There is this path near my block that leads people straight to a particular shopping centre (Great World City to be specific). We used to make our way to this shopping centre for breakfast or dinner. It was hassle-free and cost-free. That saved quite a lot of efforts and transport cost because to go to the bus-stop for the bus that sends us there would take about 2 minutes of walking, which involves [either] an over-head bridge [or a dangerous jaywalk across the 2-lane road]. Everything was fine and purse-friendly until the National Parks guys came over and thought that it was time to build a cycle-cum-jogging path for the ‘welfare’ of the residents.
After being under construction for quite a long period of time, and having it’s metal fencing removed, we thought it was time we can use this path. Worried that the path is still sealed off at the end, my mum told me to observe if anyone was taking the path or if the entrance was opened. Well, the entrance isn’t very much open – with the red tapes across and the synthetic orange ‘fencing’ that looks tough and hardy. However, it appears that there’s an old guy who always walks on that path – he probably got through by going under the orange sythetic ‘ fence’ (you see, he isn’t very tall). There was a time when I even saw a little girl cycling with her mother along this path. So the path isn’t very ‘closed’ after all.
I was positive that the path was ‘open’ and since we didn’t want to walk an extra 2 minutes and risk our lives jaywalking, we (as in my family and I) decided to walk on this ‘open’ path. The entrance fence was easy: I lifted it up slightly with my finger and helped everyone duck-walk under it. Now, I saw this same old guy walking pass us. He has already gotten into the path somehow. Alright, so we started walking freely. It was only halfway when every one of us realised we were under the siege of a huge army of winged bugs. These tiny little pest stick around us as though we had just stole their national treasure. My parents were both fanning away these unreasonable creatures, who was trying to be unfair by outnumbering us.
My sister and I decided to run. I was pestered by this little creep who simply refused to budge. I fanned, wacked, smacked and even shouted. As for my sister, her scream was unheeded. The flies continued their attacks. Finally, we reached the end of the path. Here comes the great part – it is blocked! I was going to blast some profanities when I thought it would be wiser to conserve my energy to climb over the 1 metre- or-so fence that had a bike parked beside it. It didn’t take long, and my sister was try to inform my parents about the blockage.
I persuaded them to climb over it since we have gone a long way through this darn path. My sister managed, but the greatest problem was my parents. I was worried that they could make it over the metal railings. Fortunately, the bike acted as a support for them. When my mum was climbing over, a construction worker came and we thought he was going to scold us or something until he went into some tiny hut and offered a chair to us. He was kind, but my parents managed to climb over very much without the help of the chair by the time he came out of the hut. I shouted a ‘Thank you!’ after that.
This post is not going to be political and start ranting about how evil and bad National Parks is, instead, it shall just end off like that.