hectic

Its been a pretty hectic weekend as I shuttled between Malaysia and Singapore. I have a 2 week “reprieve” before I once again do the same thing as I did last weekend, i.e traveling to and fro KL and Singapore. Friday evening I went back to my wife’s friend’s apartment to collect my luggage; lugged the luggage to the MRT station; reached Bugis, and lugged the luggage to the bus station at Queen’s Street/Ronchor Road, queued to get a ticket onto the Singapore-JB express bus; sat on the bus; was dropped off at the Woodlands checkpoint. When I finally cleared immigration after 30 minutes (no thanks to the long queue and queue jumpers) I found that the bus had gone. I wrongly thought that that was the only bus I could take- apparently not, according to my dad. All I actually needed to do was to wait for the next bus of the same company and board that one. As long as I had the ticket, that was sufficient, and the drivers usually don’t wait for everyone to re-board the bus. Because of the frequency of the buses (practically every 5-10 mins), this meant that I could wait for the next available bus and board it. But I foolishly thought that that was the only bus and guess what? I lugged the luggage across the Causeway, some 1.6km (about a mile), alternating between jogging and brisk walking. As you can imagine, I was absolutely soaked in sweat when I arrived at the JB checkpoint. Luckily my dad’s hotel was just another 300 meters from the checkpoint, so after clearing that, it was just a short walk. I arrived at my dad’s hotel room, in drenched-sweat 9:30pm. Didn’t shower immediately, but headed to look for some grub- I haven’t had dinner as yet.

What can I say about JB “city”- it is dirty, sleazy, congested, chaotic. There was a plethora peddlers selling pirated DVDs, CDs, fake pills, fake t-shirts, cheap clothes, sunglasses, leather items, and so forth. I was propositioned twice to “go upstairs”. Homeless people, beggars, drunks sitting on the benches, literally drowning in their sorrows. I think JB has deteriorated from before. The so-called “beautification” of JB certainly wasn’t apparent to me. It seems to have worsened.

Went to bed at 12am, woke up at 7am, breakfast with dad- nasi lemak and otak otak. Then picked up mom from my aunt’s place, and drove back to KL. Arrived in KL around 3pm. Went to have a quick hair cut (currently because my hair is so short, it is all over in less than 15 minutes- just take a clipper and work it round my head, that’s it!) and went back to the apartment to do more packing. Then, back to Subang for an early Father’s Day dinner because I won’t be around next week to celebrate it with my dad, before going back to the apartment again for more packing. Slept around 1230am.

Did forget to mention that I’m exhausted?

All this has obviously taken a toll on my health- I think my cough is taking longer than expected to heal because of my exertions. I weighed myself on Sunday to find that I’ve lost 2 kgs, to 61kgs.

Sunday was more packing, before taking the 4pm bus back to Singapore. Arrived at 930pm, due to the traffic.

At the same time, I didn’t get as much rest I would’ve liked because I didn’t sleep well last night. What gives? I’m tired, but I can’t sleep. I guess its just the overall stress.

More to do tonight- gotta go meet the present tenant of the apartment we are due to move into. She’s selling some of her items, and we want to see if there is anything worth buying.

Another hectic week…