I call it eventful my 9/11.

It is 2:20 on a 9/11 afternoon. Many things have happened to me from the time I got up and hence the inspiration to write this post right now. Unfortunately (or fortunately for most), the events that have taken place are nothing so serious (or rather, not serious at all) as that of the 9/11 that took place exactly 6 years ago in America’s New York City. Here, the events I was talking about are simply things like my short distance home-shifts in the morning, my late bills and bumping into a former language teacher on my way to settling them, plus my little bus rides home. Upset? I am very sorry if you are. And if you are one of those who had thought I was going to write about the 9/11 tragedy like how most journalists worldwide would in memory of the disaster, and talk about how sorry I am for all that crap, plus cry for all that shit in my blog, then I would say, you are so wrong, baby. In fact, I cared little about the 9/11 event, and perhaps I will for the next many years until there emerge grounds, maybe, for me to believe that 9/11 was created NOT for internal excuse to "change laws and start wars". Wakarimasu ka, minna-san? (Does everybody understand?) Sorry, but if you can hardly understand the political view I have just written here, you are probably not a Political Science student, or even if you are, you are probably doing the course in a university whose country practices only textbook-education and therefore not having the ability to produce self-questioning minds.

So anyways back to my update, which is only about the first-half of my day today: It has been quite an eventful day to me, at least (actually what makes it eventful are the things I came across today, which are more than usual, so in a way the day was not anything eventful at all, I simply exaggerated). To begin with, there was the return home early morning that Kenji and I had to do today because we slept over at mum and dad’s last night. Not much reason for the sleepover though other than for the fact that I was just too lazy to get back home. So this morning Kenji and I got up earlier than we usually would for Kenji’s noon shift, just to return home in time so that Kenji could get ready for work. 30 mins afterwards, we were back out - Kenji to work, and I to Orchard for a lonesome brekky, lonesome hang around in the city and lonesome pay up of our phone and electricity bills. That was all that took place actually, but in between those were indeed incidents to talk about.

Well, if you have been living in Singapore and are paying bills, you could perhaps tell that I am in fact paying my bills quite late. Well, yeah, I paid them late this time because Kenji and I totally forgot about them. And for forgetting to pay up, we received a pink, reminder-cum-‘threat’ letter (for the electricity bill only and not the phone) from the Board, stating that if we do not pay up the bill immediately, our electricity will be disconnected. I just thought the threat was a little bit ludicrous as a S$70 electricity bill and an 11-day late is taken so seriously in Singapore. On the other hand, it may be ‘that’ serious after all, I am not too sure myself for I have no insights to the Board anyway. And so I paid the bills immediately, also to make sure that I have lights in my home later tonight. But as I was making my way to the Post Office, I bumped into Yamane-sensei, my former Japanese teacher who was on her way to work. It was really good to see her I thought. We spoke a bit but soon she had to leave. The brief conversation; greetings followed by some simple questions, have indeed told me that my Japanese has deteriorated terribly. But I guess it is all right though, for I still have not forgotten how to read yet :)

This morning too, Kenji and I witnessed a woman been hit by a public bus as we were on our way to Orchard. The woman however did not seem injured. She fell to the ground after a bus hit her. Then she got up again and left the area, but looking really annoyed, for a lorry, which was waiting for her not far from the scene. It was odd I thought, but interesting. Speaking of public bus however, reminds me of a bus-breakdown I had today. It was my first bus-breakdown ever! Yay! And the story goes like this: I was on a public bus making my way home from Orchard when the bus broke down right before it entered the highway. The bus engine turned off and the air-conditioner stopped working, and slowly, the bus came to a halt. The bus driver then made some connection between him and the headquarters (their conversation we could all hear because it was on a speaker) and soon got things sorted out. Everything went pretty well I thought until the driver had to give us, his 25 passengers, some instructions following the breakdown. Somehow the driver had decided to give the instructions only in Chinese. I couldn't understand him for sure because I couldn't understand Chinese, so I turned around to try speak to some others for a translation. But 2 of the Chinese-looking passengers were indeed Indonesians and a few others sitting behind me didn't seem to care. Looking at the faces of the "few others", I wondered if they could help me with the translation, but I just brushed the idea aside for I thought they might just be another set of foreigners or maybe even, non English-speaking Chinese Singaporeans (could there be??). Subsequently I decided to turn stupid and follow what the majority did, pretending like I was in China (China wasn't too bad though). And so I tapped my EZ-link card when they tapped theirs and I stayed on the bus as the others did. At the end of it, we were given complimentary tickets each and were asked to board the next bus that arrived, which apparently was quite occupied.

So there they are, the events of my day: my short distance home-shifts in the morning, my late bills and bumping into a former language teacher on my way to settling them, plus my little bus rides. I call this eventful, I hope you do too. Happy 9/11 everyone!