Bus Fan Amazing Race

A candid shot by one of the fellow bus enthusiast.

I went to the Amazing Race organized specially for bus fans on Saturday. Did I just mention “for bus fans only?” I think I just did. Hmm, I don’t think I am a bus fan since it is defined to be a person who is proficient about the information of buses and I am not sensitive to the bus type and their specifications. So, I am neither here nor there. Without the usage of bus guides and street directories, this race tests my proficiency of my bus routes and my knowledge of “popular landmark” in Singapore. As expected, there are landmarks which I don’t know and I have realized that my searching skill is terrible.

First, and foremost, the meeting place is at a “tower” in Toa Payoh Town Park. This is my first time venturing into this town park and as usual, I am bitten by some mosquitoes. I take 73 from my house to Toa Payoh. The weather is good and scenery looks fine except that the water in a small pond there looks like it is infested with bits of algae. Faint sounds of cars and buses can be heard from Toa Payoh Interchange and the Pan-Island expressway. Many people arrived late for the event as the weather was conductive for resting. Hence, the introduction part was sort of “cut” and the race commenced a few minutes before 10.

My team and I went to the newly built HDB block at Blk 79. Photos are given to us and we are expected to find the same spot in Blks 79A to 79E and produce the exact same replica. As mentioned earlier, I was very terrible in my searching skills for spots which produce this photo from the camera’s perspective. In the end, we were quite behind time and so we proceed to the next destination at CCK.

We took 105 and transfer to 190. All of us knew what we were looking for – a Shop N Save outlet. However, it is a NTUC Fairprice outlet in Lot 1 Shoppers Mall. So, it was later found that the place we were seeking for was at Sunshine Place since the clue given to us had a picture of a loaf of Sunshine Bread and CCK and 172.

We took some time to complete the assigned tasks over there and one of my teammates decided to try his luck onto fishing. This was my first time in seeing a “fishing farm” at a shop which is just a vending machine containing a pump and water and some “light fishes” that is circulating about. After all this “distractions”, we finally proceed to our next destination at Sembawang Shopping Centre. Our choice of route is 975 to Bukit Panjang, 187 to Woodlands, 169 to Admiralty Road West and 856 to Sembawang Shop Ctr. In my opinion, taking 171 from Bukit Panjang to Sembawang Road and transfer to 167 or 980 to Sembawang Shop Centre may be a faster alternative. Halfway through the journey, we are told to proceed to SMRT Ang Mo Kio Depot.

Thus, we took 854 to Yio Chu Kang Rd and walk from there. From there, we consumed our lunch and proceeded from there to Thanggam LRT station near Jalan Kayu. Again, a set of tasks were assigned to us. So, we went around the place to search for 15 members of the public for their signatures. It requires us to be more proactive and luckily the many members of the public were very helpful in leaving their signatures to help us complete our activity. At this point in time, I was already quite exhausted as I sprinted 600 metres from Jalan Kayu Prata House to the LRT station to and forth. The reason is we failed to read the instructions for our tasks carefully and made several mistakes in it.

Next, we proceed to Ruman Tinggi, a place where 63 bus is parked near a rubbish dump. This is also my first time to the previous Ruman Tinggi terminal. We take LRT to Sengkang, transfer to 80 and next to 63. Same thing as in the previous stations, we did some tasks again and proceeded to Vivocity afterwards to conduct a “search hunt.” Never did I expect finding 5 people out of the thousands or ten thousands people already in Vivocity will be that hard. The whole event ended at around 2100 hrs and all bus fans including me the neither here nor there one went for supper.

Anyway, though many of them are bus fans, some of them are very proficient in bus routes as well as perhaps it is related to buses too. For me, I think I just remain at who I am unless I am influenced by them one day. It is rather interesting to interact with them as they provide with new views and perspectives and mostly are about buses. Hehe. However, it is interesting to note that all the bus fans that have attended the event are all males. Hmm, I am not being bias here but from here, I infer that this interest is catered more towards the males.