The weather wasn't good on Sat. It rained in the afternoon and was still drizzling a little in the evening. I had to call off my plan to go for an evening jog in UM campus, where I usually jog. I went to the gym at my apartment instead. Comparatively, I prefer to jog outdoor as I can feel to progression as I jog and enjoy the natural scenery. However, indoor gym would be the alternative due to weather or if I am lazy to drive out.
I jogged for 45 minutes and cycled for about 15 minutes. After an hour of exercise, i had a good sweat. It was around 7:30pm. I went up to my place only to realize that I left the key of the extra padlock (recently added) in my room! 1 house mate has gone to Taiwan while another was out for dinner. I didn't bring my handphone with me too since I was just downstairs, within the apartment compound.
Without handphone, how to contact my house mate for rescue?! So shit! Since I couldn't go in, I went down again, wandering around, trying hard to recall my house mate's mobile no. No matter how hard I tried, I still failed to recall hers and other contact numbers of some friends who have my house mate's number. Those contact numbers that I can remember off hand belong to friends who are too far away to come to my rescue. I was wandering here and there trying to figure out who could I contact and trying hard to remember their numbers. Unfortunately, all my attempts failed thoroughly.
Imagine with my sweaty body after exercising for 1 hour, with chilling wind blowing everywhere that I walked, I felt so cold. I was looking for a place that's less reachable by the chilling wind but there was none! I felt hungry too.
Finally, I decided to go to the guardhouse for shelter. I borrowed the phone and made a call to a friend who is usually quite mobile, and whose number that I could remember. Too bad, he was in Kajang and too far away to come to at least take me out for dinner instead of just waiting endlessly.
Knowing my house mate as a not so outgoing person, I decided to wait for her to come back as she normally won't be back too late. I waited patiently at the guardhouse. The guards actually passed me a locksmith's contact number but I decided to hang on for a while.
Time seemed to pass so slowly. Apart from being uneasy with my sweaty sticky and body, I started to feel tired and hungry. How I wished the time to pass faster or my house mate to return earlier. I had been wandering around and waiting in the guardhouse till 9:30pm. What if my house mate was returning very late or not returning for the night? Finally I decided not to wait any further and called the locksmith considering if I I kept on waiting and if the night got later, I would be dying of hunger and the locksmith might charge me double or sky high.
Within 10 minutes time, the locksmith arrived. He was a tall and fair guy. He brought along all his gears from lightweight to heavyweight. After he looked at and examined the padlock, straight away he told me, that kind of padlock is very hard to open, and suggested to saw the 'ears' of the gate, where the padlock was placed. I told him to try for a while first before using that ultimate solution as it will be troublesome for me to get people to seal it back. I even told him that I would rather pay him even without him opening anything if my house mate came back any time, than sawing the 'ears' of the gate.
Anyway, he kept on trying while I was praying hard that my house mate would return in time. He kept telling me it would be better to use that ultimate solution while I kept buying some time. I asked for the last 5 minutes and he agreed. On the 4th minute, he was already getting ready to saw. I asked him to hang on for another minute as time was not up yet and told him that a lot of things can happen in 1 minute.
Suddenly, I heard a 'ting' sound and saw some people coming out from the lift. I was dissapointed that I couldn't find any sign of my house mate's face from these 4-5 people that walked out from the lift. On a second glance, in that moment of truth, I spotted a familiar face and it was my house mate! Thank God!
'See, I told you!', I said proudly to the locksmith. He smiled at me and said, 'Luckily you insisted till the last minute.' However I still needed to pay the locksmith the minimum charge of RM50. He's a licensed locksmith and he did show me his license and the list of authorized charges. At first, I was trying to negotiate for a lower charge but after that I saved my saliva to bargain with him and paid him RM50. He deserved it as he was willing to come to my rescue (though no actual rescue done ultimately) so promptly and don't forget it was on Sat night. Guess what? I had only RM51 of cash with me, just enough to pay the bill with RM1 left. Haha...
It was around 10:30pm when I actually got in to my place and I hadn't even had my dinner! Was initially planning to cook rice & dishes for dinner if the homeless incident didn't happen but I could only settle with Indomee and tofu, a speedy istant dinner. What a night!
I wasn't angry or anxious in the process of waiting as it wouldn't help. Instead, I was calm to think and waited patiently. The sky wasn't falling down anyway.
Was I lucky or unlucky? Come to think of it, it was my own carelessness that lead to this homeless incident and I would consider myself lucky at making the right decision at the critical moment, though there was a price of RM50 to pay for it.
If there is a piece of white papar with a dark spot on it, I choose to see the white area rather than the dark spot to make myself feel better. Move on, life goes on!
5 comments:
You are quite "tai yee". Hahah! A lesson learned lah. Not try to be hero lor. I always bring handphone when I go out.
i usually bring my hp whenever i go out. just that day in particular, didn't feel like bringing it along as i was just jogging downstairs. who knows 'kena pisang' already. i will bring it along next time even if i am just going down for a while.
Can't help but commenting that I was pretty shocked that the locksmith could not open the pad lock and suggested cutting the ears of the metal door instead.
Unless you have a super expensive and secured lock like Lockwood, I believe a competent locksmith could easily picked the lock. If your lock is one of those chinese made ones, you probably have been duped. RM 50 for doing nothing is expensive.
sungimann - i am not sure whether a secured type of yale pad lock that costs more than RM100 is considered expensive to your definition. anyway, the incident's over and lesson learnt.
Very interesting article. You had a very uncomfortable situation. Hiring a good locksmith is never cheap. But hiring a dishonest or incompetent one is always expensive. I also once forgot keys inside the car. And I also called a locksmith and he is also said that will come in 30 minutes, but he came in 25 minutes. And I was surprised, because I thought that he will come after one hour, cause locksmith usually have a lot of work. He opened the car in 5 minutes. So, the locksmith was very handy for me in this tight situation.
Post a Comment