30 December 2018
On the second last day of 2018, I went to the Prudential Marina Bay Carnival with my friend YH. It was a carnival located near MBS that was filled with lots of really exhilarating rides and fun game booths. This was the second year this carnival had taken place. The first edition happened the year before. At that time, I heard it was really popular among couples. I had wanted to go check it out myself but eventually didn’t. This time, at the invitation of YH, I thought it would be a good chance for me to enjoy the carnival with the company of someone.
When we arrived at the entrance, the sky already started to turn a little gloomy. It was a warning that it might rain anytime. At the same time, I began to feel kinda half-hearted about taking those rides. I felt like going back home or simply just have something to eat at the food booth. On the other hand, YH was feeling very excited about taking the rides, undeterred by the imminent rain.
I looked at the rides all around me and started to feel terrified and reluctant. I began to worry if all these adrenaline rush would be too much for me to take.
Trying not to be a wet blanket, I suggested taking the Pirate Ship for a start to warm ourselves up first, something that seemed less scary and looked “safer”. There wasn’t really much queue and very soon, we were seated at the last row, the most popular and thrilling position of the ship which YH wanted. The ship began to swing. Once or twice, I felt quite alright and in control. But as the ship continued to swing with greater force and got more and more vertical, I felt my heart overwhelmed with fear. The more I screamed, the more insecure I felt as our butts began to leave the seats by sheer force when we flew up high to the highest position in the air. Something didn’t seem right. I hung on tight, feeling myself getting weaker so I decided to keep silent instead and endure till the ride was over.
Finally after what felt like ages, we got down the ride. Although I was still able to speak, mentally I was still in a state of shock which I wasn’t able to recover immediately. At this time, the sky finally gave way to a little drizzle. We decided to take cover at a food canteen at the carnival nearby and have something to eat first. Thank god, I was saved.
After a satisfying meal of wasabi mayo chicken drumlets and nacho chips which I enjoyed much more than the pirate ship ride, the sky was clear again and we were potentially back for more adrenaline “fun”. Before that, though, I had some fun taking photos at some of their photo spots, pretending to be a baby and a fat man.
There was one particular ride that seemed the most terrifying of all. It seemed that anyone who came to this carnival would definitely not miss this one.
I gasped at the sight of the riders being turned upside down, 360 degrees, as the gigantic machine spun round and round. YH seemed rather keen on taking it. I then frankly told her that I developed a feeling of fear after the pirate ship ride. I attributed this strange feeling in my heart to the possibility of my mental condition acting up again due to forgetting to take my schizophrenia medicine the night before. I said I don’t want to take any rides like this anymore other than those “peaceful” ones and asked her to go ahead without me. But YH was also worried she might throw up after the ride as based on her past experiences, she easily feels nauseous at any rides that spin. She suggested to take a walk around the carnival visiting the game booths first as she took more time to contemplate about it.
By this time, the night was already falling. There were all kinds of game booths around with attractive prizes to be won, most of them soft toys. Gun shooting, ball shooting, can throwing, aim the bull’s eye and drop ball into the bin, hoop a hula hoop around the bear, and many more. We spent a lot of time as bystanders observing how the other people were playing at each booth. Some might look easy to score but they were actually not as simple as they seemed!
YH and I shared one carnival card. There were only $10 left loaded in the card. We planned to utilize this last $10 only on the game booths or rides that we really wanted to play before we either top up more money or leave the carnival for good. I passed by a game booth that was giving away Spiderman plushies as a prize. I felt an urge to win one of these Spidermans back for Taenggu. Not because she ever expressed she had a liking for Spiderman before, but because Spiderman had been an idea playing around in my head for some time for an artwork inspired by her ‘s… TAEYEON CONCERT tour (but I never had it executed). YH, who is also an avid fan of metaphysical stuff (probably the only friend I have who shares the same interest as me), told me about what she had read online about how we could use the power of our minds to influence the vibrations of atoms around us to help us get what we want, and in this case, win the game. From what we had observed for a long time now, there seemed to be no sure-win physical technique for each game. She suggested I could try this method of using our thinking (a.k.a the mental method) to increase our chance of winning.
It was a game where I had to throw a ball and let it bounce against a board gently before it goes into the hole in a bin (it’s a pity I didn’t take photo or video of the game to demonstrate what I mean). $5 for 3 tries. I tried once, nope the ball didn’t fall into the bin. At the side, YH was giving me advice on how I could do better. Very intuitively, I looked up and rolled my eyes a little. No, it wasn’t me, but it seemed there was something invisible up there silently expressing disapproval towards YH’s comments. Another second and third time, the ball still didn’t make it into the bin. I didn’t win the Spiderman.
Only last $5 left in our card which should belong to YH now. I asked her to carefully choose a game that she really wanted to play the most. There was another game about tossing a ring onto glass bottle. It was popular among the carnival goers because you just needed to get just ONE ring onto a bottle and you could walk away with a gigantic unicorn plush toy. It might seem easy but for the whole time we stood at the side and observed, we estimated that probably out of every 1000 rings that were tossed, only 1 would get in. Pretty much depended on how good your luck was.
YH decided to give it a try. With $5, we could get 20 rings. If we top up $3 more, we could get one bucket full of rings. But since we only had $5 left in our card and she didn’t want to top up more, we decided to go with just 20 rings. She got started and asked me, who initially thought I would just stand aside and watch her play since it was supposed to be her game not mine, to toss some rings with her too. She grabbed a few rings and threw them all together at one go only to be told off by the game master that we were not allowed to do so. Meanwhile, I tossed one ring at a time pretty aimlessly, practically thinking about nothing at all, in contrary to what YH said previously about using mental thinking to increase our chance of winning in metaphysical terms. Then, really unexpectedly, probably at my 4th or 5th throw, my ring got onto one of the bottles! Both of us were so surprised and excited that we jumped up for joy. We quickly got one of the game masters to tell we got one in, but when we turned back and looked, the ring was mysteriously gone. She was like, where?? In that second just when I thought we were rejoicing too soon as we couldn’t prove we really did get one ring onto a bottle earlier on and would be happy for nothing, another game master came over and said she did see our ring on the bottle but already removed it when we were not looking. Phew!!! She asked which colour unicorn I wanted, I chose blue because it’s Taenggu’s favourite colour. 💙
Since the last time I miraculously got picked through a lucky draw to go up the stage and play a game with Yoona at her fanmeeting in Singapore in September (read post: Concert / Fan Meeting Experience: Yoona “So Wonderful Day” In Singapore – My Very First Face-to-Face Interaction With An Idol), this was the second time I had a giant stroke of luck ever in 2018! Once again, I felt like the luckiest girl ever on earth to be blessed with such a huge gift from Heaven to conclude the year of 2018 with. I was totally on cloud nine for the rest of that night.
I began to think this huge unicorn would be such a good addition to my collection of soft toys. If the big carrot plushie that I bought for Taenggu prior to the Hallyu Pop Fest concert (read post: CONCERT EXPERIENCE: HALLYU POP FEST IN SINGAPORE – 手心手背都是肉，爱我还是她?) could serve as food for my rainbow bunny Bobo, then this unicorn shall be her mode of transport which she could ride on and travel to anywhere she wants so that she would not have to feel bored and stuck at home alone the whole time when I’m not around (note: I think of Bobo as a representation of Taenggu in real life).
When I got home, I seemed to feel something, perhaps Jonghyun’s spirit, kept pestering me, asking where I got this unicorn from. At that time, I was in a very good mood but didn’t know how to explain in lengthy details, so I merely said “I was very lucky!”.
That night, I placed the unicorn at the narrow space on the floor beside my bed and went to sleep. The whole night I wasn’t in a deep sleep at all. I found myself waking up a few times throughout the night. In between my consciousness, I could vaguely see, at the side of my mind, a white figure of a guy ( I wondered if it was Jonghyun?!) standing next to my bed staring down at me but I quickly fell back to sleep again.
The next day, as I was going about my daily routine, I heard a voice saying “I’m not easily fooled!” I began to think if it was Jonghyun’s spirit who had been watching over me the whole night because he was worried I might have been deceived by this mysterious present which could have come from bad spirits in disguise. Just a bizarre thought of mine.
Although I might have been innocent and simple-minded, I still wished to look on the bright side and think of myself as lucky, rather than cursed, despite having all these strange experiences of schizophrenia. Personally, I didn’t sense anything wrong about the unicorn or that it might be possessed or anything. But I did have some strange visions on the first few nights of Bobo travelling around the world ever since the unicorn was here. There was one particular vision of Bobo with bits of snow on her face which made me cry. Because at the time, my brother was away in Harbin with his girlfriend, a place where it was minus 20 plus degrees with thick white snow everywhere and I remembered telling Taenggu that I envied them and wished I could travel to Harbin with her one day too. So when I saw Bobo with snow on her face in my mind, it broke my heart because I thought that she (a.k.a Taenggu), after hearing my wish, had gone to Harbin by herself, leaving me behind. And I began to worry, what if Bobo, with her new-found freedom with the unicorn, decided to leave me for good and was never going to come back to me again?! The thought of it made my cry profusely. No, Taenggu, don’t ever leave me alone and travel to new places without me!!! Because I want to go everywhere with you.
Was I a fool? I guess so. 🦄💜
