Yesterday, I had to leave the in-laws place without my wallet as I had, to my consternation, left it in Pasir Ris. I borrowed some money (ok, a lot of money to be exact – a blue note and a purple note) from Lun and left to take the express bus 10e to ORQ.
Walking to the bus stop, I realized that I did not know how much I had to pay – was $2 enough? Did I need to pay more than that, since it was an express bus? With this question on my mind, I went up to the bus guide that was conveniently located at the bus stop. It was one of the few times that I really scrutinized it, and the information that I needed was easily accessible – to travel via 10e would cost me $1.85, whereas going by the normal bus would set me back by $1.55 (both by cash). Since I didn’t have change on me, I opted to wait for an express bus to come, since it would also cut the travel time by close to 25mins.
Paying the bus fare by cash instead of ez-link card brought me back to my primary school days – the *ching ching* as the coin machine sucked in the $2 note, the *zzzit* as the ticketing machine printed out the ticket. By force of habit, I looked at the receipt number on the middle right side of the ticket and added up the numbers – twenty one!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When I was young, I was told that if the four digits (ticket number on the rightmost side of the top row) on the ticket added up to twenty one, I could fold the ticket into a quarter, and on the way out of the bus, tear it up and throw it into the bin while making a wish, after which some genie or god or what-not will surely grant it as you had the magical number twenty one.
Much of my childhood days on a bus were spent totaling up such numbers, and folding tickets into fours to tear and make a wish upon. I’m neither a professional wrestler nor a half-human half-robot killing machine now, so I think that the wishes were for naught, but it inculcated in me the love of numbers. Whenever I see digits, I immediately add them up; when I drive, I focus on the license plate of the car ahead of me; the numbers on a HDB unit grabs my attention; and when they add up to twenty one, I get a cheap thrill, for some part of me always wants to get that special number. Sadly, it almost never comes out when I engage in competitive blackjack with my wife.
With that, other memories begin flooding back.
I learnt my whistling on a bus, with my father besides me trying to teach me how to open my mouth. I still remember the small polo-like sweet that when you blow through it, with it between your lips, you can get a whistling sound. I can still see the other passengers in the bus looking at us, some with bemused expressions and others with irritated faces as we took turns to whistle the classic wolf whistle, my father’s loud and piercing, mine like a pipe with many holes, or in classic dialect, “lao hong”.
I remember chasing patiently waiting for my school bus which was supposed to send me home with the number “2999” or some other four digit code to arrive, realizing only too late that it was the referring to the license plate and not a number plate put at the window, and crying my eyes out in terror before some other kind driver brought me back instead.
I remember waking at six in the morning to bathe and brush my teeth before going down with my mother to wait at the bus stop for my school bus.
I remember the dumb games we used to play, and the screams we would get from the aunty on the bus to get us to stop and “sit down properly or I whack your bum!”
All good times, my childhood was.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The sight of One Raffles Quay jolted me out of my reverie and back to the day on hand. For old times’ sake, I folded the ticket into a quarter, made a quick wish, and threw the torn strips into the ticket bin.
No comments:
Post a Comment