The first thing u realize as you leave the office is GODAMNIT IT'S FUCKING HOT OUT HERE!! The air-conditioning leaves your skin with a tingling sensation - like you're being electrocuted slowly. The difference in temperature separates you from your skin - you feel like you're WEARING your skin, warm warm skin.
It is one of the weirdest ways to end the day.
The area outside the construction site of the Marina Bay Sands is perfectly apt for the name - it is a literal sahara, covered with sand and rocks, debris, and god knows what other construction material they use. Even after they finally built a pavement leading to and from the site to the MRT station, the sand and dirt still blanket the concrete.
About 20 steps and the sand in my shoes makes me feel 2 inches taller, and nearly 2 tonnes heavier. Maybe it really is the sand - or maybe that's the invisible weight on my shoulders.
120m or so ahead and I reach the traffic light. This is where Bayfront Ave intersects Marina Boulevard. The workers dont seem to give a damn about their lives. They pour across the road in herds even when there's a speeding lorry just 20m away heading right towards them.
Fucking lemmings.
It's retarded, this kind of behaviour. Imagine you spend the whole of your day in a construction site that's been touted as one of the most dangerous sites in Singapore, you heed all the warnings, pay attention, move cautiously, and survive - only to be hit by a truck on the way home because you were too retarded to realize the red man was still on. Whatever. I'm still waiting for the fateful day when one of them does get hit, and his warm blood coats the rest of workers. I would take a bloody (literally) picture.
The traffic lights almost never seem to change at this intersection. And the ground is soft. Loose soil and dried mud. Just a dash of moisture is enough to turn the intersection into a lavatory of quicksand.
When you reach this area - it's usually when it starts raining. Bastard clouds.
The Marina Bay MRT sticks out like a sore thumb. Sleek polished railings and granite tiles and (gasp!) an escalator, in the middle of a mindfield of concrete pilings, re-bars, trucks and raw stone materials. The field outside the station has turned into a mini-Serangoon. The indian workers will congregate outside and sit on the lawn, play their bangra music and breathe the fresh carbon monoxide of society. A lovely way to shorten their already bleak lives.
Finally there's fresh air in your throat as you pass through the turnstiles. And the trains are the only way out of this hellhole.
Then you reach Raffle's Place MRT, and the barbaric horde of workers is replaced by the imperial army of white collar workers, as they shove into the train monotonously, like blooming fools, they will shove and shove just to get into the damn train eventhough the next train is just a minute away. Funny how the white collar ones cant FUCKING READ.
By the time i reach newton, I'm totally fed up with both sides of the coin - the workers are a rude, raw and untamed bunch of smelly clothes and rubber boots while the white collars a bunch of stiff-necked un-courteous, robotic morons. Feeling this way about them makes it easier to get out of the train. I lower my head like a battering ram (im an Aries remember?) and plough my way through the crowd that stubbornly refuses to give way to alighting passengers.
I know im stronger than all of them - I work out at least. There's no pride in having a belly so big, I cant see myself pee anymore. It's true bliss being able to trample kiasu aunties and uncles as I alight, bcos i know that if they complain, i can just point to the dumb-fucked poster of PCK telling all passengers to FUCKING LET ME ALIGHT BEFORE BOARDING, DUMBASSES!!
The feeling is heightened by the blaring of One Republic's All the Right Moves in my eardrums.
This is where it gets a little creepy.
Newton MRT makes me feel like i've somehow ended up in Thailand or Vietnam. It's full of them. With a dash of the occasional ang moh. At the very least, I cant understand them, so i can just imagine that they're saying I'm the most fucking handsome sonofabiatch they've ever seen. It makes them a whole lot easier to tolerate.
The 124 bus service is a slow to arrive, but is almost always driven by a living skeleton of a driver, who has lost control of his feet, such that they're permanently depressing the accelerator. The sheer terror of a speeding bus with me on it is dampened by the fact that i'll at least die in a sea of prostitutes. Too bad they arent pretty.
Seriously why they hell are they SOOOOO many of 'em? And sze li was right - they do have the same cheap ass perfume. Smells like they pooled all their money together and bought a gigantic vat of the stuff that they take turns bathing in - bcos buying in bulk is always cheaper. Am I right aunties?
When I reach Balestier, the bus stop is just a 20m away from a new pasta restaurant that smells AWESOME, and is the only reason I still eat food, eventhough I have yet to try their spaghetti. I prefer to cook my own.
I keep my head low as I approach the condo. Looking into the eyes of a prostitute is like staring at a medusa, except medusa turns you into stone, while a prostitute turns your mojo into stone. Mental impotence is hard to cure, so beware.
The 45min home is just as tiring as the day itself.
It's only when I reach the lift that i can actually feel the weight vaporising. And the rumble of the rising elevator car feels like an ascension from the pits of this world to a small refuge where I can lay my troubled head and rest my weary shoulders.
That is, of course, until the next time the alarm clock rings.
Good night.
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