The kettle reaches its first boil and I turn it off, then on again — a habit I picked up from an uncle who insisted the second boil sweetens the water for kopi. Whether that is chemistry or ceremony I cannot say, and I no longer ask. It is early February, still dark enough that the corridor lights outside my flat have not timed off, and I am walking down to the kopitiam near Clementi market because the queue has not yet formed and the uncle behind the counter still has time to talk.
Clementi at this hour is a sequence of small openings: shutters lifted halfway, the wet market floor hosed down, the smell of detergent and coffee overlapping. I pass the void deck where an auntie has already claimed a corner table with her radio low. The MRT is running but I did not take it; these twenty minutes of walking are part of the meal.
At the counter I order kopi si kosong the way I always do — not because other drinks are worse, but because habits are a kind of map. The uncle pours with a wrist motion that looks practised but probably took years. Steam rises between us. He asks after my mother in the generic way stallholders use when they mean "whoever you belong to," and I answer in the generic way that keeps the morning gentle.
The table I choose faces the market steps without being in the path of delivery trolleys. An old man reads the papers without turning pages; perhaps he is re-reading, perhaps he is using the print as a screen for thought. I open my notebook and write one line about the second boil, then cross it out, then write it again because crossing out is also part of writing.
By the time the cup is half empty, the queue has begun — office workers, a student with headphones, a couple arguing softly about whether to share a plate. I do not begrudge them their urgency. I simply note that I arrived before it, which is the entire point of these early walks: to have a few minutes that belong to no schedule but my own.
The market steps are slick under the soles of my sandals. A cleaner moves down them with practiced steps, hose in hand, the water running into a drain I have never looked into. I finish the kopi, return the cup, thank the uncle. The walk home is brighter now — the sun not yet harsh, the HDB blocks catching a pink edge along their balconies.
Back upstairs I fill the kettle again out of reflex. The second boil happens in my own kitchen this time. I stand by the window and watch laundry on a neighbour's rail lift slightly in the breeze. Nothing I write later will matter to anyone but me, and that is the freedom of the hour. The note exists because the morning did.
Before I close the notebook I add the date in the corner — 14 February — and underline it once. February mornings in Clementi carry a particular coolness that March will soften. I want the page to remember that too.