History does not repeat itself...

but it sometimes rhymes.

A few years ago, I was involved in a reality TV show. An adventure race that was called the extreme journey.

In the first race, we did quite well, despite a few disasters that happened along the way.

I had completed the first task and was on the bus to the location of the second task, which I found out later was to harvest pineapples.

Now, every participant had two people following them, a cameraman and a director. The director told me that I was too quiet, and that I should speak more, as it won’t be much fun watching a quiet race on TV.

Speak more?

Ok, I’ll give it a go. I’ll give the producers some speak to show on TV.

I saw a lady seated nearby, and approached her, but when she saw the camera behind me, she turned away.

This was not going to be easy.

I saw two girls in school uniform seated towards the middle of the bus. They were giggling, so I thought I’ll make their day by talking to them :-) Further, it was mid-morning on a weekday, so what were they doing not in school anyway?

As I approached them, I could see they were excited…

This… is gonna be easy, I told myself, suddenly having a burst of confidence…

“Pergi mana dik?”

A good question to break the ice, don’t you think?

Amidst the giggling and their obvious shyness, one of them answered:

“Pergi sekolah, ada kelas tambahan SPM…”

I was on a roll. Keep it going dude! You have them eating out of your hands already…

“Ahh… abang pun dulu buat SPM…”


*******

I went silent.

The two girls went silent.

The first one to baulk was the cameraman, Chris Jericho. I had a small mike attached to my shirt, and he could hear every word I said, crystal clear, through his headphones. He looked up at me, while struggling to keep the camera steady… and seemed to will me to continue.

The two girls then burst out giggling.

Thank god they had to get down a couple of stops after that.

Of all the things to say… I should have asked about the weather.

That was bad. Could there have been a worse reply?

Apparently not, according to the producers.

They told me they had wanted to bill this the romeo’s race, for that quote and another incident later on in the day involving a girl in a taxi. They decided to focus on some other more entertaining bits eventually, especially the part where we gobbled down raw ostrich egg, the near fall into the crocodile pit, the blood, and the car crash at the finishing point.

*******

I don’ talk much to people on the bus these days.