2006 – Wrong Turns

What a night of exhilaration it has been. If “misadventures” is your definition of exhilaration, read on.

But let’s list out from the beginning. As you might have known by now in my previous post, I’m supposed to wake up at 6am yesterday, but after tucking myself to bed at about 2.30am, I couldn’t sleep. After my mind had a great sight-seeing trip at Langkawi, Disneyland and various other dreamlands for about 2 hours, I woke up staring at the clock pronouncing it to be 4.30am.

Took out my Nintendogs to play with it for a while, I still couldn’t sleep shortly after. Gave up sleeping, went online, bathed, got ready and set off to pick up Andy, Jon and Kai Shen (I rang up both Andy and Kai Shen before this) to set off for an early mamak breakfast at USJ17’s Sri Melur. It’s supposed to be a short gathering to see off Ryui Bynn before he leaves for his National Service on the 1st of January 2006.

Not sure if it’s a huge mistake of mine to sacrifice sleep for this. My mind was tired, stretched out against its limits; after leaving at 9am and stopped by at the bank (met Suet’s mum), finally reached home at about 10am plus. Went to sleep and woke up at 3pm before I tuck in into my lunch.

I had about 4 hours and 30 minutes worth of sleep, and I considered that enough before we proceeded with our New Year Eve’s celebration.

At about 7.45pm I went off again to pick up Jess and Sarah to go to Pyramid. Our initial plan changed at the last minute when Shawn could go with us, and despite my insistence that we should use only one car (my reason was: to conserve fuel, more fun with the entire gang in a car, etc), but as Andy and then Shawn wanted two cars, so yeah we followed the plan.

Six people could very well fit into my car, but oh well.

Due to traffic jam we reached Pyramid a bit late, at about 8.30pm, and reached we did almost at the same time as Shawn did. Went to KimGary to eat (after much deciding and waiting for Heng to be off from work), and we only began to order at about 9pm.

I would go on about the scrumptious cheese-baked rice with beef that I ate, but that wasn’t the highlight of the night.

At 10pm we finally left Pyramid and went off to Ikano (next to The Curve) where there was supposed to be huge fireworks -- the biggest in Malaysia, reportedly.

That was the start of The Misadventures of Very Clueless People with a Very Bad Sense of Direction.

We comfortably headed off to the direction of Ikano/The Curve since I know the way. As Shawn supposedly did not know the route, Andy and Heng sat in his car.

The traffic jam was to be expected, so we patiently crawled through it until at one point the policemen were blocking a particular junction. We continued travelling, thinking nothing of it, until we realised we missed a turn and had to follow the long way back, to finally U-turn, and sit through the fucking traffic jam again.

Yes, it was the policemen’s fault. Really.

When we went back, the junction was re-opened with the presence of the police car. Phone calls were traded between Clem’s Car and Shawn’s Car and they apparently just arrived. We followed directions from Shawn’s Car (Andy or whoever it was gave the directions) and we somehow ended up on the road leading to Kota Damansara / NVE. Thinking it was the correct place, considering there were many cars parking at the roadside, we did the same too.

Walked for about 10 minutes, and after walking through horribly unlevelled terrain and muddy areas, we finally reached Ikano. The crowd, was tremendous. People were partying, and we couldn’t find people from Shawn’s Car. Made the necessary phone calls and we were supposed to meet them at The Curve’s Secret Recipe.

The moment we reached there, the countdown began. The crowd at the Secret Recipe was too much, overflowing with people. “5…4…3…2…1…” and then “HAPPY NEW YEAR!” and then blasts of the incredible fireworks. There was only one problem: we couldn’t see the damn fireworks. Damn crowd.

We returned back from where we came from and finally got a view, although a good part of it was obscured by the buildings. We stood there for several minutes, heads up; beautiful, splendid fireworks doing their magic on the air. The journey was worth it, we said. I just spent the New Year with two pretty girls, in their own words.

Sorry for the lack of pictures but despite me charging the camera batteries earlier, my batteries just died for no apparent reason.

After the spectaculars ended, we spent 30 minutes trying to phone the people from Shawn’s Car, in vain. We told them we were at Starbucks, but they kept saying they were there and yet we couldn’t find them.

Let me tell you it was very trying indeed trying to locate the three guys. We then realised there was another Starbucks outlet at The Curve (which was closed), and they weren’t there. They then told us they were near Christmas trees, we went there, and they weren’t there. What finally turned out to be was, they were at Ikano’s Starbucks.

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When we finally met up with them, we were sprayed with the usual New Year partying stuffs: the colourful sprinklers-gummy thing, soap bubbles, etc. Some loud crowded party was going on, we joined in the fun for a short while then we had to go to meet up with Esther and Kai Tzin, both of whom were working at Pizza Uno, Taipan.

We left at 12.45am, and then went to look for our car. Let me tell you nothing I’m saying here could do justice to what we experienced.

We got horribly, inexplicably lost.

Two girls and a guy with horrible direction sense:

We walked, and walked, and walked; everything looked familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, but definitely leaning to the unfamiliar part. Out mindset at that time was, “why not continue walking since we’re already here”, and after walking for more than 40 minutes did we discover we actually circled the entire fucking perimeter of The Curve. :)

And The Curve wasn’t a small place. It’s big; why do you think they held celebrations at the joint connection of The Curve-Ikano in the first place?

We walked, we were staring at moving cars that looked so luscious and tempting, we were staring at huge traffic jams caused by the same big crowd trying to return home.

At some point of walking, my mind was beginning to break down. I’ll have you know that I did not sleep for the past 24 hours prior to this save for the 4-hour nap. Which didn’t seem to be really helpful. I was beginning to wear out, but still kept my cool in front of the girls, because if all of us just turned stark mad together, it won’t be pretty.

So we walked. We even reached the fucking highway, that goes to show how totally lost we were. When we eventually returned to Ikano/The Curve again, we decided to backtrack. Things began to look familiar again and we sighed/cried happily, while wiping a drop of tear from our eyes.

Yes, what caused this huge walking marathon was the one wrong turn we made. The one wrong turn that sparked this crazy walkathon at 1am.

We finally reached our car at 2am after walking like forever. Also my first exercise in more than 6 months. Walking for 1 hour on the first day of the year seems horribly wrong. We also joked that if we were to participate in The Amazing Race, we’ll most likely be the first group to be eliminated.

We settled inside the car, heaving a sigh of big relief while resting our perfectly tired legs. God. Made a phone call to Shawn since he supposedly followed some “back way” to escape the traffic jam, but his directions were unfamiliar to our tired minds so we decided to use the normal route instead.

We were safely on the route and thought we could finally go back. I was so tired I didn’t recognise the usual roads so I followed signs to Kuala Lumpur, since naturally, roads to Kuala Lumpur would lead you back to Subang Jaya.

After ten minutes or so, I went “Um, guys, I think we’re on the wrong road” and “You know what, I think we’re in KL” in which Jess replied “I think so too.”

Several minutes of travelling later, something familiar apparited in the distance, the two jagung, the two corns, the Petronas Twin Towers. “SHIT I THINK I JUST SAW THE TWIN TOWERS” and we burst out laughing, laughing in hysterics or laughing at our own silly predicament, I don’t know - I was sooooo exhausted.

Jess phoned Esther (or the other way round), who were all now at Tanjung mamak waiting for us, and we laughed again. We were so fucking hopeless.

Now I seriously wonder why the other three guys with perfect sense of direction sat together in one car, leaving behind two girls and one guy with no direction sense at all in the other vehicle.

I couldn’t believe we were in KL; we were at the completely opposite sides of Bandar Utama. Don’t ask me how I made the wrong turn, since I was too tired to care at that time. All I know was we were completely lost.

Esther told us to follow signs that direct us to highways since any highway reportedly will lead us back to Subang Jaya.

So we followed this sign that says “Seremban” with a highway sign on it. We joked what would happen if we actually ended up in Seremban, in which Jess said we’ll probably stay overnight at her relative’s place in Port Dickson. I secretly winced in terror at the thought of landing in yet another unfamiliar place.

We also passed by some train station and even considered whether it was better for us to take the train back home instead. We decided against it since it was 2.30am and the station was most likely closed.

Metres later I saw a train passing by over our heads.

We followed the road hopelessly, slowing down all the time at the sight of the beautiful green signs. We finally saw “Bandar Sunway, Subang Jaya” and cried out loud happily.

Then we made the wrong turn at Midvalley City since I thought you weren’t supposed to go there. Another wrong turn, wheeeee. “I can’t believe it’s 2.30am and we’re hopelessly lost in KL.”

We also paid two tolls that made me wonder if we had even went through the right highway at all.

We just followed the road signs leading to “Bandar Sunway, Subang Jaya” and finally, after twenty light years, arrived at Pyramid. It was close to 3am.

What greeted us was traffic jam. The non-moving type.

Fuckkk.

A billion years later at about 3.30am I fetched Jess home (felt a bit guilty since she was gonna get into trouble) and then Sarah.

I sighed.

I took a quick bath and tried to sleep but for some fucking reason I couldn’t. I was so tired, yet my mind wouldn’t shut off. And maybe it’s the sign of having not slept properly for 48 hours, but I suddenly felt inexplicable fear. Not that “omg ghosties” kinda fear, but traumatic fear. My head was replaying images of walking and driving and they seemed to be such horrendous nightmares.

I had no choice but to wake my dad up and asked if he knows where the sleeping pills are. Dad said he doesn’t know, and asked me to take the flu pill (which supposed to induce sleep) instead. Took one, at 4.30am I’m still awake.

Dad must’ve somehow found the sleeping pill and gave me half of it later. Downed it graciously, and minutes later, I slept till 3pm.

It was hours after a brand new start, and we already had an embarassing moment. Jess wondered if that’s a sign of things to come.

What an adventure, what a night it was.

Maybe someone can make a novel, a TV drama, a 3-hour movie footage out of this. “Lost Special Edition: Two Girls and a Guy”