Fire!

This picture was captured when the fire alarm went off due to some prank.

I was enjoying my beauty sleep last night (or rather this morning) when I heard my roomie calling for my name. I finally woke up after she called me for the nth time. Being half awake, I heard her voice in the foreground with some sound in the background. I thought it was my really fantastic alarm clock (the SGD100+ alarm clock that never fail to wake me up) was ringing, until my roomie blurted "It's the fire alarm!"

Too groggy to bother about any image or speech manners, I went "What the Fuck!" and I seriously meant it. I can't stop grumbling about how would anyone smoke at 5.30am in the morning (Note: The past two times when the fire alarm went off, it was the 'good job' of some jokers who decided to smoke in the hostel room.) I was extremely reluctant to get out of my bed and evacuate, especially when I just went to bed at 4am.

Imagine wearing only cotton pyjamas with bedroom slippers, standing out in the cold at 2 degrees celsius with the wind blowing crazily for a good 20minutes. I bet you can NEVER imagine how it feels if you've stayed in Singapore most of your life without venturing out of the tropics.

It was so cold, my fingers were literally numbed, my joints felt rigid, my teeth were chattering, my knees were shaking, my nose and ears painful from the cold. That was how cold I (or rather all of us who were evacuated) felt.

Just when I was cursing the guy/girl who set the fire alarm off (I thought it was a prank), the fireman came to speak to us. This was what he said "This morning is a typical case of heater catching fire. By placing the blanket over the heater, it catches fire easily, so please becareful when using the heater!"

Apparently, one of my neighbours had this small electric heater in between the two beds. One of them accidentally kicked his blanket (while asleep) and it covered the heater, causing his blanket to catch a fire and that set off the fire alarm.

Though I was annoyed by the fact that I had to wake up at some unearthly time to evacuate in the cold, I was thankful for the fire alarm. Imagine what would have happened to my neighbour if the fire alarm didn't ring. Both he and his room mate would have been roasted pigs, and the rest of us would be some roasted half-done steak.

He was in a state of shock when he found out that his blanket had caught fire and felt extremely guilty about having the hall residents standing in cold. He was apologetic for the entire incident. (His room mate was a huge contrast, smiling away throughout the whole episode without even trying to act as though he was apologetic.) I bet it must have been a horrifying experience for him. It could have happened to me. I'm just thankful that he's safe and unhurt.

In my opinion, even though the electric heater heats up easily and is convenient to use, it can be really dangerous; it catches fire extremely easily when there is no ventilation for the heater (Eg. Covering it with a piece of cloth).

Just in case you are wondering about the heater which my roomie and I purchased, you can rest assure about it because we bought an oil heater which I think is relatively safe. Moreover, the heater we got is quite tall in height, thus we will have to master some kung fu skills before we can 'aim' to cover the heater with our blankets during bed time.

Oh, did I mention anything about skipping lecture the next morning? Hahas. I couldn't get back to sleep after I got back to the room; I felt like a piece of frozen pork being thawed.

In the end, I

1. went to update my status on facebook, visited my neighbour (the one whose blanket caught fire)

2. checked out how he was doing, lent him my room mate's sleeping bag (with his blanket gone, he had nothing else to keep him warm)

3. sneezed non-stop and had to open a new box of tissue

4. sms-ed my sweet neighbour(he lives directly opposite me and we get to see each other everytime we leave our doors opened), Isaac. He told me to just skip lecture if I still continue to sneeze. Afterall, I won't be able to concentrate in class when I'm feeling sleep deprived. (With his encouragement, I mustered enough courage to skip lecture. Haha!)

By the time I dozed off, my alarm went off at 7.50am. When I tried to wake up, my head was spinning and my nose was busy (read: sneeze). How to attend, concentrate and stay awake during lecture in such a state? Plus, I only had that one hour lecture for the entire day. How not to resist the temptation to skip school?

*Woops*

Maybe, I'm just trying to justify and reduce my guilt for skipping lecture.

But ... I really was down with a flu for a good 2-3 days. So ... yeaps! I had a good reason for missing lessons, Right?