He was Cinderella. Through the prosaic banality of daily chores, he found a relief from the exile imposed by boredom. As he posted the letters, his mind would dive through the slots into the dark interior of the ubiquitous white boxes, finding themselves magically transported on the next working day to destinations he could only dream about, par avion.
As he topped up each bus card, each green lighting signalling a succesful transaction was a miracle of a myriad of electromagnetic '1's and '0's, yes and nos, love mes and love-me-nots. The pork told of its arduous journey across oceans, and the eggs the more modest stories of daily lorry rides, and tales of desperation, falling on deaf ears, at the oppression occuring every day at the concentration camps run by Seng Choon. The laundry told of the rough-and-tumble of life and the stories of rags-to-riches. The room was vacuumed with totalitarian efficiency as each square inch of carpet was gone over, and over again, overlapping to make sure there were no survivors left. But inevitably, the diaspora would never be eradicated, and the winds of migration would always ensure an interminable problem. The floor was mopped and as each cement patch stained darker and darker, the area under his dominion faded and faded, and the forces of malcontent and cleanliness slowly encroached, until at last he had only one leg to stand on. His work gave him his identity, as Marx said it would.

When he was done, the television would usually transport him to a new world, a world of reality. A world where love existed, where sons took revenge for their fathers, and elections were won and lost by a matter of votes. A world his masters inhabited,a world where the waltzess was waiting at the ball, a world where hands were smooth and silky and pumpkins could be turned into a Porsche 911, because pumpkins earned money and money bought Porches.

In his microcosmic view of the world, all these concepts were hardly comprehensible. Of infinity and light-years and Sputniks
he didn't know, nor did he care. In his veil of ignorance and apathy, Orion was a hunter who wore a belt. He had 7 sisters whom their dad had christened Pleaides who chose to dwell, close to each other, and amuse each other with their effeminate charms in the corner of the celestial hemisphere. His arrow pointed North to guide the Bedouins, and towards the twin peaks of Cassiopeia, which was later appropriated as a good sobriquet for a PDA. Even the twins of Gemini ignored him, terrified because Orion wanted to play Red Indian and they weren't ready to be cowboys, because guns weren't invented yet. So Orion stood proudly erect in the center of the cosmos, yet even the glory was not to be his. Sirius was smarter and brighter, and if you looked closely you would see 2 big shining eyes, the symbol of the intellect that was ruling the universe of the night. Canopus and Archenar equally defiant in their red fury, strode to his South, with the result that Orion although in the center, seemed to be caught withing a circle playing monkey, with everyone's blaming gaze on him.