Verbalism Personified: But then There were None...

Sunday, July 11, 2004

But then There were None...

While waiting for our bumboat ride to Pulau Ubin yesterday morning, Susan, Kim, Chandra and I turned our heads toward a procession filing out of an outpost-of-a-tin-shack that housed Singapore Immigration.

Casually placing our eyeballs on a group of elderly folk, they were heading to some unnamed destination in Malaysia. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary except for the fact they were holding hands as they creaked their way down the even creakier steps of Changi Jetty.

Now if there was ever a time to wonder about a possible disaster waiting to happen, this wasn't one of them. No sooner had the first gentleman placed his slipper-clad foot onto the slippery deck of the bumboat, did he lose his balance and fall ceremoniously into the water.

Usually that would have been the end of the affair.

However the laws of physics are rather precise. In forgetting to let go of the other hand he was holding onto, an entire chain of five uncles and aunties went yelling and screaming into the water with him.

All save for one woman who had just set foot onto the jetty steps. Poised just like the last lady standing, she continued to decend those same creaky steps with all the purpose she could muster.

Initially it was assumed that she was coming to the aid of her inundated compatriots. Stopping at the edge of the water, she seemed to stand still for a moment. However the sight of her dog-paddling friends was just too much for her. Wobbling weakly in the knees, she lost her balance and fell in after an eternity of indecision.

Our friendly bumboat drivers, usually accustomed to many forms of watersports, were taken aback at the sight of so many dog-paddling humans. Apparently they weren't accustomed to this kind of variety. To their credit, the shocked inertia was barely perceptable and they swung into action by fishing our hapless folk out of the water.

The sole irony was that the first gentleman's slipper remained unscathed on the deck of the bumboat. The same could not be said of the soggy clothes, soggy hair and soggy handbags of our soggy compatriots being pulled from the water. Even lemmings would have been so proud.

At first, there were many. But then there were none...