Kopitiam Command Centre – One Shot Story

Shot on Kodak Gold 200 film, on a Yashica 35 GSN. Disclosure, I did straighten the photo digitally, because of the life of me it appears I can’t take a straight photograph.

We are often drawn to the grand statements, the spotless new appliances, the gleaming glass clad buildings, yet, recently I stumbled into an aging coffee shop (locally known as a Kopitiam, literally coffeshop) and was immediately confronted by this humble, scarred piece of infrastructure.

On this simple wooden board lies the very control centre for surviving the equatorial climate. Each dial, perhaps controlling an individual fan battling the tropical air, speaks to me of a story of focused, persistent effort. Bearing the marks of countless adjustments over decades, these dials are not just mechanisms, but a visual catalogue of shared human effort. The remind me of the daily, necessary fight against the relentless humidity and heat (a struggle I can assure you is very real here in Singapore), a gentle but essential war waged long before the luxury of affordable air conditioning became common. This manual, visible, and faintly inefficient system reminded me that life’s most essential comforts are often the quiet result of persistent, unglamorous work. There is a deep, peculiar beauty in this kind of endurance, a silent reassurance that simple, reliable things can indeed hold the centre together when the world outside feels overwhelmingly complex.

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