Tropical Dawn

"Did you hear the cock crow?" Mum asked as I emerged from the air-conditioned bedroom. I shook my head as I breathed in the balmy air that permeated the rest of the un-climate-controlled house. I had been listening intently to Amy Tan and Joan Chen dramatically reading the former's book, "The Bonesetter's Daughter", on my iPOD. At that moment, I felt somewhat sheepish about forgetting to listen for the "welcome home" greeting of our neighbor's fiesty chicken. In an attempt to redeem what I had missed, I paused to discern the familiar sounds of dawn in the tropical suburban neighborhood. The trills, chirps, and hollow "coke coke coke" of resident early-morning birds suddenly filled the air, punctuated with the playful "cak cak cak!" of a house gecko -- or "zee-zak", as we call them in Malay -- roaming the walls of my childhood home.