A nightmare I don’t want to experience again!

Last Thursday was probably one of the most stressful days that I’ve had in a very long time. So much so that I lost weight (which isn’t a bad thing) but I don’t ever want to experience it again!

The story goes like this :

Wednesday evening at my workplace, Sam the scooter decided to just stop working. When I pressed the ignition, nothing happened. Not even the lights switched on. Which led me to believe that it was a battery failure. So I called Cart up for help and he arrived later in the evening to attach his cable from his battery to mine to temporarily give life to Sam and accompanied me in his car as I rode to my regular mechanic.

The only issue was that because it was late in the evening, and the mechanic needed time to diagnose the issue. I still needed to go to work the next day. No problem … I’ll just take the public transportation. I can deal with this. I’ll just have to get out of the house earlier.

Just to let you know, to get to my workplace, I’d have to take the bus and travel about 3km. Then take the subway, change to a connecting line, and then take a train. After that, walk another 3km from the train station to my workplace. If all goes well, I could reach my workplace in about an hour and a half.

But unbeknownst to me, as I took the bus, I realised that there was a transport strike going on. The bus and subway started their strike at 8.30am so I (along with a whole mass of people) had to rush. But growing up in a cosmopolitan country like Singapore, the crowd wasn’t such a big deal. The train left a few minutes after I boarded, and I ended reaching work rather early.

By the way, transport strikes are pretty frequent in Italy. Sometimes even twice a month. But it’s normally held on Fridays.

But it was after work when the nightmare really started.

As I had to cover another teacher during the weekend, I decided to carry some substantial amount of children books and materials. It was probably about 10kg or so. And I tell you, lugging that amount on a 3km distance (there were no bus services) nearly made me cry. On top of that, I had to rush over as the train strike starts at 2pm. I was half dead when I finally reached the train station.

The train didn’t arrive on time. In fact, it was an hour late. And when it finally arrived, the entire situation was chaotic. There were so many people and I felt like a sardine.

It felt kind of like this :

Being poked and hit (accidentally or not) was no fun. And then I still had to take the subway. By the time I reached my neighbourhood, it was already time to head to where I teach private tuition. Not even time for a proper lunch.

And when that was over, I walked another 3km all the way home.

As you can imagine, by the time I reached home, I was so exhausted, I slept as soon as my head hit the sofa. Completely dressed and all. I was that tired. Even if I were in my teens or early twenties, my body probably cannot take this physical punishment.

I don’t think anyone should experience what I experienced. Ever.

Which makes me wonder, maybe getting a foldable bicycle could be a good investment. As a back up plan in case these sort of things happen again.

Or even better … When will teleportation be invented already?!