Pausing in Puchong

Straw stabs through plastic membrane,  milky tea bleeds down container, stains Cambodian white cotton.

I sit futilly dabbing with wet wipe while the excitement of black 'pearls' disappears amidst the constant car drone outside.

It is a pearl milk tea day in Puchong. Shops change their faces quicker than fading hollywood starlets. Coffee houses rise like Reggie Perrin only to fade like him too. Tea rules.  Coffee shops gone. The delicate sound of bandsaws lingers like a midnight mosquito gnawing at my Tuesday morning.

I suck the black 'pearls' like so many peas into my childhood peashooter, before the days of digital games, computers or mobile phones. Essex memories bully their fluffy dice way into my tiring expat consciousness. I mentally shoot all those past friends whose fingers never reach keyboards to send warming emails, and remember all the mails that slip into junk mail to be silent forever in the digital void.

My expatness sometimes cloys, a reminder of my tentative position in my chosen country. There is a constant reminder of my increasing Englishness, the internationalist fading with each year I remain swathed in equatorial heat. Teaching only emphasizes this.

It's a typical sultry day, all half sun and soaring humidity. Puchong asserts its double-parked ambience into my not exactly silent mileau.

Traffic cop draws pad to treaten SUV driver who dashes to rescue their car, drive off to further illicit parking venues not passing go and not collecting £200. Her Cambodian book closed, her H/Blend Coffee -H Hot is left forlornly on the scrubbed wooden table. She has a slight return to curbside parking, while I finish my writing and leave Chatime, taking her half finished coffee to her.