Some mistakes are too much fun...

to only make once.


One evening, while waiting to get into an auditorium to watch a theatre performance with some friends, I got a call from a colleague who was to join us. I could barely hear her, as there was an alarm blaring at the background. She sounded that bit frantic.

You see, there is a car park behind our office building. While pretty safe in the day, it gets dark and creepy at night. As she was making her way across the car park to get to her car, she saw some men hanging around the area, so she hurried. In fiddling for her car keys, she accidently set the alarm off and inexplicably lost the remote. So there she was, getting late for the show, alone in a car that wouldn’t start with its alarms blaring, in a creepy car park with men hanging around nearby, wondering if I could help.

Together with another friend, I rushed to the scene in my car. It was easy to locate her car as the car park was almost empty. We went over and she emerged. She had found the remote and had shut off the alarm, but the car refused to start. I got the keys from her and tried to fiddle around, seeing if I could somehow get it to start, but it couldn’t work.

“We’ll sort this out later I guess. You can follow us; we can still be there before the show starts”.

“Err… there’s someone else coming,” she says.

I looked at her, puzzled. “What for? We’re here.”

“Well, I called him as well.”

“Ok, you can tell him not to come. We got to catch the show. Don’t want to miss the start!”

She makes a call, and then comes back to us.

“He was on the way to Malacca, but turned around when he found out I was stuck… so he’s going to come here anyway.”

Hmm… this sounded fishy. Probably a stalker I thought. I’ll handle him. So we waited.

Soon enough, another car comes into the car park, and a gentleman alights.

‘Looks decent’, I thought. But then again, so do all men. After some introductions, at which I did pretty well to keep my suspicions under wraps, the discussion was on what to do next.

He offered to drop her home. I was having none of it.

“She’s coming with us, we’ve got a show to catch. You can go back to Malacca. Nice meeting you.”

I had spoken and that was it.

As we reached the theatre, another friend who was waiting for us asked what happened.

“I’ll tell you later, but thank god we reached there when we did!”

*******

To find out three weeks later that those two just started going out was…

The good thing is they had a good laugh about it that night itself (and till today, still do). They even asked me to speak at their wedding.

What are the odds of something of a similar genre happening to me again?

Well, once every 7 years it seems!

A few months ago, another guy told me that he was going out with someone, and to find that those two just started going out was…

He told me yesterday that they are going to get engaged to be married.

I’m not at liberty to share the details of the story, but suffice to say, one sequel is more than enough for me!