Elder Mr Liu’s chickens were free roaming souls. They would wander around his house and on the nearby pathways and wander back into his compound in the afternoons. During one of those days when I was staying in his house, one of his chickens did not make its way back. Elder Mr Liu went out to have a look but could not find it. He talked about it the next day and said he wondered which neighbour had stolen his chicken. In Singapore we grew up using the Malay phrase “curi ayam” which mean steal someone’s chicken, literally, or steal someone’s girlfriend or wife, figuratively. Today I have seen a real literal case of “curi ayam”.
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