Kowloon Auspicious Noodles

玩法 The work

You make noodles in a ground-floor room off the dark lanes. Every day you walk the maze from your cubicle to the workshop: mix the dough, press it through the rolls into a band, fold it and roll it thinner pass by pass, cut it at the table into cakes, and take them out on trays to the car that waits in the alley. Full trays on the trolley and the car pays more.

The recipe is chalked on the wall by the mixer, and a card in the corner of your eye says what comes next until you know it. How good the noodles are is in your hands: the measure of the mix, how long it turns, the folds, how thin you dare go in one pass, the starch, the weight of each cake. The machines forgive a slow man and catch out a hurried one.

Flour never runs out. Eggs do: any shop sells duck eggs by the flat, and the boy runs them round to the workshop — buy twenty and you'll be climbing over them. A sheet of paper under the cakes on a tray is a nicety that is paid for: buy brown paper, pick up an old newspaper, or tear a poster off a wall. Lose a tool and the tuck shop sells another; you carry it back yourself.

Nothing has to be done in a fixed order, and nothing you put down in the wrong place is lost: the thing the dot is on is the thing your hand takes. If the mixer, the rolls, the board, the tin, a rod or a lump of dough has gone wrong, hold E on it for three seconds: what it has in hand is thrown out and that one thing stands ready again. A batch is over when nothing of it is left in the works.

The car throws your money out of the window at your feet — more cakes and better ones, more money. It all goes on the heap at home; take cash from any heap before you go out. The shops and the cats only see what's in your pocket.

按鍵 Keys

Tidying: find a sponge, wet it at any tap, hold click on a tag and keep the mouse moving. Bag rubbish from the sacks by the skips.

清潔 Cleaning and putting right

Any surface in the city can be cleaned: dust first, then washed, then polished to a shine. Hold click with a mop, sponge, broom or vacuum in your hand and keep the mouse moving; walk as you go; tap to put the thing down. The harder you scrub, the faster it comes. Dirt you remove stays removed.

Detergent is the quick way to see what is under the dirt: hold click with the bottle over a stain and a capful goes straight onto it. It fizzes, it lies there working, and a mop — even a dry one — then lifts it off down to the clean tile. A capful in the bucket does the same for every dip.

The mop is a head of cotton strands, and it cleans where the strands lie. Hold click and the mouse swings the head about: it trails, it lags when sodden, and a hard flick back the other way lifts it and slaps it down — which shifts stubborn dirt. Strands lying in water drink it.

Mop and bucket for floors and as high up a wall as you can reach. Fill the bucket at any tap, add detergent, dip the mop (click the bucket), and empty the bucket down a drain when the water turns black. E stands the mop in the bucket so you can carry both. Sponge for close work. The broom that leans in the corner behind the workshop's cutting table takes what is loose and dry, flour and trimmings, a stroke at a time (click that corner again to lean it back). Vacuum for dust, dry, and for anything small and loose on the ground: butts, scraps, an empty packet. Polish is for what is already washed: rub a dab onto the surface straight from the tin (hold click), or work it into a mop or sponge, then buff with something dry; it takes out the scratches and brings up the shine. Ground-in stains want detergent: pour it straight onto the dirt and mop it off. A patch where the tiles are gone is not a stain, and only new tiles and mortar mend it.

The machines gather flour, dried dough and grease with every batch, and their bearings run dry. A tin by the cutting table holds a scraper, two brushes, rags, metal polish and an oil can. Stand it beside you, or carry it, and hold click on any piece of a machine: he takes whatever that piece wants and works it while the mouse moves. Nothing depends on it.

Water: mop a puddle up, wring the mop into the bucket, tip it down a drain. It comes back while its leak runs: a weeping pipe joint or a dripping tap wants a wrench (pipe tape will do for a joint), water through concrete wants mortar. Aim anywhere along the drip. Missing tiles want a box of tiles in your hand and a tub of mortar beside you.

Rats: bait a trap with peanut butter, set it down and walk away. Take the body out and put it in a bin or a skip, or the others eat it. Tipped cats help, but a fed cat wants a rest. Clearing rubbish starves the colony. Keep at it for long enough and there are none.

The tuck shop sells all of it; some lies about for the finding. People notice.

邊度搵 Where things are

The tuck shop (士多, on the main ground lane) sells everything: detergent, polish, mop, bucket, sponge, vacuum, traps, peanut butter, pipe tape, mortar, tiles. Its list runs to three pages: press 0 for the next.

The store room, top floor, on your way to work: out of your flat, to the end of the corridor, round the corner into the white-tiled corridor, and it is the open doorway on the left. A box of tiles, a tub of mortar, a tin of polish, a roll of pipe tape.

The nook with the crates, first floor: from the top of the stairs that come up from the main lane, turn left, and it is the first opening on the right. Another box of tiles and tub of mortar.

Detergent: a bottle inside the gate of your workshop, beside the bucket and mop; two more in the public toilets off the main lane, by the basins. Vacuum, two traps, peanut butter: on the floor of your flat. Buckets and mops: by the skip near your workshop, and at the well. Pipe tape, a bucket, a trap: by the other skip, on the main lane. Wrenches: three or four lie about where somebody gave up on the plumbing — under a hydrant, at the foot of a riser, by a tap — in different places every life; the tuck shop sells one too.

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