That Little Space...

It was a little enclave situated above the room, accessible via a small winding wooden staircase from the room itself.

Two concrete walls bounded the left and right faces of the enclave, painted with a thick coat of pastel yellow. The back wall was all but a piece of dark glass, opaque and slightly ominous in the night. The front face had no wall, only a piece of see-through glass one inch thick and standing waist-high.

Two rattan deck chairs took up half of the space in the enclave, the half which was nearer to the stairs. A jacuzzi sat in the other half of the space. A small cavity in the ground, set amidst the wooden floorboards.

Mosaic tiles of varying shades of blue lined the entire jacuzzi. Tiny tiny lights were set within some of the tiles, changing colours in a synchronized rhythm, pulsating from purple to blue to green to yellow to orange to red to pink and then to purple again. Colours of the rainbow.

An open-air shower was set in a corner near the jacuzzi, lined with similar blue tiles. The same tiny lights in the jacuzzi also lined the base of the shower, changing colours ever so often. It was a rain shower that was installed. Big, round and definitely inviting.

There wasn’t really a roof or a ceiling. Wooden slates set two inches apart from the next one ran along each other across half the space, over the two rattan chairs. There was no roofing at all over the jacuzzi area.

A lone balding frangipani tree stood in a far corner, its branches trailing on the top edge of the glass balcony wall. Stray white flowers tinged with pink lay scattered on the floorboards around the tree. Dead leaves dotted the ground around the tree as well, making light scratchy sounds whenever the breeze blew stronger.

A single yellow light shone from its mounted rack above the tree. And another was mounted just above the shower. Each cast a warm swath of orangey light across the whole area. Shadows danced away in murky areas where the light rays fell short of.

And of course, there was the moon, sitting fat and rotund amongst a flutter of clouds in the night sky. Its milky rays seeped through the gaps between the wooden roof slates, illuminating those beneath with its slivers of light.

There in that little enclave we sat next to each other in the middle of the night. Each stretched out on a rattan deck chair. Each ensconced within a bubble of self-thought.

Music emanated from the laptop which he brought along. The likes of Jay Chou, Snow Petrol, David Tao and Green Day spewed forth from its speakers.

It was tranquil though. Save for the occasional bout of laughter which could be heard from the café 8 storeys below. And save for the occasional blare of a ship horn which punctuated the air with a sudden outburst.

Oh yes, the horizon was dotted with ships. Big ones and small ones. Long ones and shorter ones. Each only a speck of slow-moving orange light in the distance.

Sitting there and staring out at the dark sea carrying its load of ships, it felt peaceful. It was a little nostalgic. It was a little out of the world. Time seemed in control of itself and there seemed not to be any worries in the world.

There was a breeze, albeit a gentle one. And it carried with it a strange mix of night smells, the wilted aroma of dank flowers and bushes and the sticky saltiness from the sea.

It was a spoiler not to have had wine with us that night. We made do with what we could find earlier in the night. And we were sipping Jolly Shandy in champagne glasses. What an irony. Oh well. Life and its ironies.

We sat for quite awhile and only moved back downstairs to the room when it got too chilly for comfort. Oh, how nice it would be too to have a room or a balcony as such in my own home….It would be my favourite chill-out area…..