New Year’s Eve Misadventure

Seriously, it’s quite hard to believe, but unplanned as it really was, Rebecca & I had actually managed to do something very different this New Year’s Eve - We got ourselves lost! Lost in Telok Kurau!

This adventure began after we had a simple dinner at Parkway Parade food-court & I accompanied Rebecca to buy a set of PE attire, as she had to take weekly PE lessons next year. I thought it’s quite a good change of environment for her (instead of taking on another heavy teaching subject), instead of just teaching in the classroom & doing miscellaneous work in the staff room.

I decided to give myself a New Year’s gift by buying a book from MPH bookstore. It’s a military book about the true account of the Black Hawk Down pilot who was shot down, captured & tortured in Somali.

A few weeks earlier, I had also bought another military book about the true account of an Underwater Demolitions Team member who founded the US Navy SEAL team. This book was an account of his life in the US Navy, before he was accepted into the Navy’s Special Forces, trained several forms of special warfare programs & also his account of how he operated in his three tours of duty in the dangerous jungles during the Vietnam War.

My interest in reading military books was renewed when I re-read one of the military books that I bought about a year back. The only difference is this book is a fictional story & it’s about a US Navy SEAL team’s covert operation that turned tragedy. Fictional stories are fine with me, coz I also read fiction military books by the famous author Andy McNab, as well as Tom Clancy. Although my personal preference would still lie in true accounts of military wars & soldiers.

Anyway, back to the main theme of this Blog entry…

I started to feel bored after buying our things at Parkway & started to feel listless about the ‘unhappening’ way that we are celebrating the cross-over to the New Year, so Rebecca suggested that we take a stroll to the Marine Parade library to see if it’s open. I thought that it should be closed since it’s the eve of a public holiday… but we decided to give it a try, nonetheless. I thought that even if it was really closed, at least we had a short stroll after dinner.

As expected, the library was dark & closed… even though we could feel cold air con blowing out from the small gaps in between the entrance glass doors. Why in the world would the building management leave the air con ‘on’ throughout the next few days of public holiday! Strange…

This was the turning point of our activity for the night. Rebecca suggested that we take a slow walk & see where it gets us... & it could be like an adventure for us. I didn’t have any plans, so off we started walking.

We passed by the Starbucks café next to Marine Parade library, I decided to take a peek to see how it looks like inside. As I climbed the short flight of stairs towards the entrance, I raised my head cautiously to take a cautious look around… & there right in front of me… were two huge eyes staring in shock at me! It was a lady probably in her 30s, sitting quietly by herself, reading a book.

She must have been startled when out of all the quietness, this head slowly rose up from the door entrance & into full view of her face! I was a bit shocked to see her & she was even more shocked to see me! Her eyes were very big & almost on the verge of popping out! And she had this really scared & frozen look on her face as well… making me laugh my way down the short flight of stairs, telling Rebecca what happened & continued laughing & laughing all the way as I walked away from the library… It was such a comical sight… & both Rebecca & I had a great burst of laughter. *Chuckle*… =)

Then, we decided to take a turn & walk towards East Coast Road. And so we did… & soon reached the area called Telok Kurau. This place is located near East Coast Road & we found ourselves right in the midst of a huge mass of landed property & unending rows of shop-houses at almost every corner!

Both of us haven’t been to this stretch of roads & houses before, but since we were just strolling about, we didn’t really bother, as long as I roughly knew my way around, since it’s supposed to be quite near East Coast Road & Siglap. How wrong I was… when I soon realized that we were lost!

We tried to find our direction by following behind buses traveling along the stretch of roads & private houses… & even tried using East Shore Hospital as our main point of bearing. But after almost an hour of walking… we still couldn’t find out way out! Turn here; turn there… but still surrounded by shop-houses & private estates. Oh dear…

Finally, we walked till we saw this bus 67 pass by us… so we walked towards the bus stop ahead & saw that there were two buses 28 & 67 that go to Rebecca’s home. Rebecca was happy & relieved, so we waited & boarded the next bus 28 that came along shortly.

Getting on the bus, Rebecca started to shake off the tiredness in her legs, though my legs didn’t really feel tired. We started to talk & laugh over the incident, when I suddenly realized that Rebecca told me that the traveling time should take about 15 minutes to reach her home. I started to look around & then asked her, “Eh, I thought you said that we should reach your home in 15 minutes? How come so long already & we are still at Paya Lebar?”

Both of us started to look around & I started to ask if she knew where we were. Rebecca said that we are at Tai Seng, since she saw a SingTel building that just passed by. It is very seldom that I took this bus (coz we normally take bus 14), so I wasn’t sure if this was the right way, so I gave her the benefit of the doubt, since she was more familiar with this bus route.

As more & more streets passed by, we began to see road signs stating ‘Bartley Road’, then ‘Mount Vernon’, then ‘Serangoon’, then ‘Bendeemer’. Oh dear… where is this bus heading? Where were we going?

The answer became clear – we had taken the bus going the opposite direction! Now both of us were looking like two uptight individuals, looking frantically around & I said, “Let’s look around for a good place to alight, where they might be taxis to flag.” And so we did… & alighted at this bus stop, where we had to cross over this long & huge overhead bridge to get to the other side of the road.

Thankfully, there was another bus 28 that came along, before we managed to flag a taxi, so we boarded & this time, managed to reach Rebecca’s home! Phew! After sending her home, I took the usual bus back home…

All in all, it was really an unplanned & unexpected adventure together… a very different way of spending our New Year’s Eve! It’s strange… I was bored & she wanted an adventure… & God really gave us one! I really don’t know whether to find it interesting or scarily amazing… Hmm… but it was quite an experience… =)