At about 5pm I take the umbrella out again and walk down to the markets in my rubber boots, sloshing through the sudden laneway cascades, thinking of our new house. I’m trying to remember what it looked like on the day of the inspection. Certainly nothing like this. Then I land on a strip of Asian noddle joints, no Anglo menus in any of them, all equally safe and anonymous. A kind of typhoon season electricity in the air, the avenue of markets producing a steamed tunnel effect, each of the noodle joints shielded by corrugated iron, their front street-sides open, bustling with heat and soup and gristle at practically any time of the day. With its proximity to the wharves, and increases in trans-Asian migrations, Aramis is now a brimming mini-city building itself up, storey by storey, laneway by street, one external air conditioning unit at a time. Proximity, too, to the Western Metropoles, the steel ways and the Free Cities, their rich detritus.
