I go early to avoid crowds and to hear vendors before the loudspeaker announcements begin. Tiong Bahru Market before eight: fish on ice, orchids wrapped in newspaper, melon prices discussed with the seriousness of chess.
The wet floor reflects fluorescent light. Rubber boots make a particular sound. I walk slowly — not to shop efficiently, but to listen.
I come for vocabulary — the words people use when they are not performing for an audience. Hokkien numbers shouted across stalls. Malay names for herbs I cannot spell. English mixed with gesture when the exact word slips.
The auntie at the vegetable stall remembers I always ask for extra kang kong. She does not know I write. She knows I pay in exact change on Tuesdays. That is a relationship too.
Nothing here becomes a publishable essay every week. Most mornings I carry home eggs and a sentence fragment — "the orchid seller counts change with wet hands" — that sits in my phone notes for months before finding a home.
When a draft feels too clean, too written, I come back here. Markets refuse polish. Fish scales on the counter. Price stickers curling in humidity. The city as it is, not as a brochure wants it.