The Big Clean-Up

Or 'cover-up' (and a good reason not to be home this evening).

Apparently there's going to be a visit by an imminent person to our block (our block! Ours! The honour! [turn off sarcasm]) as part of the dude's official duties, the first I've heard of since he took over the running of our ward after same lines were re-drawn at the last, um, elections.

I know this because a flyer was stuffed into the grilles of our gate informing us of it, and the cleaners that, one night before, have begun cleaning up most of flat's visible surfaces. When the missus and I got back yesterday afternoon, Lift A stunk of one-day old refuse, and the same dickwad who'd been spraying the floor of the lifts with water left in his water-bottle (and on other days, leftovers from his Coke can) had struck again. When I left for dinner with her dad in Little India (missus already left earlier for a meeting then to dinner), there was already one cleaner hard at work, mopping the floor of the lift lobby and by the time we got back from the same dinner, Lift A was clean and smelt vaguely of stale pine.

Even as I type this, I hear the guys who go floor to floor cleaning them with their high-powered hoses are going about their rounds. This, despite the fact, they were just here on Saturday. And it's a fortnight before they were supposed to come back.


Just to think, it was last week at a family dinner that someone suggested that Ministers should take public transportation at least once in their exalted lives to see how the common people lived in their country. I said: yeah, they'd do that, but their PAs and their SOs, and whoever else works in their office, will let slip their intentions to the dudes at SBS or SMRT, who'd then brief their drivers immediately, clean out at least half their fleet of trains and buses (and spray some sort sweet-smelling scent into the air). On the big day, SOs will stand around the VIP at the bus stops trying to remain incognito, while keeping passers-by a safe distance from their wards, and then be the first to board the bus to check out the passengers already on it then allow said VIP to board finally. There will be a strange lack of traffic on the roads at 8.30 in the morning, because somewhere out in front, there are 4 motorcycles on outrider duty. No, I said, it just makes things really, really inconvenient for the rest of us. No thanks. Let them dwell in their lofty castles and never come to where we are.

Which is why I won't be home tonight.