what they're doing here- yu-mei balasingamchow

Comfort in routine/ Sense of routine destroyed

"As usual, Atiqah and Zul set out before dawn after they had completed the subuh prayer and kissed the sleeping Nurul goodbye.Atiqah usually liked the quiet morning commute with her husband: the unhurried walk through the cool, unsunned air, the easy ride on a not-too-crowded bus. " "After five years, the routine felt reassuringly mundane, the rhythm of life in place." "Today though, she walked faster than she needed to, leaving Zul to lag behind. She would do everything faster today , she decided, and when she reached the stall, she accelerated into a non-stop flurry of chopping,slicing,frying,stirring,more slicing,chopping, flouring and seasoning, simmering and straining,then serving,scooping,bagging,and packing when customers began to arrive for breakfast." "Atiqah and Zul could get up in the morning and do, together, every day, knowing that the stall would be there, the food would be cooked,the customers would come, and by the end of the day , there would be money,not a lot, but enough in their bank account, and the next day they could wake up and do the same things all over again." "Atiqah missed being at home in the afternoons when Nurul got home from school,when the girl would tell them about what she had been up to with her friends, or ask Atiqah and Zul to play with her before she had to do her homework."

Sense of resilience/perseverance

"They started visiting prospective stalls the following week. In the mornings they worked as usual, and in the afternoons, after closing their stall, they changed into clean clothes and went looking at hawker centres and coffee shops in Ang Mio Kio or nearby estates. It wasn't easy to find stalls within their budget, and sometimes they were turned away because the coffee shop

Past informing their presen

ATIQAH "Her hair bunned neatly under her hairnet even though she had been working all morning." "When Mr Tan mentioned the exact amount, it felt like the time someone had shoved one of those metal airplane meal carts into her ribs." "Her neatly shaped toenails, immaculately painted in bright red, no one would believe that she had been a Singapore Girl either-not with her chipped fingernails, not the way she was slouching against her narrow,banana-yellow plastic bench ,wearing a food-stained Bossini t shirt and comfortable,but hardly fashionable ,cargo pants." "She was tired of the novelty of changing into a nice outfit after work. But she kept at it. It's just like wearing the SQ uniform." "For Atiqah, a little makeup, but not too much, and a quick dash of lipstick, which she could still apply impeccably without needing to look in a mirror. Clean ,smart clothes, the kind that she rarely wore after she stopped flying , but not too well-dressed in case the landlord jacked up his asking price." "(new stall) Atiqah feel as if she was insulated and floating above everything ,disembodied high up in the sky" "(SEES A SIA PLANE) And to all Singaporeans and residents of Singapore, welcome home, she said to herself." "Very firmly and politely talking to the landlord as if he was a passenger who has asked for too much alcohol from the airline beverage trolley."

Unpredictability/Un-certainty of being an entrepreneur

Mr Tan (Landlord): "Announced that he would be increasing the rent." "He was going to renovate the coffee shop, smarten it up , and install new fans, television sets and furniture to make it more modern and comfortable. All the stalls would have illuminated signs with photographs, not just plain lettering on a coloured background as they did now" "Would be five hundred dollars more than what they were paying at the moment, which was the amount they usually managed to save every month. Atiqah and zul: "Difficult to imagine that he had been a factory engineer with a promising career, until several years ago, when he had been retrenched during a 'corporate restructuring exercise'." "When Atiqah quit flying five years ago, they were going to use the bonus from her job to start a catering business, they were going to build something bigger than this dark,cloistered hawker stall...," "But the business didn't work out as they planned" atiqah: Pg155 "after the hospital visit last year" Pg153"The voice that had steadied her through their heartbreaking visit to the hospital last year." Pg158 "If I didn't quit SQ, if I took another five-year contract, it would be ending this month, with my bonus and everything. You were so tired, he reminded her. I'm tired now too. We're both tired. We'll start again tomorrow." Pg160 hinting at miscarriage/infertility "I wish Nurul had someone to play with. Maybe if I had quit earlier..."