Scares

I had two scares within the last week.

1.
The first one was when I went back to Penang for a company event. My colleagues and I had stayed in a hotel by the sea. A day after the event I got a call. It seemed that one of the rooms we were staying in had been occupied by someone who was now quarantined for H1N1.

My mind went into a melodramatic overdrive. As I was telling my mother that I may have been exposed to the virus, and therefore, so has the rest of the family, I imagined lying in the hospital with high fever and at the verge of death. I had phantom tickles in my throat the whole day.

But thank God, two days later I found out that the person who had been quarantined had come out negative for H1N1. Phew...

2.
The second one was when I was driving alone along a road near Seksyen 16. Traffic was at a stallstill so I had time to glance around and observe. As I was looking through my rearview mirror, I noticed two guys on a motorcycle stopping abruptly next to a car a few cars behind mine. They were garbed in oversized coveralls. Then, in split second, the guy at the back stood, crashed the window of the car, reached in, and grabbed out a big black bag. Then they zoomed off.

It was shocking. I thought of pushing my passenger side door open and letting the motorcycle ram into it as they rode past me. But it happened too fast and all I could do was lean over to look at the bike's number plate. Alas, the robbers were smart enough to have bent the plate to partially obscure the numbers.

I glanced around, my hands shaking from the shock. Nobody had reacted. The victim's car moved along without stopping so there was nothing I could do but make sure my own bag was well hidden, my door was locked and my baseball bat-like steering lock was within reach. I also prayed for my own safety and the victim's - whoever she was.

I will buy you a garden...

Recently I discovered not one but two gardens smacked in the hustle and bustle of the city. One is at the rooftop of 1 Utama, aptly called the Secret Garden. And the other is the Lake Gardens' Butterfly Park. Needless to say, I went trigger happy.