02/12/2008

It was a horrendous exam all right but my day did begin with some startling oddities, albeit positive ones. I thought I was in hot soup when I left home at 8am. A travelling time allowance of only an hour was sure to make me late as past experiences have shown. One and a half hours was the mandatory minimum it took for me to reach school from home with some stringy time of say 15 minutes to spare. This unnecessarily arduous travelling time had nothing to do with the train. It was the bus. The train could zip me to Clementi under 45 minutes, no problem.

The only peeve I have with the train journey is the waiting time as well as the passenger load at Jurong East interchange, where I have to transfer to the East bound line in order to get to Clementi. Elucidation slips my mind everytime I ponder on the mysterious reason behind the high passenger load on the train coming from Boon Lay. The fact is, the train had served barely 5 stations from its terminus in Boon Lay yet the train is almost nearly three quarters full. It seemed to me that almost everyone in Singapore stayed in the vicnity of Boon Lay. But that is really a ridiculous disposition isn’t it?

Now now, back to the oddities of the morning that glistened my day somehow. As I have mentioned earlier on, walking out of the house at 8am when you are supposed to reach school at 9am meant certain doom. It was almost certain that I will be late. 9 out of 10 times this was proven correct. But how sweet, I managed to get on a train that travels direct to Pasir Ris. This meant that I could save time that would otherwise be lost had I taken the usual train. And not to mention the likelihood that I would have to wait a couple of packed trains for the trains coming from Boon Lay are FOREVER packed.

I managed to sleep whilst standing and I reached Clementi a sweet 8.40am. Not too bad actually. But I thought my luck had ran its full course when I reached the interchange because I saw service 96 leave just as I reach. In a valiant attempt to avoid being late (yet again), I dashed for the bus through the bus bay.

O_________O

I was turned away. So humiliating…

It was quite normal for me to expect that the next bus will come in probably some time later cos there is no one in the bus queue except for a solitary me but guess what? A noisy 96 trundled up to me just yet! Woo hoo!

So sweet…  Besides this, the streets was conspicuously empty and more importantly free of gridlocks. It was a breeze on the bus. Ironically I actually reached my bus stop earlier than the bus which I so vainly tried to board. I looked at my watch.

8.54am

Just on time. Sweet.