The day when everything went wrong

Dear blog,

Have you ever been in this situation whereby you are hoping so hard for an auspicious day to light up your rather boring, repetitious lifestyle? And have you ever experience that after that wish of your, something unpleasant just sneak behind you. Leaving you speechless and vulnerable?

Well, frankly, the past 24 hours can be regarded as one of the most dramatically worst day of my summer. I rarely mention about things happening around me but I think this should be an exception since I’m up to the mood to do so.

After spending almost 3 enjoyable days in the laps of my warm cozy house, I reluctantly dragged my heavy luggage and bags full with local delicacies to the bus station, waiting for my trip back to yet another hectic college life. It was night and the station was swarming with young people like me who were not so eager to abandon the sweet embrace of relaxation and laziness offered in our houses.I had my bus ticket placed neatly in my wallet and I was talking to my father about the latest happenings in my college.

As we were talking, an elderly woman with a lot of bags placed them near to my enourmously looking luggage.Then, she began to removed the worn out batik cloth that was wrapped around her neck and absentmindedly threw it on top of mine luggage.Later, a few children, presumably her grandchildren started to cover my luggage with the jackets that they took off. Initially, I did not pay much attention to the actions of the lady and her family.I was wrong. Before I knew it, her grandchildren put their bags right on top of the jackets and batik cloth.

I simply can’t take it anymore, I made a mental note myself. Therefore, I politely asked the lady to remove the bags and the jackets and the worn out cloth from my luggage.The lady looked at me with such a quizzical look that suggest her surprise at my polite demand.

“What are you talking about?” she replied in rather defensive tone.
“Could you kindly remove all of these from the bag?” I repeated my demand.
“ But there’s mine. You have no right to ask me to remove it!” The lady sneered.
“ Of course, I’m aware of that. But the bag is mine!” I said sarcastically without ever removing the malicious grin I sketched on my face.

Embarassed, the lady left without such expression that indicate her irritation at being corrected and losing her pride in front of the children who were rather puzzled by grandma’s sudden decision to move to another place of waiting. Perhaps it was karma, I soon received my punishment.

I looked at my watch and it was 9.15pm.WHAT?!!~It can’t be. My bus is supposed to arrive at 9.00pm as stated in the ticket. Wait a minute, my hawk-like eyes suddenly managed to catch sight of something disturbing about my journey back. It was the wrong ticket! I’ve bought the wrong ticket without ever being bothered to examine carefully every last bit of the details printed on my ticket. I cursed my carelessness in not checking the destination of my supposed destination. Instead of the normal KT-SA ticket, I accidentally bought the SA-KT ticket. A ticket wasted and my journey back impeded. I searched through every single ticket counters there were and was rather relieved to hear that there’s one more available ticket back and I painfully fish for money inside my wallet, thinking of the number of meals that I could buy with it.

My “bad luck”(is I would say so myself), did not end there. A few hours after the bus started its journey, I was shocked to know that it broke down in the middle of no where, surrounded only the spooky atmosphere of the palm plantation. The engine malfunctioned and the air conditioning was stopped. There was no sign of human residence nearby and the screeching of cicadas was the only sound that I could hear apart from the occasional murmuring of complaints by the other passages who can barely sleep with shirts soaked wet with sweat. To make matters worse, the bus stopped there for almost 3 hours (with a heavy downpour at the second hour)!

Dear blog,

So what did I learn from the series of event that I had experienced for the past 24 hours?

I learn that I need to be more careful next time.

I learn that life is not easy.

I learn that bad luck can occur anytime, any place due to human mistake and natural mishap.

But most importantly, I won’t be using the service offered by the same bus company, never again!