Nighthawks at the Diner

I still remember that when I was on that crazy 10km hike in the middle of the night. It was a tradition that all the sec 3 ppl in that crazy uniform group had to hike from a certain girl's school to East Coast Park, and set up a tent there and spend the night there till morning. I don't know if they still have that tradition, but these days, some people actually live in tents on East Coast Park.

I had walked past a diner. I can't remember which – was it McDonald's? Burger King? It seemed like such a wonderful vision to me at first. Me and a few friends, hanging out at one of those booths. I don't know – was I trying to recreate those moments over and over again? 

There was a period in my life when I actually tried to be a McDonald's kid. I was 30 by then. I would just buy a medium coke, and sit there with a book for hours. I don't really know why now, looking back at it. I think back then I lacked a larger sense of purpose. All I knew was that I had a job, and I didn't have to worry about it. Back then, quite possibly, the only thought on my mind was escape. Maybe I just liked being in a comfortable position. Now that I'm even older than that, I think back and I wonder, what was I thinking? I could have been doing something that had some positive consequences in my life, and I didn't do anything. Well I got some knowledge from books. I treaded water. I don't know.... 

Then I actually went to America, the land where you had all these diners. I liked going there. I liked drinking coffee, eating bacon and eggs. I did that a lot. It was great for the first few times, until something seeped into me. The emotional coldness of the whole thing started to eat into me. I'd be alone, somebody who I didn't care about, would never see again, would be filling up my coffee. For a while, it felt great to be quaffing down the pancakes, even though you knew the syrup was nothing but empty calories. 

And the waitresses … I don't know.. I hardly made small talk with them. I could never relate to them. The only thing I cared about was getting a second or third refill of coffee. Maybe that was back in the first decade of me drinking coffee for fun, when somehow it was the most wonderful thing ever invented. 

Maybe books were fun because back then I was dating – over the internet, of course – a girl who also loved books. Maybe I discovered books around the same time that I discovered romance. Maybe I spent a life time trying to convince myself that I loved books and studying, and for an all too brief moment, everything clicked. Maybe that was the first time that a few things came together in a nicely bundled package – a steady job, a few years in a gothic architecture wonderland that was Snowy Hill, a love of books. I was sold on the university dream. 

And maybe the diner was a wonderful dream, because it was the end of me being cooped up in the house with my parents. It smelled like something that I had been deprived of for a long time. It was a bright light in the middle of the night. 

Diners in America are single storey buildings, with a large signboard, which basically are advertisements for the highway. You can't get more 20th century than that. You slowed down on the main road, and then looked for somewhere to turn in. I remember going back to America during my trip across the continent, and somehow I just wanted to go into a KFC, a Jack in the Box, an In n Out and a Popeye's. Somehow, it just seemed like a pilgrimage that I had to take. 

And somehow, that area – which was basically Kallang – ended up being a place that the last 10 km of the marathon snaked through... it was the most dreadful part of my marathon, the hell that I had to go through in order to claim my finisher's medal. I don't know if that factors into that. 

What I did like during my first working years, at the factory, was sitting at a cafe and ordering a cake or a pie, and eating it. Or sometimes it would be an ice cream. Somehow I just liked going to all the ice cream spots and thought nothing of dumping $5 on a single or double scoop, and sit there and go my way through a book. I could go to a place that had soft serves. I remember that when meeting up with some of my old classmates, I even brought them some ice cream, even though it was half melted by the time I got through with that. 

I don't know if that dream went away. All I know is that by the time I went to live in Mexico, it stopped being attractive for me to while away my time in the interior of a restaurant. Of course, I would be searching through the pages of yelp, and trying to find this or that barbeque place. But possibly I had too much of a sense of purpose to want that. No, I never wanted to be in a tavern, and I didn't really sign up for that. And all the coffee shops were closed by nightfall. And I seldom got up early enough to spend my morning in a coffee shop. Sometimes I went for super early breakfast at the broken yolk, but that was about it. In America, you could go to one of those diners late at night, and there'd be one or two of those homeless people. And for all you know, the waitress serving you could be homeless herself, spitting in your food, whatever. 

Some things would still be great for me. For example, sitting down at a kopitiam and eating a good meal. But that's somehow different. 

The pandemic has basically destroyed the possibility of me sitting down at a restaurant. It's going to be quite a while before I go back to doing that. I was out and about during the weekend, jogging to a shopping mall where I used to go to frequently. I was alarmed to see a few upmarket coffee joints packed with people. Not really packed, but with people sitting there and chilling for hours. It was terribly alarming.