I’m stuck on the expressway at 5.45pm in a heavy downpour. I drive a manual car. I gear up and down and come to a complete halt. My left foot aches. I go from gear 1 to 2, to 3, and all the way back to 1. The brake lights of the car in front of me come on and off, and I feel like I’m tailgating him, but so is the car behind tailgating me. I drive from NTU all the way to Ubi. I don’t know what I’m doing, except this is supposed to drive me out of my permanent laze and slumber. I really hope something good comes out of this.
The taxi drivers on the road are not courteous, they cut in and out of queues because every second on the road affects their income. A second waited longer meant an unhappier customer, a second worth of gas, a second of car depreciation, and a second taken away from their family. They horn at me because I’m still on my probation plate.
I didn’t feel comfortable. Dinner was difficult to stomach, the beef felt unpalatable, undercooked, raw. The rice felt too hard. I’m 30km away from my comfort zone. I don’t know what’s going to happen next. My friend looks calm and certain, and I take a deep breath and trust that everything will be fine.
I’m not ready to take on the world financially. Will I ever be? Business. Business. Business. What’s that?
Someone respectable shakes my hand. His handshake is firm, confident, smooth. He speaks to me, a stranger, effortlessly. He openly admits that he hadn’t had a glorious education path, but damn. He’s doing so much better than University graduates. He wears an expensive watch, and we start talking about watches because I’m a watch slut. We talk about niche Swiss brands. Rolex. Omega. Tudor. Jaeger-LeCoultre. A. Lange & Söhne. Patek Philippe. Vacheron Constantin. It’s so nice to find someone who likes the same things as I do.
I go inside the office. Someone gives me a presentation. He wears my childhood dream watch on his wrist. He’s barely 5 years older than me. He turned down his University offer to do business. He says that the path less taken is the path more rewarded. But most of us don’t have the balls to do that.
The night is messy and my bank account hurt more than it did before I arrived. The parking fee by the time I left cost $5.50. Ouch. At least, the 30km drive back was significantly undisturbed. I cruise along lane 1 on the expressway at 100km/h the whole time. My mind raced my car. I’m not sure which one won.
At night, I sit on a bench and talk too much. She’s very patient and I couldn’t have been more grateful for that. The security guard walks over but finds no reason to chase us away. I wasn’t drunk, wasn’t rowdy. Just too bombarded with thoughts, that perhaps my life needs to take a permanent change in a better direction. I wanted supper, but my wallet whispered no. Fuck supper.
I drive her back to hall. It’s late. I go back to my room at last and my roommate is fast asleep. I like how she wraps herself in blankets like a burrito when she’s asleep, such that I can’t see her face, but the lump under the sheets tell me enough that she’s there just fine. I creep around my room as quietly as I can, fumbling through my own wardrobe as though I were a thief, so quietly I can barely hear myself breathe. I take a hot shower a little longer than usual because I have the luxury of time.
2am, I crash into bed and did not bother answering my text messages. They can wait.
My mind races too fast. Then it crashes. Then I’m out.
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