I needed replacement bulbs for the kitchen — nothing poetic, just two screw-fit warm whites that the hardware uncle on Havelock Road keeps in a drawer behind the batteries. The errand should have taken twelve minutes. It took twenty-seven because I allowed distractions that were more interesting than bulbs.
First distraction: an elderly man comparing fan remote prices with the seriousness of a jeweller assessing stones. Second: a child practising times tables aloud while waiting for her mother at the photocopy shop. Third: the uncle himself, who insisted I take the slightly more expensive bulb because it would survive the kitchen heat two months longer. He may have been selling. He may have been caring. In Havelock those motives often share a counter.
I paid, tucked the bulbs into my tote, and walked back toward Chin Swee without checking my phone once. The tote also held onions I did not plan to buy and a free calendar I will never hang. Small errand, small surplus. The bulbs fit perfectly. The kitchen tonight is warmer in colour than yesterday — a change no visitor would notice, which makes it entirely mine.
People speak of efficiency as virtue. This errand argues gently for the opposite — for the margin where time loosens and you notice the child stumbling on seven-times-eight and the uncle's advice about heat. Nothing worth publishing except here, in a diary that specialises in nothing worth publishing.