Basket.

Even by the surreal standards my life sometimes achieves, this morning was an odd one. I was doing the 6-8am sentry shift at Khatib Camp's main entrance, and guess who waltzes in at about 7.30? The very same nasal-voiced Chua Seng Khim who attempted without much success to teach A01C A-Level Economics almost exactly two years ago. I could only stare as he walked past me without showing any signs of recognition (understandably). It was an encounter odder than meeting Geraldine Chong at a Buona Vista bus stop (last August) or Aaron Loh at the same apartment complex my junior resides in (last July). It seems I really have a penchant for such chance meetings/sightings.

But what came next was even stranger.

I booked out at about 9.15 and was on my way to the MRT station when I was stopped by this little old lady. The instant she began speaking, I knew she was from China. She pointed to the fruit trees that exist within our camp perimeter and asked me, in Chinese, whether just anyone could enter the place. She also remarked that the ripening fruit smelled very good. I told her that this was an army camp and only open to authorised personnel. At this point I was only thinking that she was a nature-loving Chinese emigre hippy, nothing much out of the ordinary. Then she suddenly begins talking about Falungong. She expounds on how it is merely a philosophy for healthy living, how the atheistic and oppressive Chinese government is trying to crush it and how one should embrace its principles wholeheartedly because it can only benefit body and soul.

I am taken by surprise (understatement) by this abrupt turn of events. It took all my reserves of self-control to stop myself from looking shocked, which I think might have been rather rude. I put on a neutral expression and listened to her for a few moments before she concluded and went off on her way.

The whole thing was just so unexpected. How often do you meet a harmless-looking (actually, harmless, in fact) old lady on the street who turns out to be a Falungong adherent and attempts to convert you to her... beliefs? And with such innocuous opening lines too.

After all that, I near the MRT and meet a rather comfortingly common Singaporean weirdo - an old man holding an umbrella who walked past me and began suddenly muttering loudly to no one in particular. Now that did it. I fled up the stairs into the train, the arrival of which had been perfectly timed to coincide with mine, to begin the journey home, where I was determined to stay for the rest of the day. I won't meet any ghosts from the past, Falungong adherents or the merely-ordinarily odd here under my own roof.