Jet lag had me awake at five, so I did the thing I always claim I will do: walked to the wet market at opening.
The vegetable stall nearest the entrance is run by a couple who, at 5:50 am, have already been working for two hours. The crates were stacked in an order that was clearly a system — not alphabetical, not by color, but by some logic of what the 6 am customers buy versus the 8 am customers. When I asked, the husband explained without stopping his hands: early customers are restaurant people, they buy in bulk from the front. Later customers are grandmothers, they inspect everything, so the inspectable stuff goes at browsing height. The stall is a database and the interface is optimized per user segment.
Nobody taught them the vocabulary. The vocabulary would only slow them down.
Half of what gets called strategy in meetings is done wordlessly at 5:50 am by people arranging crates.
Other observations from the hour: the fish seller's daughter doing homework on an upturned styrofoam box, laminated in the smell of the sea. Tea in a jar the size of a small aquarium. A regular who was handed her exact usual bundle before she said a word — the transaction taking four seconds, built on four hundred previous transactions.
By 7:30 the market was loud and ordinary and I went home. But the version of the neighborhood I saw before sunrise is the load-bearing one. Everything visible at noon rests on it.
I bought scallions I did not need. It felt wrong to take notes for free.