SINGAPORE – On a Facebook post dated May 31 (Sunday), Mandy Xinyi Chan shared how she went for a 10-kilometer jog by herself and ended up getting lost.
According to Ms Chan, after having a heavy dinner for a birthday at home the night before, she decided to go for a run the next morning, “the first in a long time,” she shared. She only took her keys with her, leaving her phone and wallet back in her flat.
Ms Chan, who is no newbie when it comes to running, surprisingly lost her way on a route she had taken just one year before when she joined the Standard Chartered Marathon. She shared that “Maybe it was missing the outdoors too much or maybe it was me trying to adventurous, I took a route that I had never done before.”
By the time she had run four kilometers, she shared that all the buildings began to look the same. This is when she realised that she had gotten lost, and because she only had her keys with her, she had no way of accessing Google Maps or Grab to make it back home.
She decided to ask for help from a stranger after “walking in circles for 1km,” but even after two hours of trying to find her way back to a familiar spot, she was still lost. She finally came across the Fort Canning MRT station, where she approached the station’s operating office for help.
Ms Chan ended up sharing what had happened to her with one of the station’s workers, explaining that she didn’t bring her phone or her ez-link card. And while she believed that he would just give her the directions on how to get home, she wrote in her post, “THE NEXT THING THAT HAPPENED SHOOK ME.”
Rather than show her the way, the operator pulled out his own wallet and quickly handed her a S$2 bill so that she could buy a ticket to get back home. He also told her, “It’s okay, Hari Raya la,” showing her to the closest ticketing machine.
Although she attempted to refuse at first, she wrote that “he insisted that it was okay. I was so taken aback but promised that I’d go back and pay him.”
For Ms Chan, she felt that S$2 was more than just an act of kindness. She iterated, “This was more than $2 to me. It was humanity in full blown form. I miss this. Can’t wait for Singapore to hit zero cases again and for us, to resume life again, with a deeper appreciation for these little moments.”
You can see Ms Chan’s Facebook post here. / TISG