Saturday markets test discipline. I tell myself I will buy only what is on the mental list — eggs, fruit, something green — and then I reach Teck Whye and remember there is one stall I always stop at, even when the queue is three people deep and I am already late for a haircut I will reschedule anyway.
The stall is nothing photogenic in the influencer sense — plastic basins, handwritten prices, wet floor, the honest chaos of produce that arrived hours ago and will be gone by noon. The auntie who runs it recognises my reusable bag and my inability to resist kai lan when it looks lively. She talks while she packs, short sentences about rain tomorrow, about her nephew's exams, about how the mangoes this week are "not bad" which from her is high praise.
I come for reliability. The tofu is firm without being smug. The chillies are fresh enough to make you cough once when you sniff — respect. The eggs are stacked with care, not thrown. In a neighbourhood with plenty of options, habit is its own vote. I have tried other stalls. I return here because she never makes me feel stupid for asking what something is called in English when my mother tongue word fails me.
Today she slipped an extra spring onion bundle into my bag — "for soup," she said, though I had not mentioned soup. Maybe she saw my face and diagnosed comfort food need. I paid, thanked her, stepped aside for the next customer, an uncle who already knew his order by number of gestures.
Teck Whye on Saturdays smells like fruit skin and floor wash. Bags rustle. Someone always argues gently about parking. I walked the rest of the market with my heavier bag and lighter mood — the small lift you get when a familiar face treats you like a regular, not a transaction.
At home I unpacked slowly, lining items on the counter like evidence of a good decision. Kai lan first. Eggs nested in their tray. Chillies in a bowl because I forget paper bags leak. The extra spring onion went into a pot that evening and tasted like permission to cook without a recipe.
I will go back next Saturday. Probably with a list I half follow. Probably with the same queue wait. The stall is not a secret — nothing here is — but it is mine in the way routines become personal landmarks. Teck Whye has many aisles. I always find this one.
That night I texted my sister a photo of the soup pot — not the stall, not the auntie, just steam and green onions — and she replied with a thumbs-up and a question about whether I finally learned to bruise chillies properly. Family keeps you honest about cooking claims. The soup was decent. The morning market run was better.
Some habits look like laziness from outside: same stall, same bag, same route. From inside they feel like continuity — a thread you can pull when the week gets loud. Teck Whye does not need my poetry. It needs my return business and my please-and-thank-you. I can manage both.