(i re-did this post last night even though i published it in the afternoon, i can't help it if i want to be proud of my work)

everybody has their fears. i mean, i'm terrified of cockroaches, worms, millipedes, centipedes, creepy-crawlies, snails, psychotic killers, vaginas, children, psychotic children covered in creepy-crawlies, snails, worms, millipedes, centipedes, cockroaches and equipped with a... okay. well, let's not go into the details of the combined average of my fears. but if there's one thing above that i fear the most, it's the things of the unearthly. and i'm not talking geography here.

spirits, ghosts and mysterious white things that come in human-form (this sentence needs paraphrasing). i'm terrified of all things spiritual. and you know what the irony is? i've never seen a single ghost in my life before and i've never really come close to an out-of-this-world experience. true, i've read my fair share of Singapore Scariest Ghost Stories (compiled by the mysterious Russell Lee) and countless are the spam e-mails that i have received of spirits captured in jpgs. but how do you fear something that you have never seen or experienced before? is that what they call the fear of the unknown? i'll be the first to assure you then, that i ought to be the most cowardly of the lot. beneath this smart-assed facade of mine, there's nary but a real dumb blonde beneath who's prolly as smart as a g-string.

i remember during the secondary school days when everyone was beginning to discover the joys of e-mailing and sending each other junk mail. that was when i got freaked out over opening e-mails filled with ghostly jpgs. of course, that was also the time i discovered you could receive free daily porn pictures, but that's another story for another post. one of these freaky ghostly e-mails was opened during a computer lab session during secondary school. apparently, everyone got bored with learning how to use Microsoft Word and started checking up on their emails. and as usual, the bloody secondary school kids think it's bloody 'kewl' when they show their friends scary shit. of course, the chap who showed us this particular email attachement never told us anything about it being scary.

i think some of you guys might have seen it before. it's an attachment in the email. there's basically a picture of a bedroom drenched in blue light. and the point of the attachment is to stare at the window at the top left-hand corner of the picture (i'm getting goosebumps as i type these lines and i'm not lying about this) for close to a minute before one will be able to experience a visual effect. of course, being the curious secondary school sucker that i was, i willing stared as closed to the screen as possible. and nearly forty-five seconds later and several 'you're wasting my time, i don't see anything' type of responses, a lady in a white gown and enlarged eyes appeared at the window and appeared to flash towards the edge of the computer screen. the whole thing was over in less than five seconds. but it's a moment in time that got me really freaked out. i couldn't help thinking about those five seconds for the rest of the week. that's how bad these things get to me.

Singaporeans however, are very exposed to the whole ideology of ghosts. after all, we're a melting pot of Asian cultures here in the tropical nanny state. and if there's one thing we're really good at (other than education, setting lame world records and recycling our waste water), it's gotta be ghost stories and our knowledge of the spirits. just look at the seventh month that just passed. the seventh month, in case you're not Asian and are neither living in the Asian countries, refers to the seventh (duh?) month of the Chinese Lunar calendar. the month whereby the spirit and all our deceased ancestors are released in the human realm to par-tay. i have no idea what the spirits really do during this month really. prolly scare a few Singaporeans, relive the bad music of the 80s and perhaps cruise the same ol' toilet that they used to cruise in the days of their gay youth. but they are basically out there doing stuff during the seventh month. that month, has just passed apparently.

the seventh month never meant much to me despite warnings about going out too late at night. i still carried on with life as if the seventh month were the eight, ninth or tenth of the Chinese Lunar calendar. i guess i'm much more irritated by the inconsiderate Singaporean heartlanders. everywhere you turn, you see them burning paper money for the deceased. not in the town-council designated burning bins, but rather just along the streets. a gentle breeze basically sweeps ashes and paper money remnants all over the place. and have i ever told you how big my nostrils are? i can't help but feel like i've stepped into the hellish alternate world of Constantine during the seventh month.

the food offerings are another irritating issue. most people place food offerings of oranges and rice and pork belly beside trees. but there are the inconsiderate few who basically place them in the middle of pedestrian walkways. ditto that for the burnt offerings and ashes. the general rule of respect is that one is not supposed to step over these offerings to the deceased. i mean how would you like if i stepped over your wallet or carbonara? hmph. petty little spirits. none the less, accidents are bound to happen. accidents like my first ex-boyfriend's brother who accidentally kicked some ashes once and woke up the next morning with a set of swollen testes. maybe it's puberty. maybe it's the testosterone. either way, waking up with a set of mysteriously swollen balls is no fun.

it's even more fanatical in the hospital where death and dying occur on a daily basis. according to superstition, there are bound to be vengeful ghosts with plenty of regrets roaming the hospital corridors. after all, who wants to die in a crappy 'C' class ward that has no air-conditioning but rather, a senile old man screaming bizarre things in the middle of the night? the seventh month is apparently the time when all the superstitious Chinese peeps avoid going for operations. they believe that the vengeful spirits would screw up their chances of surviving their hernia operations. to me, it just means a smaller number of people going for operations, translating into an easier workload for the month.

i knew of one colleague who had a mysterious experience during the seventh month though. a bed-ridden patient who managed to tumble off the bed despite the fact that the bedrails were up. and of course, she's bed-ridden. how do you key in a Risk Management Report for things like that? truth be told though, the whole concept of the seventh month seems to be just that, a concept. of course, i might have to change my mind about that when i relate to you this story about having sex in the outdoors and not realizing that it's the month where the spirits are merry-making.

you see, opportunity came knocking on my door when a random search on the net brought forth a stranger with a car. the main aim was to have sex in the car and if the environment permits, outdoors. admittedly, i've never been a real big fan of the great outdoors given the rise of global temperatures and outbreaks of dengue, etc. plus, there tends to be this unproven co-relation between mother nature and spirits. back during the days of green, brown, black and combat boots, the general saying was that if you wanted to pee in the great outdoors, do it at a tree always remember to apologize to the tree before peeing. i felt rather stupid doing it, but then again, a little stupidity never hurt anyone, did it?

thus we met at 2230hrs and drove off in his car. of course, the fear of carbon monoxide poisoning crossed my mind. but that was easily quelled by the abnormal swelling in the nether regions. we drove from the residential area all the way to the industrial areas between Kranji and Woodlands, all the while looking for a secluded spot of sorts. we could have settled for a random multi-story parking lot, but my adventurous spirit refused to settle for sex amongst mere cars.

that's the magic of having a car. it presents an endless number of opportunities. the manual gear stick for example, coupled with the appropriate hand wipes and alcohol swabs, make for an excellent alternative for a category named 'Thing to Put Up Your Rectum'. not that I have tried anything resembling like that, but surely it's an idea that comes to mind. of course, there's all the traveling to distant places that going by foot could never take you as well. and having air-conditioned sex in humid Singapore is bliss. to put it simply, having a car is king. and to put it even simpler, having sex in a car is ehrm... well, whatever that is better than king.

and so we travelled, looking for that desolate spot that seemed so elusive. every single industrial estate was either filled with foreign workers chatting with loved ones on mobile phones or stray dogs barking away. it wasn't until we passed the Kranji reservoir that we saw THE car park - a quiet and lonely spot with several other cars parked around. it was dark, filled with trees and had very dim lighting, just apt for getting dirty deeds done. a few questionable drives around the parking lot revealed a strategic spot snuggled between a red van on the right and some trees on the left. i scanned the surrounding for any signs of human life and true enough, there were none.
it as oh-so-quiet as Bjork. too quiet for comfort though.

it wasn't until i looked at red van that was on the right of us that i realized something was amiss. apparently, there was someone watching us. i'm not sure whether it was the lighting or the reflection or whatever unknown scientific explanation that caused it. but from where i was sitting in the car, there was someone or perhaps something at the red van passenger seat's window. it was blurred, but one could make out the misty reflection of a person, a lady to be exact. a Chinese lady, with very frazzled hair. this is rather irrelevant but the first though on my mind was something like 'this woman really needs conditioner man.'

it wasn't until i realize that this particular lady was staring at us from the window and keeping eerily still, that i realized something bizarre was going on. if she at least moved and said hi or took out a video camera with a flickering red light, i would have been more at ease. but a deeply-ingrained Asian knowledge of spirits and one too many budget Asian horror flicks gives you a general idea that this is definitely not your serial voyeur. now, not only was there something standing in my pants, ditto that for all the hairs on my body too. it's times like these when i'm thank for Fight or Flight. i can assure you that flight is always the best choice in most situations (ghostly or not). i have plenty of smart-arsed quotes saying stuff like 'running away is not only for losers' up my cowardly sleeve.

'let's get out of here,' i said to my partner.

'did you see that?' he asked

'let's just get out of here,' i repeated firmly. i didn't realize it but my hand was gripping rather tightly onto his left hand. his left hand, of course, was tensely placed on that gear stick which presented a myriad of anal-retentive opportunities.

and as quickly (if not faster) as we arrived at the parking lot, we zoomed off with the image of the Chinese lady with the bad hair seared into our minds. not so much about the conditioner-deprived hair, but the bizarre spiritual-cum-sexual experience we just had. i was rather freaked out, having seen the first spirit in my entire life. freaked out to the extent that i had forgotten to button up my pants. and you know what ghosts and a strong blast of air-conditioning can do the the nether regions. brrrr.... once i had gathered back my balls though (literally and metaphorically), we exchange interpretations of what we both saw on the way back to the residential district. the other guy mentioned that the visage had a veil on to which i countered with my version of a woman's bad hair day. we both gave a nervous chuckle and decided to settle for a secluded spot at an industrial vehicle car park.

the image of the woman haunted my dreams as i slept that night. it was an uneasy sleep as that was the first time i had seen anything like that. hell, it was the first time i've seen a ghosts in my entire twenty-three years of mortal living. i mean, i've heard endless stories about friends of friends of friends who had seen ghosts, and they are the sort that you often hear when you overnight at chalets with some alcoholic beverages in hand. but to see it first hand like this, it truly affects the mind and the body. plus i couldn't believe that i had been so stupid as to tempt fate by having outdoor sex right at the beginning of the seventh month. so much so that i developed a debilitating 38.2 degrees fever overnight. i didn't feel like smoking, i didn't feel like eating, i didn't even feel like seeing the doctor. all i wanted to do was sleep and forget all about the previous night. thank goodness for parents because they forced me to do all of the above-mentioned, falling short of the smoking. some ibuprofen, antibiotics and Dunhills later, i was up and running and back to having sex again.

though i'll have to admit, i'm gonna just stick to multi-storey carparks for now and run the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning and perhaps indulge in a bit of 'manual gear-stick fun'.

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