Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head

I always thought being stuck travelling when it rains was bad enough.

Now let me correct myself on that:

Being stuck travelling on an open lorry when it rains is even worse.

And the worst? When the driver of the lorry is terribly and unmistakably lost.

I had this revelation when travelling during sports camp on the back of a 10-foot lorry, bangladesh-worker style. The plan was initally to travel from Yishun to East Coast, which would have taken nothing over half an hour.

As we were on the highway, ominous storm clouds started to form overhead. This was not unexpected, given that it had been raining almost every day for the previous week. We were prepared for a short ride under the rain, thinking that we would be reaching East Coast very soon. Passing all our bags to the passengers in the sheltered front seats, we huddled together and tried to pass time by engaging in a not-very-interesting conversation.

The next time we looked up, the AIA building was looming over us. Question marks started to form on top of our heads. Why are we in Queensway? By the time the lorry got to NUS, if someone was drawing a picture of us in a comic book, he would have drawn thousands of question marks above us.

In a nutshell, we travelled from Yishun, to NUS before finally setting off on the right path to the East Coast. The only thing that was missing from the 2 hour grand tour of Singapore was a tour guide.

By the end of the ride, the heavy rain typical of tropical Singapore had turned 5 sports camp programmers into 5 silly-looking twits sitting bottom-soaked in a moving half-filled fish tank.

After such a wonderful sentence, it is very indeed very tempting to write "The End" here. But... that would have been rather sad. I must say, there's nothing like a dreary day that brings out the goodness in people.

Just as the clouds couldn't hold their weight anymore and started sending raindrops down, a uncle driving another lorry stuck in the same traffic jam as us started waving an umbrella out of his window. He attempted to pass us the umbrella in the crawling traffic, but with all the others busy passing our bags to safety and leaving only me (with the short arms) to notice him, we did not manage to grab hold of the umbrella.

Just as our lorry was picking up speed, having failed to get any of us to get the umbrella, he threw the umbrella over to the empty side of the lorry. We barely managed to shout our thank yous across to him before our lorry weaved itself out of the traffic jam.

It was an heroic act that warmed our hearts on a cold day, and showed me that even though people always complain about Singaporeans who have no time for others, Singaporeans, or at least the uncles, are still very much a kind bunch.

Raindrops keep fallin' on my head
But that doesn't mean my eyes will soon be turnin' red