Random Thought Bubbles

so i was supposed to leave for brunei last saturday. but lo and behold, half an hour before the shuttle was due at 2am, a cold shudder overtook my body. my passport, my passport. we were waiting in kit chung's (who was himself out for the night) house for the shuttle because we'd given up our house and couldn't wait in it. i thought i put it into my handbag. i'd taken it out that very afternoon and placed it on a table. then saw it again and put it back in my handbag. or didn't i? it played over and over in my head. i couldn't have packed it away. i couldn't have thrown it away. who throws or packs away a passport?...

then came the flurry of looking into my handbag, which isn't very big at all. emptied it out. no, nothing. not there. na da. okay okay i last saw it in the afternoon. it was there. i didn't leave the house, it should be somewhere nearby. i looked through my bag, the boys looked through my bags. 3 TIs looking into 3 bags. and could not find a passport. the boys looked through their bags. still nothing. the shudder became a realization that i might not be leaving auckland at all.

it could've been in one of the boxes that i was packing up that afternoon. but the boxes had gone off to storage. maybe it was in one of the boxes. but it was too late to go to storage. maybe it's still in the house. call apartment manager. who cares that it's 1.30am in the morning. this is an emergency. look in house. nothing. it's spotless. no trace of a red little book. so insignificant yet the ticket to my freedom.

frick. panic fills my heart. a strange electric sensation fills the skin and turns it cold and hot at the same time. the afternoon's happenings play over and over in my head. but there are gaps in my memory. could it be in one of these lost moments that i misplaced my passport?

what should i do? who should i call? call kit chung (i suppose the funny thing is i didn't think about calling my dad first haha). kit chung will know what to do. in my mind, kit chung is mr. know what to do in any situation. a flustered and very distressed marilyn calls dr. wong who tells her to calm down and asks if she's looked everywhere. he confirms that it's not possible to fly without the passport and there's nothing she can do unless she finds that passport. but no, it's nowhere to be found. dr. wong says delay the shuttle, he'll try to think of a way out.

call dad. maybe he has a magic trick up his sleeve. dad asks the same questions. have you looked here and there and in all the pockets? yes, i wouldn't have called otherwise. dad says keep looking. delay the shuttle or something. but the shuttle is here already. mom asks the same questions... have you looked here or there or in your bag. how could you be so careless...

the shuttle comes. the 3 TIs board the van and throughout the journey i explain over and over again on the phone to my parents that i've looked everywhere. this is not helping. i'm helpless and there is nothing i can do.

arrive at the airport. look once more. ask at the counter what i can do. lady says to talk to the rba rep. i look through my bags for the millionth time, hoping against hope that 3 TIs were blind enough not to have found it before. no success. defeated, i lug my stuff to the counter and tell the man... i have lost my passport. i need to change the flight. can you help me? he tells me there is a charge for it. but since it's saturday i'll have to call reservations on monday to change things. but to call the embassy first so i'll know what date to change my flight to.

the boys check in and i'm left sitting tired and distraught waiting for a miracle. they come to me and we look once more... nothing again. i sms kit chung to say i'm not flying and that i need a place to crash. he says come come, of course you can stay. they walk me to the shuttle van and i go home. the shuttle driver used to be a singaporean and he is talkative. i let him prattle on about how stressful singapore is. really, i'm too tired to care. so at 4.30am in the morning kit chung comes downstairs to get me and i sleep. kit chung's house is full of people. kevinjit, kapil and me and the next day his younger brother too and all our stuff as well. it's cramped up but all the flatties are nice enough to welcome us anyway. they are studying for 4th exams which are this thursday... it was so nice of them...

morning comes and i explain my story over and over again to people i meet. why are you still here? i lost my passport. (i'm not distressed anymore. there is now a plan or the makings of one. i don't get stressed when there's a plan... my parents were more worried than i was or am...) nothing i can do now till monday anyway...

but one of the flatties has a number i can call on the weekend to ask for help. and lucky too coz that saved me alot of time. otherwise it would've been me needing to wait for application forms to come my way from wellington and then only being able to make the appointment to go to wellington to get an emergency travel document.

i look into storage twice more with no luck. time to make a police report. the police man is nice and says it's so common. 2min later i'm out of the station and walking home. this is sunday.

monday comes and it's making calls day. i wait till after lunch time and the contact comes through for me. i have an appointment for thursday which is excellent. i make some other calls and insurance says they'll cover me. i change my ticket and get a flight for saturday. so i'm going to kl instead now. i can only fly to my home country. i suppose it's fate... or carelessness.

thank goodness for friends who come through for friends. so very grateful... don't lose your passport. it's a hassle you can live without.

spent too much time waiting
then too much time without
only to forget what a waste it is
to

stop running
stop being a free spirit
stop waiting

always this waiting...

I'm south, rambling around the place and creating havoc on the roads =P timothy, zhi yuen, man keat, thomas and yours truly travelled south for the week and we're at the backpackers' at the moment. i figured it'd be a good time to blog since there's internet and i just know i won't do any blogging of these pictures when i get back because i'll be too busy trying to pack up to go back to brunei on the 15th. on the 15th!! it's so near now, and kl, oh sweet city, we're so close to being reunited!

so pictures =) very very long blog post. lots of pictures. took me several days to get them loaded onto the post. slow yha internet. haha.

eating at the airport in auckland. mmm mcd breakfast =)

big snowcapped moutain from the airplane. looks like an enormous pimple to me

waiting at the airport for the rental car people to give us a ride to the depot to get the car

first rental car

we were so impressed with the telephone box we had to stop and take photos in it.

YHA christchurch. we stayed at YHAs throughout the whole trip

some people doing capoweira to other people playing music. they were doing it slow mo but it was still fun to watch. while we ate our slouvakis out in the sun =)

the bridge of remembrance.

we met up with ra nae and she brought us to the gardens. there are three versions of this picture. apparently this one was the best one. but it looks dated and i look old. ack.

according to this stick i'm about 165cm tall

my favourite flowers are wild daisies but this rose is pretty too =)

we went to disturb chow trying to study in the comp lab. he looked very stressed

that's us mucking around at the front entrance of otago medical school

then we decided to have a little roll around in the grass at the art school

i could stop laughing after this photo. jap girl with massive eyes. haha

we spent quite a long time just taking photos in the quad of the art school. it's very pretty in there.

otago university is way prettier than auckland =P

it was man keat's birthday so we went out to eat expecting at least some things to be open. but the streets were empty and quiet. we tried looking for an open place to eat at 11 at night. and almost nothing was open except for a 'sticky fingers'. which was good anyway because they had very yummy pizza =)

and then took turns being squashed in a red phone box.

and again

and again

veily silly ah

we went to see the cathedral. it's hard to miss since it's right smack in the middle of everything

i lit a candle, hoping we all pass our 5th year exams =P

super duper pipe organs

looking back at the doorway

a choir was practising while we were at the church. the church had good acoustics

that's the man who played the pipes. i'd feel very powerful.

big sperm in the church square. it's supposed to be art. can't quite remember what it's supposed to represent, aside from being a humungous sperm.

walking the 134 steps up the church tower

top of the tower

coming down the tower

we visited ra nae while we were in christchurch. she brought us to the copenhagen bakery. omg, best smoked salmon bagel i've ever had. *salivate* for most of the trip i've just been eating. it makes me happy =P and fat.

rental car number 2. none of us knew how to put snowchains on the tyres so i learnt something new that day.

the sign on a rental van

i thought having a car spray painted with the reservoir dogs is cool.

pak 'n' save christchurch has self check out terminals now. if you don't put your item into the bag the machine nags you to put it in and won't proceed to let you check out more. we stopped by to get supplies for the rest of the journey

the people who rented the reservoir dogs van were having a picnic in the pak 'n' save car park in front of their van. i found that quite strange.

this is my new favourite cheese. it smells like salted fish but doesn't taste like it. it's nutty like emmental (my previous most favourite cheese)

that's me eating my salted fish smelling cheese. it's good! i don't know why the boys don't like it as much as i do.

we got out to much around by this field filled with yellow flowers

the best seat in the backseat is the middle seat

i like taking photos =) so do the boys

just driving into lake tekapo. it was a really small place... only one grocery store and barely anything else. but it did have a jap restaurant and a whole lot of jap tourists

this isn't quite in chronological order. zhi yuen on one of his morning photo taking walks by the lake.

Looking out onto lake tekapo. i'm standing behind thomas trying to make him look like a teapot =P

once we got a little more organized. i look like i'm ready to kick into a musical song with a cane, heels, lotsa kicking and tap dancing.

Church of the Good Shepard. it's a quaint little church facing the lake. killer view from the inside. it shares the same lion symbol thingy as that found on the bridge of remembrance. i found that interesting. felt a little da vinci co

this is the window at the back of the church facing the lake.

this be the view from the inside. amazing. i would stick around in church longer with a view like this. heehee

i made the boys lamb salad with hummus and mint jelly that night. made a little bit too much coucous though.


we went stargazing that night. apparently the town around lake tekapo has sodium street lamps and the residents have to face all their lights down so that there's minimal light pollution. i got to see venus, jupiter, the tarantula nebula, the moon and a bunch of other things through 3 telescopes. it was fun =) and now i know where capricorn is in the sky.

and then everyone was stuffed and happy. like this cat =) it got a lot of love from us 5 while we were there.

i was wiped out too. was trying to read the front bit of p.s. i love you but didn't get past knowing that the husband died and that he'd made a list of things for his wife to do after he died.

flowers by the lake just outside the hostel

more of zhi yuen's handy work

For a lot of people, zhi yuen is a serious and reserved fellow. the truth is, he is a poser.

and he's gotten it down to an art

because he takes his own pictures

while pretending to walk away into the beautiful scenery. haha =P

then it was off to mt cook to hopefully glacier kayak

I was kinda pooped from laughing so much in the car. everytime someone made a strange noise (and it'd almost always be me) someone else would continue with another silly noise and suddenly we're breaking out into the 'in the jungle' song, complete with the ah wim ba weh and tu du du du tu du du du du and in the jungle the mighty jungle in spontaneous unison. it was awesome. but really quite alot of work =P

Cloudy day views from the car

Long lonely highways

With silly people standing in the middle of them

This is our car ad for subaru. it's a nice car but it takes forever to pick up

a rainbow to welcome us to mt cook =)

Tramping at Hooker Valley... yeah, Hooker Valley =P

it snowed the next day we were at mt cook. so no glacier kayaking. first time i saw snowfall. i was so excited!

I was not really dressed for the weather but wasn't too frazzled. Didn't get too wet nonetheless =) That's a lake and those are some mountains with snow on them =P

That's them there again, without me spoiling the picture

Zhi Yuen on one of his lone walks =)

More pictures to come. it's the last day of our trip but there are still lots of pictures from mt cook, queenstown and milford sound bits to show =)