit. Where was I? Ah yes, the rescue. I have a plan, but for it to work, I need you two to help me get a couple of things…”
WORD COUNTER: 5006
Tuesday, 3 November 2009
Chapter 03: The Mean Curry Man
One day, one of Dirty Tortoise’s best friends visited him. She was a female gecko name Qicak (pronounced chi-cak). Not just any gecko, mind you – Qicak was a leopard gecko, one of the most beautiful, most sought after species of geckos in the world, which humans love to keep as pets. And among her species, Qicak was one of the most beautiful of all geckos, and would cost a lot of money to the humans who would pamper her and treasure her and give her all the delicious worms she wanted.
So what is a highly valuable, much sought after specimen of gecko doing living in a wet market and befriending a dirty tortoise?
“I just like being free,” Qicak said matter of fact-ly, when quizzed by Dirty Tortoise one day.
“But surely you liked the attention – to be lavished with food all the time, and be admired and loved by humans!” prodded Dirty Tortoise further.
All he got for that was a withering gaze from Cak, a look that warned him not to ask about her past any further.
The reason Qicak was so defensive about her past, is because it was actually a rather depressing and sad past, not the exciting and cool kind she wanted her good friend Dirty Tortoise to know (instead, she had told him she had been in a circus and used to be the pet of a trapeze artist who kept her in his pocket even during his acts).
You see, Qicak was the pet of Aunty Wu Qian the owner of the Five Thousand Chinese Spice stall. Qicak was all that was left to remind Aunty Wu Qian of her beloved daughter, who had died in a car accident many years ago. After her owner had died, Qicak, who had loved her previous owner very much as well, became very attached to Aunty Wu Qian, because she was all Qicak had left and Aunty Wu Qian had the most amazing supply of spice worms that she had ever eaten.
Qicak lived in a little Tupperware box inside the Five Thousand Chinese Spice Stall, which had a nice little matchbox for her to hide under, a water dish, and a little food bowl that Aunty Wu Qian kept full of yummy spice worms she picked out from her stocks.
Qicak and Dirty Tortoise first met when she moved into the Spice Market and had gone exploring. Dirty Tortoise was on one of his excursions outside Ah Choi’s vegetable stall at the time, and they had met each other right on the border of the Spice and Vegetable sections. Dirty Tortoise had never seen such a beautiful reptile before; while Qicak had never met such a dirty tortoise before (all the once she had met before were in pet shops and were always scrubbed clean regularly).
They hit it off immediately, thanks to their love for food, and Qicak would come visit Dirty Tortoise, lie down on his shell, and they would tell each other stories of their human’s ‘adventures’ (to a tortoise and gecko, haggling over the price of one kilogram of spice can be a great adventure).
Anyway, Qicak was visiting him for a very specific reason today. She needed his help saving her home from a new spice stall owner who was causing everyone in the Spice Market a lot of trouble.
The new stall owner had moved in about a week ago, replacing the old curry spice seller whose business had outgrown the market (this happened a lot in the Spice section, not so much in the vegetable section), and had gone on to open a new chain of restaurants that used his unique curry spice powder in curry fish heads.
The new spice stall owner, whose name was Karikan, was a mean, calculative man. He was tall and burly, with dark hair and a long curly moustache he liked to twirl around like Fu Manchu. When he spoke, you could hear him from the other side of the Wet Market, and you did not want to be anywhere near him when he shouted at you.
Now, the unspoken rule in the Spice Market was that each stall was open and free to do their business anywhere they want to. Even though each stall had their own space, more often than not, they would encroach on the other stalls space, but there had never been any problems amongst the stall owners. Until Karikan moved in, that is.
As soon as Karikan moved in, he immediately set about marking his territory. He zealously drew lines around his designated area, and scolded poor Aunty Wu Qian (whose Five Thousand Chinese Spice store was just next to him) for letting her big piles of spices spill over the line.
He had only one specialty – curry powder, but unlike the last curry powder man who had small piles of different curry powders, Karikan proudly proclaimed that his curry powder was the world’s first multi-purpose curry powder, and could be used in any curry dish you want.
While the curry was amazingly delicious when cooked, in its raw, powder form, Karikan’s Magic Curry Powder was the most foul-smelling, pungent curry powder you had ever smelled. It smelled like a combination very spicy curry cooked with un-fresh fish heads and rotten onions.
It was so strong-smelling that Karikan had to build a bubble-like tent around his stock of curry powder, and customers who bought more than 2kg of the stuff were given free disposable industry-strength gas masks, or they would pass out before they even got home to cook the powder.
Unfortunately for everyone in the spice market, Karikan had taken over the curry powder stall RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE of the Spice Market, and thus, EVERYONE had to put up with the smell. Aunty Wu Qian (who Qicak was living with) had an especially hard time putting up with the smell and the mean Karikan.
“Just yesterday, I overheard Aunty Wu Qian complaining to her husband that her business has been affected because her customers can’t stand the sell of Karikan’s curry powder. So she’s thinking of moving out of the Spice Market if this goes on. What will I do without her?!!? I don’t want to move out of the Spice Market! It’s my home!” Qicak wailed.
To add curry powder to injury, Karikan was also a cruel man who disliked animals immensely, especially those he considers ‘pests’ like geckos.
One day while Qicak was hiding in her cubby hole, she saw how cruel he could be towards geckos. “He had this HUGE bag of rubber bands, and he was using them to SHOOT DOWN all those little green geckos who were on the walls!” she exclaimed, clearly distraught. “They didn’t even do him any harm, they were HELPING him get rid of the mosquitoes and flies around his stall. But he STILL killed them! What if he sees me in Aunty Wu Qian’s stall one day and decides to kill ME too?”
After telling her story, Qicak was so upset that Dirty Tortoise had to offer her some tea (in the form of leaves, of course. Tortoises don’t drink tea, don’t be silly) to calm her down.
“I see that we have a problem here that not only affects the Spice Market, but the entire Wet Market as well. We cannot have such a mean person in the market, especially one who kills animals for fun!” said Dirty Tortoise indignantly. “And I certainly don’t want to lose you, Qicak my dear friend. We must do something about this monstrous curry powder man!”
WORD COUNTER: 3669
So what is a highly valuable, much sought after specimen of gecko doing living in a wet market and befriending a dirty tortoise?
“I just like being free,” Qicak said matter of fact-ly, when quizzed by Dirty Tortoise one day.
“But surely you liked the attention – to be lavished with food all the time, and be admired and loved by humans!” prodded Dirty Tortoise further.
All he got for that was a withering gaze from Cak, a look that warned him not to ask about her past any further.
The reason Qicak was so defensive about her past, is because it was actually a rather depressing and sad past, not the exciting and cool kind she wanted her good friend Dirty Tortoise to know (instead, she had told him she had been in a circus and used to be the pet of a trapeze artist who kept her in his pocket even during his acts).
You see, Qicak was the pet of Aunty Wu Qian the owner of the Five Thousand Chinese Spice stall. Qicak was all that was left to remind Aunty Wu Qian of her beloved daughter, who had died in a car accident many years ago. After her owner had died, Qicak, who had loved her previous owner very much as well, became very attached to Aunty Wu Qian, because she was all Qicak had left and Aunty Wu Qian had the most amazing supply of spice worms that she had ever eaten.
Qicak lived in a little Tupperware box inside the Five Thousand Chinese Spice Stall, which had a nice little matchbox for her to hide under, a water dish, and a little food bowl that Aunty Wu Qian kept full of yummy spice worms she picked out from her stocks.
Qicak and Dirty Tortoise first met when she moved into the Spice Market and had gone exploring. Dirty Tortoise was on one of his excursions outside Ah Choi’s vegetable stall at the time, and they had met each other right on the border of the Spice and Vegetable sections. Dirty Tortoise had never seen such a beautiful reptile before; while Qicak had never met such a dirty tortoise before (all the once she had met before were in pet shops and were always scrubbed clean regularly).
They hit it off immediately, thanks to their love for food, and Qicak would come visit Dirty Tortoise, lie down on his shell, and they would tell each other stories of their human’s ‘adventures’ (to a tortoise and gecko, haggling over the price of one kilogram of spice can be a great adventure).
Anyway, Qicak was visiting him for a very specific reason today. She needed his help saving her home from a new spice stall owner who was causing everyone in the Spice Market a lot of trouble.
The new stall owner had moved in about a week ago, replacing the old curry spice seller whose business had outgrown the market (this happened a lot in the Spice section, not so much in the vegetable section), and had gone on to open a new chain of restaurants that used his unique curry spice powder in curry fish heads.
The new spice stall owner, whose name was Karikan, was a mean, calculative man. He was tall and burly, with dark hair and a long curly moustache he liked to twirl around like Fu Manchu. When he spoke, you could hear him from the other side of the Wet Market, and you did not want to be anywhere near him when he shouted at you.
Now, the unspoken rule in the Spice Market was that each stall was open and free to do their business anywhere they want to. Even though each stall had their own space, more often than not, they would encroach on the other stalls space, but there had never been any problems amongst the stall owners. Until Karikan moved in, that is.
As soon as Karikan moved in, he immediately set about marking his territory. He zealously drew lines around his designated area, and scolded poor Aunty Wu Qian (whose Five Thousand Chinese Spice store was just next to him) for letting her big piles of spices spill over the line.
He had only one specialty – curry powder, but unlike the last curry powder man who had small piles of different curry powders, Karikan proudly proclaimed that his curry powder was the world’s first multi-purpose curry powder, and could be used in any curry dish you want.
While the curry was amazingly delicious when cooked, in its raw, powder form, Karikan’s Magic Curry Powder was the most foul-smelling, pungent curry powder you had ever smelled. It smelled like a combination very spicy curry cooked with un-fresh fish heads and rotten onions.
It was so strong-smelling that Karikan had to build a bubble-like tent around his stock of curry powder, and customers who bought more than 2kg of the stuff were given free disposable industry-strength gas masks, or they would pass out before they even got home to cook the powder.
Unfortunately for everyone in the spice market, Karikan had taken over the curry powder stall RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE of the Spice Market, and thus, EVERYONE had to put up with the smell. Aunty Wu Qian (who Qicak was living with) had an especially hard time putting up with the smell and the mean Karikan.
“Just yesterday, I overheard Aunty Wu Qian complaining to her husband that her business has been affected because her customers can’t stand the sell of Karikan’s curry powder. So she’s thinking of moving out of the Spice Market if this goes on. What will I do without her?!!? I don’t want to move out of the Spice Market! It’s my home!” Qicak wailed.
To add curry powder to injury, Karikan was also a cruel man who disliked animals immensely, especially those he considers ‘pests’ like geckos.
One day while Qicak was hiding in her cubby hole, she saw how cruel he could be towards geckos. “He had this HUGE bag of rubber bands, and he was using them to SHOOT DOWN all those little green geckos who were on the walls!” she exclaimed, clearly distraught. “They didn’t even do him any harm, they were HELPING him get rid of the mosquitoes and flies around his stall. But he STILL killed them! What if he sees me in Aunty Wu Qian’s stall one day and decides to kill ME too?”
After telling her story, Qicak was so upset that Dirty Tortoise had to offer her some tea (in the form of leaves, of course. Tortoises don’t drink tea, don’t be silly) to calm her down.
“I see that we have a problem here that not only affects the Spice Market, but the entire Wet Market as well. We cannot have such a mean person in the market, especially one who kills animals for fun!” said Dirty Tortoise indignantly. “And I certainly don’t want to lose you, Qicak my dear friend. We must do something about this monstrous curry powder man!”
WORD COUNTER: 3669
Monday, 2 November 2009
Chapter 02: Odd Market Animals
Ah Choi knew there was a tortoise living under his stall. He also knew that it was very dirty. He knew that Dirty Tortoise was dirty because the drain was dirty, and the drain was dirty because Ah Choi had to keep his vegetable stall clean, and to do so he had to wash all the dirty stuff into the drain, where Dirty Tortoise lived.
So Ah Choi knew why Dirty Tortoise was so dirty all the time, and he felt very guilty about it. He had tried moving Dirty Tortoise to another place that was cleaner, but Dirty Tortoise just trudged SLOWLY and SURELY back to the little old drain all over again. After a couple of times, Ah Choi eventually gave up and decided to let the tortoise stay there, and even started feeding the little tortoise leftovers from his vegetable stall.
What Ah Choi did not realise was this – Dirty Tortoise could actually talk. No, he didn’t talk in English – that’s a human language. No, the Animal Kingdom has their own language, complete with their own dialects – reptiles speak Reptilian, mammals speak Mammish, birds speak Twittish, and so on. The difference between their dialects and us humans, is that there isn’t really any difference between them – just the peculiar accents and the way some things are said.
Anyway, enough about the boring subject of Animalian Language. More on that later. This is the story of Dirty Tortoise. And at this moment of time, Dirty Tortoise was happy.
For a tortoise, he was leaving a good life. He lived free in a nice dark, damp place, he had a constant supply of food thrown into his drain by Ah Choi, and he had lots of friends around. It was an odd life for a tortoise, but then again, Dirty Tortoise was not the only odd animal in the Temelo Wet Market.
In fact, the entire Wet Market was filled with odd animals. This was a very odd market indeed, and that’s not even counting the whole Very Important Heritage Site thingy. It was a Wet Market where every single stall had a little animal living under, inside, above or around it.
Dirty Tortoise’s vegetable section, for instance, is also home to Billy the Unoriginal Goat (a unique species of goat is so incapable of original thoughts that it doesn’t even know what goats are supposed to do and so copies whatever every other animal does), and Leafy the Vegetarian Green Snake, amongst others.
As expected, the spice section was home to the most exotic animals. Only here, are the animals brave and pretty enough to roam around in plain sight, for tourists to ooh and ahh over and take pictures of. Among the animals here are Cak the rainbow-coloured leopard gecko, Vladimir the Russian Talking Parrot and a rainbow coloured Neon Flourescenian Cat ironically called Blackie.
While most animals steer clear of the meat section (because it can be rather distressing to see a friend of yours being slaughtered and strung up to be sold as soup stock); even the stalls in that section was occupied by meat-eating animals (usually the ones that even humans steer clear of) such as Meg the miniature chicken fox, Fang the walking Piranha and a gang of boomtown rats who had formed their own little triad called the Ratatatatats. Though.
Over in the fruits and flowers section, the animals are generally of the insect and bird variety. The insects love that section because of the flowers and pollen, the birds love it because of the fruits. Again, these are not your normal fruit flies or sparrows you see everywhere. Wingit the cherry eagle, for instance, is the smallest eagle in the world, about the size of an apple. He hunts like a normal eagle, swooping down from high on worms that dare peek out of their apples, and built his eyrie in an IKEA lamp above the apple stall. The only worm Wingit won’t eat, is his good friend Squirm the giant orange worm. Squirm survives on oranges, which contain citrus acid that is pretty bad for a cherry eagle’s stomach. There was one animal in the Fruits and Flowers section that was neither an insect nor a bird though, and that was Sonky the Funky Monkey. Naturally, he lived in the banana stall, a guest of the stall owner Chiu, who liked the way the funky monkey hummed Prince and Jamiroquai songs while he was merrily gobbling down a comb of bananas (Chiu was too stingy to get an iPod, so he relied on Sonky to entertain him during the slower business days).
Also, the Temelo Wet Market is a market where rats are cleaner than tortoises, and are welcomed as pets, because they clean up the floor of any waste cleanly and properly. It was a wet market where humans and animals co-existed side by side, and no one took a broom to a rat, or shot a gecko down with a rubber band. No one knew why the market was like that, or when it started being that way – it just was.
Amongst all the animals that lived in the Temelo Wet Market, Dirty Tortoise was the oldest. In human years, that is. In Rat years, he is ancient. If he was a mosquito, the rest of the mosquitoes would think of him as The Mosquito God Who Lives Forever. In tortoise years, however, Dirty Tortoise was practically still a teenager, still full of curiosity, and still gung ho enough to wander around the Wet Market seeking out new things, and making new friends. The only problem is, being a tortoise, he never got very far. In fact, he had never even been all the way to the (human) entrance of the Wet Market, let alone step foot outside. The most he had gone to was just over the halfway line, where the meat section was, but the sight of the raw meat and the occasional tortoise shell hanging around the place frightened him, and he never lingered for long.
Still, Dirty Tortoise was a friend to every animal in the market, even those who typically do not get along well with animals in the other sections. He was also the most knowledgeable of them all, because Ah Choi who was also studying part-time, would often read books out loud in his stall during the slow business days (which was almost every day), and Dirty Tortoise learned a lot about deep subjects like Management, Business and Marketing just by listening to Ah Choi reading.
It was because of this that whenever the other animals had problems, Dirty Tortoise was the one they would usually turn to for help.
WORD COUNTER: 2303
So Ah Choi knew why Dirty Tortoise was so dirty all the time, and he felt very guilty about it. He had tried moving Dirty Tortoise to another place that was cleaner, but Dirty Tortoise just trudged SLOWLY and SURELY back to the little old drain all over again. After a couple of times, Ah Choi eventually gave up and decided to let the tortoise stay there, and even started feeding the little tortoise leftovers from his vegetable stall.
What Ah Choi did not realise was this – Dirty Tortoise could actually talk. No, he didn’t talk in English – that’s a human language. No, the Animal Kingdom has their own language, complete with their own dialects – reptiles speak Reptilian, mammals speak Mammish, birds speak Twittish, and so on. The difference between their dialects and us humans, is that there isn’t really any difference between them – just the peculiar accents and the way some things are said.
Anyway, enough about the boring subject of Animalian Language. More on that later. This is the story of Dirty Tortoise. And at this moment of time, Dirty Tortoise was happy.
For a tortoise, he was leaving a good life. He lived free in a nice dark, damp place, he had a constant supply of food thrown into his drain by Ah Choi, and he had lots of friends around. It was an odd life for a tortoise, but then again, Dirty Tortoise was not the only odd animal in the Temelo Wet Market.
In fact, the entire Wet Market was filled with odd animals. This was a very odd market indeed, and that’s not even counting the whole Very Important Heritage Site thingy. It was a Wet Market where every single stall had a little animal living under, inside, above or around it.
Dirty Tortoise’s vegetable section, for instance, is also home to Billy the Unoriginal Goat (a unique species of goat is so incapable of original thoughts that it doesn’t even know what goats are supposed to do and so copies whatever every other animal does), and Leafy the Vegetarian Green Snake, amongst others.
As expected, the spice section was home to the most exotic animals. Only here, are the animals brave and pretty enough to roam around in plain sight, for tourists to ooh and ahh over and take pictures of. Among the animals here are Cak the rainbow-coloured leopard gecko, Vladimir the Russian Talking Parrot and a rainbow coloured Neon Flourescenian Cat ironically called Blackie.
While most animals steer clear of the meat section (because it can be rather distressing to see a friend of yours being slaughtered and strung up to be sold as soup stock); even the stalls in that section was occupied by meat-eating animals (usually the ones that even humans steer clear of) such as Meg the miniature chicken fox, Fang the walking Piranha and a gang of boomtown rats who had formed their own little triad called the Ratatatatats. Though.
Over in the fruits and flowers section, the animals are generally of the insect and bird variety. The insects love that section because of the flowers and pollen, the birds love it because of the fruits. Again, these are not your normal fruit flies or sparrows you see everywhere. Wingit the cherry eagle, for instance, is the smallest eagle in the world, about the size of an apple. He hunts like a normal eagle, swooping down from high on worms that dare peek out of their apples, and built his eyrie in an IKEA lamp above the apple stall. The only worm Wingit won’t eat, is his good friend Squirm the giant orange worm. Squirm survives on oranges, which contain citrus acid that is pretty bad for a cherry eagle’s stomach. There was one animal in the Fruits and Flowers section that was neither an insect nor a bird though, and that was Sonky the Funky Monkey. Naturally, he lived in the banana stall, a guest of the stall owner Chiu, who liked the way the funky monkey hummed Prince and Jamiroquai songs while he was merrily gobbling down a comb of bananas (Chiu was too stingy to get an iPod, so he relied on Sonky to entertain him during the slower business days).
Also, the Temelo Wet Market is a market where rats are cleaner than tortoises, and are welcomed as pets, because they clean up the floor of any waste cleanly and properly. It was a wet market where humans and animals co-existed side by side, and no one took a broom to a rat, or shot a gecko down with a rubber band. No one knew why the market was like that, or when it started being that way – it just was.
Amongst all the animals that lived in the Temelo Wet Market, Dirty Tortoise was the oldest. In human years, that is. In Rat years, he is ancient. If he was a mosquito, the rest of the mosquitoes would think of him as The Mosquito God Who Lives Forever. In tortoise years, however, Dirty Tortoise was practically still a teenager, still full of curiosity, and still gung ho enough to wander around the Wet Market seeking out new things, and making new friends. The only problem is, being a tortoise, he never got very far. In fact, he had never even been all the way to the (human) entrance of the Wet Market, let alone step foot outside. The most he had gone to was just over the halfway line, where the meat section was, but the sight of the raw meat and the occasional tortoise shell hanging around the place frightened him, and he never lingered for long.
Still, Dirty Tortoise was a friend to every animal in the market, even those who typically do not get along well with animals in the other sections. He was also the most knowledgeable of them all, because Ah Choi who was also studying part-time, would often read books out loud in his stall during the slow business days (which was almost every day), and Dirty Tortoise learned a lot about deep subjects like Management, Business and Marketing just by listening to Ah Choi reading.
It was because of this that whenever the other animals had problems, Dirty Tortoise was the one they would usually turn to for help.
WORD COUNTER: 2303
Sunday, 1 November 2009
Chapter 01: The Wet Market
Once upon a time, in a drain inside a market, there was a tortoise.
The drain was very dirty, and so was the tortoise. No one, not even the tortoise himself, knew what his real name was (though it is not sure whether tortoises are meant to have names anyway). What they did know, was that he was very dirty, and he was a tortoise, so they called him Dirty Tortoise.
Dirty Tortoise lived in a drain located directly below a vegetable stall in a wet market in a town called Temelo. The vegetable stall was owned by a young boy named Ah Choi, who had inherited the stall from his parents. Ah Choi’s parents were too old to take care of the stall now, so these days they mostly stayed home watching Hong Kong Cantonese television series while playing the occasional game of mahjung.
As far as the layouts of markets go however, this was a very conventional one. If you took an aeroplane and looked down on it, you will see this medium-sized square building with strange, blue and red roof tiles. The market is divided into four very different equally square sections, with each section peddling different sorts of wares and seperated by two main yellow painted paths that divided these sections looked like a very big yellow cross.
If you were a newcomer to the market (regulars usually come in from the side doors that lead directly to the sections the want to go to), you would walk through the front entrance on the south side, which consisted of two dark grey metal doors with HUGE locks on it, and a simple, faded white plastic signboard that said “TEMELO WET MARKET” in big bright blue letters (and had a tiny white sticker on the right corner that said “24-hour locksmith: Maniam (HP: 017-3xx5xxx5)”. These doors were closed at 12am sharp every night, after the final stall – usually the Mamak Stall owned by Maniam the Locksmith - shooed their last customers out.
As you enter the doors, you will be assaulted by a barrage of different smells coming from either side of the vast hall. On your right, the wonderful scents of flowers and fruits waft by from the Fruit and Flower section, where the stalls peddle the freshest fruits and the most wonderful blooms in all of Temelo. But turn your face slightly to the left, and the obscenely strong scent of raw meat and blood makes your nose would wrinkle in disgust.
Quite why these two contrasting scents were put side by side is unknown, but legend has it that hundreds of years ago when the Wet Market was built, humans had yet to discover the joys of flowers, fruits, vegetables and spices. So when the Wet Market was built, it consisted only of one section – the meat section. Butchers from all over the town would congregate there, selling all sorts of meats – from chicken, beef, pork and mutton, to exotic meats like deer, frogs and even (gasp!) tortoises.
By and by, as human began to crave more culinary and sensory delights, there were more and more stalls in the Wet Market that sold other things besides meat. But the meat section (which was still very big at the time) remained in the front of the building, and you had to walk through the rows of dead meat and the stalls of bloody entrails to get to the vegetables and fruits.
One day, a Very Important Politician, who wanted to turn his town into a Very Important Heritage Site, visited the Wet Market hoping to turn it into a tourist attraction. As soon as he stepped into the market, he was shocked by the smell of the meat market.
“WHAT IS THIS STENCH!” he thundered. “HOW WILL WE ATTRACT TOURISTS TO COME HERE IF THEY CAN’T EVEN GET PAST THE FRONT DOOR??!!”
That day, the Very Important Politician went back to his office, called in a reporter from the Very Serious Propaganda Network (VSPN for short), and made this announcement:
“FROM TODAY ONWARDS, THE MEAT SECTION IN THE WET MARKET IS TO BE MOVED TO THE BACK OF THE MARKET SO WE CAN ATTRACT MORE TOURISTS,” he thundered on camera.
To cut a long story short, the butchers protested, held demonstrations (both peaceful and violent) and marched upon the Very Important Politician’s office, throwing pigs intestines and Bishop’s Noses at his limousine until they came to a compromise – the butchers could remain in front, but they had to let the nicer smelling stalls like fruits and flowers have the other half of the market, to create a more harmonious smell and the impression that they are getting along. The Very Important Politician called it his 1Market campaign, and though not everyone was happy with the arrangement, they decided that the best way to avoid anymore stupid policies was to go along with it.
But that was a long time ago. Now, no one remembers the 1Market policy anymore, and the Meat and Fruits and Flowers section people get along just fine.
But let us move along with our little tour of the Wet Market. If you survive the strange and contrasting smells of the front section and walk along down the middle of the hall to the middle of the big yellow paths, you will come upon the most wonderful and most famous section of the market.
On your left, the Spices Section is full of little stalls manned (or rather, womanned) by little old ladys, surrounded by all sorts of different spices either contained in little glass jars or in tiny little pyramird-like piles in front of them.
From conventional spices like curry powder, chilli powder, coriander, pepper, parsley, sage rosemary and thyme, to more exotic spices like Mantis Tears, Organic Gunpowder Residue and Venus Flytrap Extract; this was the section that the Temelo Wet Market is most famous for, and which eventually got it named a Very Important Heritage Site, just as the Very Important Politician wanted.
It is said that every spice you ever need can be found here, and people from all over the world have a saying that if you want to spice up something, whether it’s your chicken masala, your lasagne or even your sex life, there’s always something for you in the Temelo Wet Market.
Compared to the other sections of the market, the Spice Market was always the most crowded, full of not just shoppers, chefs, and representatives of multi-national spice export companies; but also of countless tourists taking pictures of the little old ladies who seemingly do nothing other than flick at flies (and the occasional tourist) with their little plastic bags on sticks.
By contrast, the Vegetable Section of the wet market where Dirty Tortoise lives under Ah Choi’s vegetable stall, seems almost pathetic. Although the vegetables are fresher, cleaner and certainly more organic than any hypermarket in Temelo, business is generally slow in this part of the market, limited to a handful of old regulars and the occasional lost tourist trying to find his or her way to the Spice Market.
Ah Choi’s vegetable stall is one of the oldest stalls in the vegetable market, and though he was not doing badly (his parents friends still came to his stall regularly to buy their vegetables), he still looked in envy at the booming business of the spice stalls opposite his.
So there you have it – the Temelo Wet Market, the most unique market in a world filled with hypermarkets, and home to the hero of our stories – Dirty Tortoise.
WORD COUNTER: 1625 words
The drain was very dirty, and so was the tortoise. No one, not even the tortoise himself, knew what his real name was (though it is not sure whether tortoises are meant to have names anyway). What they did know, was that he was very dirty, and he was a tortoise, so they called him Dirty Tortoise.
Dirty Tortoise lived in a drain located directly below a vegetable stall in a wet market in a town called Temelo. The vegetable stall was owned by a young boy named Ah Choi, who had inherited the stall from his parents. Ah Choi’s parents were too old to take care of the stall now, so these days they mostly stayed home watching Hong Kong Cantonese television series while playing the occasional game of mahjung.
As far as the layouts of markets go however, this was a very conventional one. If you took an aeroplane and looked down on it, you will see this medium-sized square building with strange, blue and red roof tiles. The market is divided into four very different equally square sections, with each section peddling different sorts of wares and seperated by two main yellow painted paths that divided these sections looked like a very big yellow cross.
If you were a newcomer to the market (regulars usually come in from the side doors that lead directly to the sections the want to go to), you would walk through the front entrance on the south side, which consisted of two dark grey metal doors with HUGE locks on it, and a simple, faded white plastic signboard that said “TEMELO WET MARKET” in big bright blue letters (and had a tiny white sticker on the right corner that said “24-hour locksmith: Maniam (HP: 017-3xx5xxx5)”. These doors were closed at 12am sharp every night, after the final stall – usually the Mamak Stall owned by Maniam the Locksmith - shooed their last customers out.
As you enter the doors, you will be assaulted by a barrage of different smells coming from either side of the vast hall. On your right, the wonderful scents of flowers and fruits waft by from the Fruit and Flower section, where the stalls peddle the freshest fruits and the most wonderful blooms in all of Temelo. But turn your face slightly to the left, and the obscenely strong scent of raw meat and blood makes your nose would wrinkle in disgust.
Quite why these two contrasting scents were put side by side is unknown, but legend has it that hundreds of years ago when the Wet Market was built, humans had yet to discover the joys of flowers, fruits, vegetables and spices. So when the Wet Market was built, it consisted only of one section – the meat section. Butchers from all over the town would congregate there, selling all sorts of meats – from chicken, beef, pork and mutton, to exotic meats like deer, frogs and even (gasp!) tortoises.
By and by, as human began to crave more culinary and sensory delights, there were more and more stalls in the Wet Market that sold other things besides meat. But the meat section (which was still very big at the time) remained in the front of the building, and you had to walk through the rows of dead meat and the stalls of bloody entrails to get to the vegetables and fruits.
One day, a Very Important Politician, who wanted to turn his town into a Very Important Heritage Site, visited the Wet Market hoping to turn it into a tourist attraction. As soon as he stepped into the market, he was shocked by the smell of the meat market.
“WHAT IS THIS STENCH!” he thundered. “HOW WILL WE ATTRACT TOURISTS TO COME HERE IF THEY CAN’T EVEN GET PAST THE FRONT DOOR??!!”
That day, the Very Important Politician went back to his office, called in a reporter from the Very Serious Propaganda Network (VSPN for short), and made this announcement:
“FROM TODAY ONWARDS, THE MEAT SECTION IN THE WET MARKET IS TO BE MOVED TO THE BACK OF THE MARKET SO WE CAN ATTRACT MORE TOURISTS,” he thundered on camera.
To cut a long story short, the butchers protested, held demonstrations (both peaceful and violent) and marched upon the Very Important Politician’s office, throwing pigs intestines and Bishop’s Noses at his limousine until they came to a compromise – the butchers could remain in front, but they had to let the nicer smelling stalls like fruits and flowers have the other half of the market, to create a more harmonious smell and the impression that they are getting along. The Very Important Politician called it his 1Market campaign, and though not everyone was happy with the arrangement, they decided that the best way to avoid anymore stupid policies was to go along with it.
But that was a long time ago. Now, no one remembers the 1Market policy anymore, and the Meat and Fruits and Flowers section people get along just fine.
But let us move along with our little tour of the Wet Market. If you survive the strange and contrasting smells of the front section and walk along down the middle of the hall to the middle of the big yellow paths, you will come upon the most wonderful and most famous section of the market.
On your left, the Spices Section is full of little stalls manned (or rather, womanned) by little old ladys, surrounded by all sorts of different spices either contained in little glass jars or in tiny little pyramird-like piles in front of them.
From conventional spices like curry powder, chilli powder, coriander, pepper, parsley, sage rosemary and thyme, to more exotic spices like Mantis Tears, Organic Gunpowder Residue and Venus Flytrap Extract; this was the section that the Temelo Wet Market is most famous for, and which eventually got it named a Very Important Heritage Site, just as the Very Important Politician wanted.
It is said that every spice you ever need can be found here, and people from all over the world have a saying that if you want to spice up something, whether it’s your chicken masala, your lasagne or even your sex life, there’s always something for you in the Temelo Wet Market.
Compared to the other sections of the market, the Spice Market was always the most crowded, full of not just shoppers, chefs, and representatives of multi-national spice export companies; but also of countless tourists taking pictures of the little old ladies who seemingly do nothing other than flick at flies (and the occasional tourist) with their little plastic bags on sticks.
By contrast, the Vegetable Section of the wet market where Dirty Tortoise lives under Ah Choi’s vegetable stall, seems almost pathetic. Although the vegetables are fresher, cleaner and certainly more organic than any hypermarket in Temelo, business is generally slow in this part of the market, limited to a handful of old regulars and the occasional lost tourist trying to find his or her way to the Spice Market.
Ah Choi’s vegetable stall is one of the oldest stalls in the vegetable market, and though he was not doing badly (his parents friends still came to his stall regularly to buy their vegetables), he still looked in envy at the booming business of the spice stalls opposite his.
So there you have it – the Temelo Wet Market, the most unique market in a world filled with hypermarkets, and home to the hero of our stories – Dirty Tortoise.
WORD COUNTER: 1625 words
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)