63. A Jack Russell made the bean curd man smile

No doubt, he made excellent bean curd and I had patronised his stall many times. He has a steady stream of buyers. He closes the stall in the afternoon.
Each time he or his wife would ask what I would be ordering. No smile and no remembrance of my order. I was a non-entity to him. Faceless and nondescript.

A slim man in his fifties. His wife was slim too. No small conversation as he dispensed the bean curd in a bowl and collected his 40 cents. Another customer would be waiting. Most would buy the bean curd home. He dispenses the bean curd into plastic bags, pour in the syrup and twist the rubber band to seal the bags.

One weekday morning I asked him, "Why do you open your stall half a day?"

The bean curd man said, "I start work at 2.30 a.m. I have to grind the Canadian-imported beans to prepare the bean curd. It is too tiring to work the whole day."

"How long since you open this stall?" I asked this man as I perceived that he was in a rut and was not enjoying his trade.

"Since I completed my National Service full-time some 30 years ago!"

I was impressed that he stuck to this trade for so many years.

"Why don't you do other business?" I asked.

He said, "I did MLM (Multiple Level Marketing) selling health products. I could earn as much as $4,000 a month but my downline of agents were not productive. So I gave up the MLM as it took a lot of time."

I doubt that honest money can be earned so easily but I did not say so.

"What business are you in?" the bean curd man suddenly asked me.

I said, "I am a veterinarian in Lorong 8 Industrial Park in Toa Payoh."

The bean curd man smiled, "Do you remember vaccinating a Jack Russell? My second son brought the dog to your Surgery."

"Sorry, I can't remember as there are too many Jack Russells. Did he cycle to the Surgery as that was one young man who did it.

"No," the bean curd shook his head.



"How did you all toilet train the puppy?"

"This puppy is just too active," the bean curd man's eyes widened and shone, "Running in and out. Here and there in the apartment like a sports car. He was peeing all over the apartment during the first few days. We put him inside the crate with pee pans below the flooring.

He paused and his facial muscles relaxed into a smile. "Later on, he went to the newspapers on a pee pan and pee there." the bean curd man recalled the actions and nonsenses he had to put up with the high dynamo.

That was good news. The bean curd man had 2 sons and they were working. The younger one was the one who bought the Jack Russell puppy. The bean curd could not talk more because more walk-in customers came in. It was the antics of a Jack Russell puppy that brought out his smiles of happiness when we talked.