This happened sometime last week.
I travelled down to SIM for registration with a friend by bus 52 from Bishan that took us about say 30 minutes journey. We were both heading down to town to meet up different group of people after that so we concluded on getting back to Bishan by the same bus and travel down by train. We waited at the bus stop for the bus to arrive and chatted furiously. Both saw bus 52 approaching and boarded the bus.
We chatted our way through the journey going at everything and anything. We’ve even got so bored, we started chatting about horoscope (In my opinion, it’s considered to be one of the say, -in-desperate-times-I’ll-dig-it-out-to-get-people-talking topic. But it’s understandable, we’ve been chatting for close 4 hours already.)!
And then, I realised our surrounding looks a bit different from what I saw from my journey to the campus.
I saw a signboard saying TANGLIN CC. In my head’s street directory (which is awfully limited), it shouted to my saying that we might just be pretty close to ORCHARD (the ultimate destination we were both heading to), so I wiped out my mobile and rang SHAN up (she’s a walking street directory, literally). Her instructions were to get down the bus and switch to another one that will bring me to town considering that we’re already at Tanglin, that shouldn’t be too far.
Relayed the exact words to my friend and then a absurd comment came from my friend.
FRIEND: “Did we take the wrong bus, or are we on 54?”
fyi, we are supposed to have boarded 52.
Y.: ”Erm, shouldn’t be, look at the signboards at the bus stop!”
FRIEND: “52 is not on it!”
Y.: “What about 54???”
FRIEND: “Eh, no!”
Then we started to panic. When I look ahead as to where the bus was heading to, what it seems like to me was an expressway or something. No matter what it is, I need to know what bus we are on anyway, so the following happened.
Y. (talking to a stranger): Hi, erm may I know what bus we are on?
STRANGER: Number 154.
That moment, I shared a shocked expression with my friend and started mumbling how stupid we both were. Actually, I guess it’s not a murmur, cause people around were obviously giggling about it so we were pretty loud I suppose
After I’ve calm down and all,
Y. (talking to stranger): “Do you know how to get to town from here?”
And before she could answer, the pair in front of her that was giggling really openly, turned and offered us instructions.
In normal times I would have turned really mad, okay on my stupidity and on the fact that they were laughing and giggling so openly. But then, it somehow struck me how nice these people were. I directed my questions to someone else but they offered me an answer anyway, though still having that little smirk on their faces. But seriously, since when are Singaporeans that helpful anyway?! So I guess I’m really thankful for that.
Followed their instructions, and reached town safe. How it is that we boarded 154 while thinking that it’s 52 all the while, no idea really.
It’s sounds pretty much of a bus adventure isn’t it? Not I’ve enjoyed it in any way. But that’s why I’ve always loathe buses. Dirty, squeezy and slow. Now I have a new addition to the list of why I loath buses, plays eye trick on you and brings you to somewhere out of the world.
