SINGA-TWO: The Eternal Queue
Plane Source
Meera flopped her body on the cement bench. Beads of sweat ran down her forehead and the length of her back. When viewed in a different light, one could easily spot smoke emanating from her body. She pressed her eyelids together, gritted her teeth, and tried to lift her legs off the ground, as high as she could. It felt as if she had been walking on broken shards of glass for the better half of 10 kilometers now, and her slight reprieve provided a soothing oasis from the desert of torture she found herself stranded in. To say that she's had a long day would be an understatement.
Gary dragged their bags towards her, while Hao sat right beside her. They found themselves at the City Hall station, in the middle of one of the year's busiest rush hours. Droves of people flocked the entrances of the train as soon as it arrived. However, they weren't in a rush. Their flight leaves three hours from now anyway, and they were, at best, 30 minutes away from the airport.
"No pressure," Gary reassured. "The trains arrive every 2 minutes. The lines would dwindle in no time, lah."
But, it didn't. With each passing train, the lines only seemed to double. Instead of getting frustrated, the trio used the time to recuperate. They had spent more than 80% of their day lining up in queues, and they weren't in a rush to stand in line for yet another one.
"Two hours," Meera blurted out of frustration.
"Huh?," asked Hao. "Simi?"
"We spent two fucking hours standing in line for a ride that lasted only five minutes."
Gary and Hao laughed, but they were equally infuriated when they were in the middle of that queue. It was funny in retrospect, but the snail's pace of the moving line didn't afford them the chance to sit down for a meaningful amount of time, which resulted to the battered state of their feet.
"And, before that," Meera followed. "The line at Makansutra, the line at Bugis, the lines for the bathroom."
"Simi line for the bathroom?" Hao coyly queried, to which he was met with a solid punch to the arm, care of Meera. "Paiseh ah! I was just ... I was just joking. Relax, Mee. Kick your feet up."
To which, she did. She rested her ailing appendeges on top of her stroller, and placed her back firmly against the wall. Meera took a deep breath, then let out a long sigh. She wiped her sweat from her face, then tried to stretch her legs. A sharp pain greeted her, but she decided she'd rather rest up in the departure area while they waited for their flight.
As soon as the queue didn't double, Gary walked towards it and saved their spot. It wasn't that he didn't suffer the same pain, he just didn't complain as much. One of these days, Meera and Hao figured Gary would just snap, but they first posited that a few years ago, yet he hasn't flinched even once.
"Come on," Gary urged them. "Just a little more and we could be resting comfortably at the airport."
They boarded the train to Tanah Merah, then switched hurriedly to the train headed for Changi, since it was already there when they alighted. Hao suggested for them to just focus on all the sights so that they could take their mind of the pain gnawing at their feet. They exchanged stories about everything that happened to them the entire day to pass the time, but it didn't help at all with easing the discomfort.
"When we get to the plane, these shoes are coming off," Meera shared. "I don't care if it smells like a graveyard of rats up in there."
"One of us is sitting apart from the group," Hao reminded them. "So, uh, dibs on not being Meera's seatmate!"
"I guess you're alone then," Gary decided as he turned to face Meera. He gripped her shoulder firmly while he faced away. "I pity the poor soul who's unfortunate enough to get a full whiff of that."
They strolled through to the check-in counter, where they were met with yet another queue. After they stowed away their luggage, the trio made their way to their boarding gate, lining up yet again at the immigration counter. As soon as they arrived at the gate, the waiting passengers stood up to form a line. The trio then decided to wait it out until they were the last to board.
"How about you remove your shoes now while we're waiting?" Hao inquired. "Spare us all from the stench, yeah?"
"You siao ah? And let you all relax in peace?" Meera replied. "Nuh uh! No, sir. If I suffer, everyone suffers."
"Ah sibei jialat."
"Kao pei la," Gary interrupted. "Come on guys, line's almost up, let's board."
Once they found their seats, Gary and Hao sat together on the row just before one of the emergency doors, while Meera sat in between two very hefty fellows. She glared at them with disdain, unable to remove her shoes, like she initially intended. Gary sat closer to the aisle, while Hao chuckled at Meera's plight.
The pre-flight announcement came on, and the flight attendants stood in the middle to demonstrate the safety procedures. Gary sat in attention, listening attentively to every instruction. Meera lifted her feet off the ground, trying to establish a position on both armrests. Hao sat quietly, looking outside the window.
As the plane started to move, the fasten seatbelt sign came on and the captain commanded the flight crew to take their seats. The motors started to spin, and the ground crew cleared the area.
Hao kept staring out the window, but was interrupted when a stewardess sat right next to him. Her face was located directly between his line of sight to the window, which made things a bit awkward to start. The stewardess herself didn't know where to look, so she just stared blankly in front of her.
The airplane pushed forward, accelerated quickly, then lifted itself off the ground. Right outside, the sun slowly set just beyond the horizon, but Hao wouldn't know it, since he couldn't see out the window. There was nothing wrong with it though—staring, that is. He was single, and the seats were designed that way. It was awkward, but that was just how the aircraft was built. He wanted to make small talk, but he couldn't find the words to say. The stewardess eyes, shifted quickly sideways, that's when he figured that now would be the best time to start things off. Just as when he was about to speak, the stewardess unfastened her seatbelt and made her way to the back.
"Hey," Hao muttered. "You think I have a shot with that chio bu?"
"Don't, lah," Gary warned. "You screw that up, you go make things awkward for the entire flight."
"I won't! You go wing me, yeah?"
"Eh guai lan! You alone in this, bro."
"Ah shh ... Yeah, whatever lor."
A couple of minutes passed and the food service started to roll out. Meera had difficulty eating because of the cramped space, but that didn't deter her from trying. As she was sipping her drink, her bulky seatmate shifted, which made her spill her drink all over herself. She shouted in dismay, and a member of the flight crew rushed to her aid. Apologetic, the flight attendant offered her a seat at the Business Class, since there were still a few spaces left. Meera accepted instantaneously, looking back at her companions with a smirk.
Hao stood up and made his way to the bathroom, surprised to find that there was only one person before him in the queue, though there was still a queue. Unable to wait for his seatmate to return, Gary switched seats with Hao, reclined the chair and drifted off to sleep. When Hao got back, he busied himself watching movies on the in-flight entertainment screen.
A few hours passed, and they were deep into the night. The aircraft experienced some turbulence during its voyage, but had a generally smooth ride. Apart from a few crying babies, most of the other passengers were quite orderly. Fortunately for the flight crew, it seemed like a normal, ordinary flight. That is, until the captain heard word from the air traffic control tower.
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking," she announced over the onboard PA system. "I have just been informed by air traffic control, due to ongoing repairs in the runway, there has been traffic congestion with regard to landing. We are currently 7th in the queue, and our touchdown time would be delayed by about 30 minutes. We apologize for the delay. For passengers who are on connecting flights, our flight crew will get to you shortly to assist you in relocating to the Business for faster alighting once we touch down."
"W-What," Gary asked, startled awake by the flock of people heading to Business Class. "What's going on here?"
"Landing's delayed, I think," Hao replied. "Something about the traffic in the runway or some shit."
"Traffic ... in the runway?"
"Yeah, I don't know. Cap'n said we're 7th, I think."
"Tch. I wonder if Meera's having the time of her life in Business Class."
"Hmm? Here I'm wondering if people want to escap Business Class because of the putrid smell."
Just as they were talking about her, Meera emerged from behind the curtain, looking more relaxed than she had ever been the entire day. She floated to the middle of the plane, right where her friends were seated.
"What's up, boys?" she teased, wearing slippers the plane provided her.
"What about trading seats for even 30 minutes?" Hao queried.
"In 30 minutes, we'll be touching down."
"Yeah, I know."
"Yeah ... No." Meera dismissed, strolling back to her seat with a smile.
Gary and Hao looked at each other, dejected.
"I had to try."
30 minutes went by, and the plane was still up in the air. It passed a sea of clouds, and a strange light flashed around it. The cabin crew was prepared, and they readily served drinks to ease the tension. At that point, some of the passengers were growing a bit restless. The captain once again took to the PA system, and announced that they were bumped down the queue. She was apologetic, but her apologies wouldn't be able to rectify the delay.
An hour went by, and more passengers started to question the cause of why they still haven't landed. The flight crew tried their best to allay the worries, but they themselves were growing a bit distressed. City lights below became familiar, as the plane circled around the vicinity of the airport.
Several hours went by, and the passengers started a ruckus. Not knowing what to do, the flight crew barricaded themselves and consulted the captain on how to handle the situation. As the night went on, the ruckus died down, as many of the passengers elected to go to sleep. Some of those who remained awake worried if the plane had enough fuel to keep circling around.
The captain checked the gauge, and was surprised to find that the fuel hasn't at all decreased. She wondered if they had ever taken off, and if the whole flight was just one big illusion. Tapping on the panel, she was scared that it might quickly turn to empty and that they would plummet to their doom. She didn't mind dying, but she could bear the thought of having hundreds of lives in her conscience.
The sun came up just beyond the horizon. A whole night had gone by and the aircraft was still stranded in the air. The captain didn't know how exactly they managed the feat, but instructed the crew to serve the remaining meals before the passengers were forced to eat each other. Jokingly, of course, but the fear was real.
Meera dragged her feet towards where her friends sat. With her tired eyes, she looked out the window, only to be met by a sight of blue. She wondered if she was dreaming, or if they had already died, and this was the purgatory that befit them. In her mind, she swore to trade places with her friends, but in the end she couldn't come around to offering it.
"On the plus side, though," she remarked. "My feet feel like they're brand new."
The plane circled around once again, and a beep signaling an announcement was heard over the PA system.
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking."
Excellent post dear friend @jedau, very interesting, open flying really? And if he flew like he did for the fuel to last so many hours and finally the plane landed? Those are the intrigues for the next chapter.
Thank you very much dear friend for this great material
Have a great day .
Did the plane ever land? Will the queue ever end? Are they even flying? Will I ever stop asking questions? Who knows?? All I know is that I'm thankful for your comment, my friend :D
Are all the Singa stories going to have rhyming titles? :D
I was a bit confused by the first lah but with everything else (some of which I understood and some I didn't) I could totally hear the characters talking, ahh memories XD (which are not actually that distant, I speak Singlish to my grandmother at least once a week and when I go home every couple of years most people talk like that XD).
Man those queues sound hellish. I do remember a lot of queueing in Singapore but they did move eventually XD Also remember a lot of queueing at the Gold Coast in Australia (we did the theme parks) but we were silly enough to go there during the school holidays (well not a lot of choice in that really as my sister and I did school) and they also moved eventually, and while they did take a while to get to a ride which didn't last nearly as long as the queue did we didn't have to wait quite as long as your three friends did.
Although one thing I've noticed between the Asian cities I've been to and the Australian cities, there's a LOT of people packed into one place!
And WHAT is going on with that plane :O
It's not for me to say, but you know it to be true
When will this mini-series end? Know it, I know you do :D
Awesome!! I ran it through SG friends to make sure it's as close to authentic as it can get. I'm glad that it's at least confirmed :) I know not many people will read this, but I do take extra special care of the little details just for my sanity haha! Thanks for your continued support, mate! My recent vote average seems to suggest that support has gone down to a tenth of what it was haha The timing couldn't be any worse, just when my account is turning a year old haha!
Oh man, that sucks about the queuing! I can't believe it's prevalent even in Australia? But, is it following you though? I mean, is the queue there and you stumble upon it, or did you bring the queue? Wait, are you Meera!?
HAHA! I noticed that, too! I guess when tour groups converge, they make it seem like areas are congested. The slow moving people make it seem as if the queues are longer than they really are. I do plan on explaining my inspiration for this, a la SILVER LINING when I'm done with this mini-series haha
Will that plan ever land? Did they even take off? Is it just some fever dream? Are they already dead? Was the food service drugged? Did Hao finish all of the in-flight movies? Who knows?? Do I even know?? Am I just making all of these stuff up?? Will I ever stop asking questions!?
Yeh I know the feels XD But it also helps for when you have people who have some idea what's going on XD Like in your case I think it may have been a dialect issue as in that kind of sentence the people I know would have used leh or ma rather than lah.
Queues are just gonna happen wherever there's a lot of people XD there's less people in Oz though so they don't last as long generally.
I'm not Meera, I don't attract queues but I do attract crowds into shops which is great for the shops but not great for the person that hates crowds XD
Ohh I didn't know about ma, but I have heard leh used instead of lah. Singlish slang is awesome haha!
You know what's funny, @randomli's has the same ability haha! We call it her curse haha! Talking about drawing crowds wherever she goes.
The variations of lah and ma seem to come more with the Chinese pidgin, I haven't heard them too much in the Malay pidgin.
I was talking about this with my sister when I was dropping her back actually, though unfortunately I can't remember much of the conversation due to being overtired, hopefully it will come back to me later but I think I've blown my stack with that one XD
Don't overwork yourself, you still have a whole household to take care of after all! Ahh I see, that's interesting. While my SG friends have Filipino roots, they operate in Chinese circles, so hmm.. maybe the slang is getting intermingled somehow?
As far as i can tell from accent and observation (no academics involved whatsoever 😆) i think it probably evolved from Chinese and was picked up by everyone else. There's a lot of fusion going on by the time you get that far into south east Asia.
If you meant Singlish and Filipino slang intermingling that's also highly probable 😅
Oh, yeah, don't I know it haha! Filipino itself is a mix of Spanish and Bahasa, so who am I to judge. You know what's funny? If it weren't for romantic reasons (ooooooh), I would've graduated with a course in linguistics haha! Did you laugh? Tell me if you did, so I would know if it was indeed as hilarious as I thought.
A graveyard of rats LOLOL. Loved the dialogue between the two guys about the flight attendant, could really hear that!
Very mysterious, my mind is instantly continuing the story on, like the plane actually crashed and there in some kind of purgatory, the show LOST comes to mind :)
Perfect timing regarding the posting time of your previous chapter and this! Haha! If there's any question whether we're kindred spirits or not, it should all be put to rest considering the care we take with scripting the dialogue :D
This was actually the last one I wrote for the series. I wrote this while I was on the plane. Lost was actually the first thing that came to mind when I conceptualized this!! But, since I didn't want to stretch it out too long, I made the ending kind of like a choose-your-adventure type of thing :)
Who is this mysterious trio anywhere, and why does it seem like queues follow them wherever they go? Do they deserve the things that befell them? Oh, you know that I've already mapped their entire histories out ;) Thanks for stopping by, sis! With the recent decline in interactions, it's always great having constant bastions here :D
I know, right, it is quite the synchronicity that your story and my chapter were similar in that way!
Of course you've mapped them out, our imaginations can't help but do that ;)
Yeah, this time period in steemit has definitely become one where you have to skip about talking to people for them to find their way to you for the most part. It's some of the reason I took on @merej99's challenge, having to do fifty comments a day gives me motivation to do the skipping lol.
I've had the worst luck trying to bring in more people by commenting on their posts. I always chance upon people who just reply but don't even bother checking out my posts haha!
Loved it. A build up and creation of tension. The air of mystery. The slight feeling of matters unresolved. Characters were very real. Dialogues and interaction very believable.
I will point out one thing which I noticed because that is an area I have my attention on in my own writing. I saw one spot in the early part where you changed from past tense to present tense:
Last word should be arrived, given the tense of the story? Mind you was probably just a spelling error given the s is next to the d. And didn't notice this anywhere else.
Again, great story, very readable.
Oh shoot! Good catch, mate! I actually wrote this on my phone during the flight, so I must've fumbled with the 's' and the 'd' since, as you said, they're right next to each other. Yes, that's what I'm going with. Edited it, and now swept under the rug hahaha!
This one's more experimental than the first installment, which follows the basic story structure more. Have you gotten the chance to read that, by the way? I would love to read your thoughts on it. I will provide the explanation for the stories in my recap, but as of now, I'm glad you picked up on the unresolved matters. This was surely one where the story is more than what it seems. I took extra special care in terms of making the dialogue and interaction believable, so I'm glad you appreciated the effort put into it.
Thanks for taking the time to leave your thoughts, mate! I truly appreciate it :D
Wow I completely missed the first one. How did that happen? Too many meme posts flooding my feed probably. Thank you for letting me know. I will line that up to read at some point in the next 24 hours. And as always, give feedback.
I think it was a simple spelling slip also. It's just that particular spelling mistake looks worse than it is because it changed the whole tense, lol.
I'm sticking with the keyboard error excuse, if you don't mind :/ Though, I have to admit that tense slip up isn't uncommon for me. The only reason I have clean posts is because I usually get the chance to edit them one, two or three times. Not for this series though haha! I'm really trying to post it raw for a change.
I agree, keyboard error. Occam's Razor and all that :)
In all seriousness, that would be it. It stood out to me for the simple fact that I am working on that very issue. I do the same thing, mix up tenses, or confuse POVs. Still, it was a very minor detail in an otherwise great story.
That's very comforting to hear. An author of your caliber suffering through the same thing, that makes me feel that I'm not too far behind. Now that I think about it though, do I really want to reach that level of comfort in writing? Talking about not making mistakes like that. Sure, it'll make churning out work way easier, but I think it takes away from the whole process.
POV issues and mixing up tense inadvertently. Too many adverbs, especially around dialogue tags. And comma splices, or just too many commas. Probably others in there as well, but they are the mistakes I notice in my writing (or have pointed out to me in review).
It happens. Especially when posting without a thorough editing process. I am more focused on writing and honing that side of things. Less so on the editing, although I do reread and do a loose edit. Spelling and grammar mistakes can ruin a good piece.
You know, as much as I try to adhere to the basic rules, there's just a point where we have to let go and find our own identity. Grammar and spelling, sure. But, when it comes to adjectives and adverbs, I think it's case-to-case basis. Especially when you've already written quite a few. You don't want to sound too monotonous for sure. Gotta keep the readers on their toes.
I could just feel the tedium of long haul air travel in the story, as well as the tedium of the queues. I want to hurry along to the next one now, to see if the mystery is answered, or whether it will remain a mystery for all time.
The queues were ... ugh! I can't even... I'm sorry to say that they are one-off stories, for the time being that is hmmmmm! I really wanted to give that sense of "come on, come on, come on!" with this one. You're spot on with the tediousness of it all, it was quite intentional :D
10 interesting facts about ARMENIA
https://steemit.com/culturevulture/@cleemit/10-interesting-facts-about-armenia
Armenia does seem interesting, but the way you promote your post ... Not so bueno, hombre. You could do better by at least reading, voting and leaving a thoughtful comment. And, no, I will not be checking your post. Sorry about that.
haha pretty irrelevant, anyways nice post @jedau.
Thanks, man! I hope you enjoyed reading it :)