At the sight of flashing lights one street away, I buckled up as though an office worker would maximise his page of excel to hide the minesweeper when boss came out of his office. Uncle cabby says, "road block again. Let's make a turn before the junction," and there he made a professional left negotiation to embark on the detour.
And cabby carried on with his cab talk, the trade when customers pay to entertain his driver. As I sat back calmly to immerse in the perfect match of indian-filled accent with jasmine aroma and hindu goddess pictures, I sensed an involuntary gradual rise in the rate of my heart beat. One not out of fear or panic, but that of adrenaline rush. Turning my attention to outside the window, I witness that the street lamps were already racing towards where we came from.
As we cruise through the empty yellow-lit highway, the imagined silence outside the car revealed the set in of the late night - so cool so relax. However, my heart beat never attempt to synchronise with ambience.
"One-forty", cabby blurps out suddenly, with a sense of cheeky pinch.
I rolled my eyes to the clock installed above the gearbox. "Uncle, now already 2plus lo."
He was silent for a moment, and he went, "one-sixty!" Now, with an obvious tone to show off.
My eyeballs rolled further to the right. The bigger and brimming clock was 4 o' clock - 5 minutes before the markings on the clock come to a blank. I awed a silent "woah" to myself, finally satisfied with the answer to the unexplained anxiety.
The retired Malaysian racer took less than 10 minutes to race me home from Ang Mo Kio to Woodlands.
