Bad Monday Morning
It all started the day before.
I didn’t manage to send my clothes to the washing machine because the rest of the people in the flat were using it. Even if I had the chance to, I wouldn’t be able to hang all my clothes because all the laundry lines would have been taken.
Not having done my laundry was just one thing. Through some peculiar train of thoughts, I had believed it would be a good idea to snort cocaine drink coffee to start my day yesterday. So I tried the new coffee that I just bought from NTUC FairPrice, not knowing that the effect would be so severe.
Little did I know that it would be the start of a bad morning today.
So there I was, lying on my bed at 3 a.m. in the morning, tossing and turning, unable to sleep. I decided to be wise and started reading a book, only to get too excited to go to sleep.
And before I knew it, it was close to 5 a.m. when I finally turned in.
Two hours later, the sound of the M1 jingle jolted me awake, gave me a heart attack, and I died peacefully in my sleep prompted a series of conditioned reflex, my hand instinctively pressing the snooze button on my Sony Ericsson K618i.
It was 7.30 when I finally awoke, and off I went downstairs to the nearby coffeeshop to get some breakfast. Bleary eyed, I somehow managed not to mispronounce “nasi lemak set A” as “nanti emak satay” (translation: later mum satay). I brought my catch back into my cave home and ate peacefully.
Too peacefully, because by the time I finished eating, it was already 8.20. I quickly rushed to shower, and it was 8.35 when I came out. I opened my cupboard and then it hit me like a killer litter.
I didn’t have much choice of clothes.
The only pants available was a black one, since the jeans one had been worn for two weeks and badly in need of a wash (remember I didn’t manage to do my laundry the day before?) and the white one is way too oversized for me.
As for the T-shirt, I didn’t have much choice either. I could only use one of these:
- Black Quiksilver T-shirt, perfect to go for funerals
- Faded grey polo T-shirt
- Milo-stained horizontal-striped polo T-shirt, which happened to be one of my favourite T-shirts. Why oh why must all my favourite T-shirts be stained?
- Grey T-shirt with yellow sleeves. It sports expanded collars which expose my collarbone sometimes, slightly twisted sides, and big yellow lettering saying ‘BH’. ‘Beverly Hills’ in English. ‘Bra’ in Indonesian.
After a short contemplation, I opted for the last. I didn’t have much time anyway.
And so off I went to the street and hailed a cab. The driver was a Chinese who thought I could speak Chinese. When I mentioned that I didn’t speak Chinese, he gave that look all taxi drivers have whenever they hear that I don’t speak Chinese–he examined me on the rear-view window, turned around to look at me right in the face (!@#$%^ without looking at the road!) and asked me whether I was Chinese. Of course, I said what I always do in such situation: “I’m a Chinese but I don’t know Chinese. I am who I am. I am a Chinese Indonesian”.
Apparently he could speak Malay, and we were chatting a bit on our way to Boon Lay MRT. Apparently he has a son who is studying in NTU too, taking Bioengineering, and he has two more papers, one of which will be on this Friday (the other one I can’t remember when).
So I alighted at the MRT station running away without paying and took another cab to work and transferred to the train. All was well and the day seemed brighter, and I took out my book to read, until this retard decided to board the train, carrying his MP3 player blasting some Chinese song through its speaker. That was it. I closed my book and today at 9.15 a.m., a teenager was beaten up to death by a Chinese Indonesian wearing a grey T-shirt and black pants at Jurong East MRT. I decided to tune out everything and listened to my own MP3 player until I reached my workplace.
With the earphones. Not speakers.
Luckily that was it to the bad Monday morning. Since then things have been picking up for the better. Work was good, and I don’t think I have to do OT (overtime) again this time (Mondays have the tradition of being the most busy compared to all other days in the week).
Hope it will stay that way throughout the week! 