The uncle at the kopitiam always boils the water twice. I noticed it last year and I notice it every time now, the way you notice a neighbour's habit once someone points at it. First boil: clatter of cups, steam that fogs the menu taped to the wall. Second boil: quieter, almost private, as if the kopi socks need a gentler persuasion. I come down before seven because the block is still forgiving then — fewer doors, softer footsteps, the corridor gate clicking once and not again for a while.
Jalan Rajah in the morning has its own grammar. The coffee shop under my block smells of butter and burnt sugar and something metallic from the old fan above the counter. I take the table near the pillar, not because it is best but because the light falls on the Formica in a way that makes reading possible without squinting. The uncle knows my order without me speaking: kopi si kosong, soft egg if they still have them, and he never asks whether I am eating here or taking away because the answer has been the same since March.
I write on the back of a receipt sometimes, which feels less formal than a notebook in a place where everyone is trying to start their day without performing. Today the receipt is from yesterday's marketing run — a shop in Balestier, nothing to do with this paragraph — and I flatten it with my palm until the crease behaves. The pen skips on the glossy part. I move to the matte edge where the ink catches properly.
What I am trying to capture is smaller than a story. The second boil sounds different from the first — lower, slower, as if the kettle has understood what it is for. The uncle pours with his wrist at a angle I have tried to copy at home and failed. My kettle at home boils once and shouts about it. His boils twice and whispers. There is a lesson in that if you are the kind of person who hunts for lessons; I am trying not to be that person on this table.
Outside, a bus passes without stopping. Someone opens the void deck door and the morning air moves — not cool, not yet, but less heavy than it will be at ten. An auntie asks the uncle whether the toast is ready and he answers with a number of minutes that sounds like a promise he intends to keep. I drink the kopi while it is still hot enough to matter. The egg arrives with a tiny spoon I never use; I tap the shell with the back of the spoon out of habit learned from my mother, who believed the first crack should be soundless.
By the time I finish, the kopitiam has filled by half — school shoes, delivery bags, two men in office shirts reading phones without tasting what is in front of them. I pay and the uncle nods the way he always does, neither warm nor cold, just accurate. I walk back to the lift with the receipt folded in my pocket and the paragraph mostly intact. The second boil, I think, is when things become drinkable. The first boil is only preparation. I do not know if that is true for tea socks or for mornings or for sentences that arrive too eager. I only know I wrote this in one sitting because the kopi was still warm and the table was still mine.
That is the whole scrap.