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Slingin’ in the Rain
Today I lost my pants in the hotel.
No, it’s not what you think. I wasn’t slapped with Yet Another Fine. Any rumors of me paying fines for public nudity (or anything else, for that matter) in Singapore are base canards at best. Besides, I’m pretty sure you don’t have access to the police reports, so I’m safe. Relatively.
Anyway, enough about me. For the moment. I’m sure you want to hear about the pants.
Here’s what happened. Really…
I went off to work as usual, riding in a taxi to the International Business Park in the west end of Singapore. The skies were a bit threatening, but not yet dark. I even thought there was a chance the clouds would burn off in the heat.
Little did I know it would rain. I mean, Really Rain. Enough to show me the purpose for all the drains I keep stumbling into seeing everywhere. The rain started just before lunchtime, and continued throughout the afternoon. Sometimes heavy, sometimes heavier.
It was so wet I couldn’t hail a taxi in the afternoon to ride home.
So I took the train. There’s shuttle bus from the Park to Jurong East Station. So I avoided the condensed humidity that way. I rode to Tiong Bahru and got off. I wanted to shop at the supermarket there, for some fruit, cheese and crackers to snack on while blogging. (Gotta keep my strength up, and I’m paying attention to nutrition as usual.) I looked for some dill pickles too, but this supermarket has no Western-style foods to speak of. No pickles. Well, pickled mustard, they had that. Pickled lettuce, they had that. Even had some pickled cucumbers. But not cucumbers like I eat. So I settled for a bit of sliced cheese and some nice looking crackers. I could tell they were nice, by the picture. I couldn’t read a bit of the Korean and Chinese on the package. I hope their pictures are true to life.
When I came up out of the basement store at the mall, it was raining even harder. Some street flooding was evident, in spite of the capacious ditch-and-culvert system everywhere. This was a bad sign. I had a mile to walk.
So I queued up for a taxi. Me, and about 1.3 bajillion others.
I got a taxi after a while, and I was glad to do so as the rain wasn’t letting up at all. The taxi driver was a jolly fellow, with a clear license to print money on a day like today. After all, everyone is taking taxis everywhere, even just a couple of blocks. Especially stranded Westerners. It costs $2.50 to get in, and there’s a $2.00 adder at rush hour. So already $4.50 Sing, and he hadn’t even released the brake. The fare went up a whole $0.30 on the way to the hotel. I was tempted to tell him to make the block, just to get the fare up to a nice, round $5, but I decided it was better to get inside and up to the 24th floor before any more water dropped from the leaky skies. I knew it was a good idea to get to high ground, as the taxi captains were blowing up life rafts and building makeshift paddles.
When I got to my room there was a note concerning my laundry. Seems there was some miniscule spot on the trousers. So they didn’t launder them. So they’re still downstairs in the laundry, unwashed. And when I called about them, nobody could find them.
Gone. Lost.
A couple hours later, as I was sitting in the bar guzzling Singapore Slings to console myself over my tragic loss, I had one of the house hired help come rushing over to me. They’d found the missing pants! Oh joy. But sadly, they were still unwashed. Did I want them to do a rush job, or just wait until tomorrow? I said to wait.
I had just one more Sling to top off the evening, then retired to study for the next day’s session. The only good news: The rain let up to merely a downpour, and was showing signs of reducing to a steady rain…
Enjoy the Heat!
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