'You Only Live Once'

As all of my family and closest friends know, I am not the adventurous/outdoor type of person. And I have never ever been. I guess I was never lucky or blessed enough to be born with that in my DNA. Even if I wanna inject those kinds of stuffs in my system, my body would literally not accept it and would eventually vomit it all back out. BUT, recently I had decided to turn it all around and try something new. Something different. Something outdoorsy. Something to live up to the phrase “Live a little”. Hence, my friends and I went to ride ATV yesterday morning at ATV Adventure Park in Kemensah Heights. If you ask me two weeks ago, I would never imagine myself having to ride and participate in these kinds of things. Even my friends were shocked that I would agree to do it. Well, even I myself am shocked. For myself! Unlike me, my best friends have always been the adventurous types of girls that I personally believe all guys would love. They have ride on jet skis, ATVs several times, banana boats, ice skating, roller blading, skiing on top of snowy mountains and more. You name it; they have experienced it all. Whereas I would just prefer to sit back and watch them have all the fun. But they completely understand where and why all of this is coming from me. Why I would prefer to miss out all the fun. Why I am so scared to join them. And this is my reason:

Four years ago, I went on a road trip to Singapore with my friends and their family. We went there right after we completed our SPM and high school. It was all very enjoyable and we had the best times of our lives by going to their cousin’s wedding, having sleepovers, telling ghost stories in the middle of the night among all their cousins; guys and girls. It was all just good fun. To top all of that, we were staying at this huge creepy rental bungalow in Singapore. And mind you, it gets double creepy since our bungalow was located right beside the abandoned Changi Hospital which we can see perfectly clearly from our bedroom window. And yes, all of us did get and feel that sense of ‘something’ that night. You know that bad feeling to the point where the hair on the back of your neck stands up and you have goose bumps all over your arms, legs and whole body. You start to get that cold feeling on your chest which makes you shiver like crazy. And you know what’s worse? You can’t help but to feel paranoid of the fact that someone might be watching you. From the hospital! Because there are a lot of stories regarding to the haunting site and I have watched a documentary on the Changi Hospital once. (At the exact moment as I am writing this, there's a dog barking so loud outside my house. And it's 2am in the morning. I'm having chills. Dog, stop). However, I have never been the type of person who believes in these paranormal things but that night completely makes me second-questioned my beliefs over these stuffs. Or perhaps my brain was just trying to psycho the shit out of me. Well, I don’t know. It’s all over and it’s four years ago anyway. 

So, back to the story! I am so sorry, by the way. I always tend to stray from my actual points whenever I'm trying to deliver a story. It’s one of my flaws. Anyway, one sunny morning my friends, their cousins and I decided to go to this famous park in Singapore called East Coast Park. It’s such a perfect spot for having family picnics, playing kites, jogging and doing other outdoor activities. Just perfect. So the park provided this service of renting bicycles and roller blades which you can leisurely stroll and play around it. I was obviously gonna go for the bicycle. It’s cuter, it’s easier and more importantly, it’s much more safer! But since every one of them was too adventurous and thought that bicycles were just “mehh” for them, they decided to choose roller blade instead. And me, thinking that I do not want to look like an idiot and a loser by being the only one who would go with a bicycle, stupidly decided to change to roller blade then. I was obviously not confident in roller blades because I don’t have enough muscles in my legs to support them. That thing was literally heavier than my foot. No, it was heavier than me. So how am I supposed to be able to play and support them? After I put on and tighten those devils on both of my feet, I tried to stand up but I couldn’t. I just sat there like a sore loser for five minutes, took a huge deep breath till my chest ached, then tried standing up again. This time, I managed to but I couldn’t help shaking like crazy. My legs were shaking so bad as if an earthquake was happening right under my feet that day. But I told myself to get a grip and don’t be such a wimpy baby. However, my best friends and their cousins were super supportive and helpful to me, and they guided me through every single step. For 15 minutes or so, I was doing quite okay and I thought to myself, “This isn’t so bad after all!” I was actually enjoying it. I enjoyed it a lot UNTIL, that horrible moment came. Oh yes, honey. Next thing happened was the moment that eventually changed my life forever and made me anti-adventurous/outdoorsy since. I lost my balance and everything was happening too quickly that I didn’t see what was coming for me next. I fell hard, face first, on the tar road. The impact was so strong, so quick that my face basically slams real hard on the tar road. I don’t know why, but I just laid there with my face down on the road, thinking that I was already dead, gone, goodbye, until I heard someone calling, shouting my name in such a panic voice and came running over to me. I heard a bunch of footsteps coming over as well a few seconds later and they were all bending down on me. I couldn’t get up from my position yet. But I know I had to at some point. And so I did. The first thing I noticed was blood. It was everywhere. On my shirt, on my jeans, on the road. And what’s worse, the source of the blood was coming from my face. So you can imagine how my face looks like on that unfortunate day. I had blood oozing and gushing from my forehead, my nose, my mouth and my teeth. It was bleeding so much to the point where I really thought it was never going to stop. But thankfully, that day happened to be our last day in Singapore. Therefore after the accident, my friends and I immediately went back to KL. They were driving beyond the speed limit as blood was still oozing down my face in the back of the car, rushing to the hospital. It took me months and a monthly visit to a specialist doctor to get completely healed from all the wounds and scars on my face. After that, I learned my lesson to not be a fool of taking such risks ever again and doing things that are beyond my capabilities. Way, way beyond. Since then, I have always traumatized with participating any more outdoor activities and that’s why I would always prefer to be left behind.

However, recently I don’t know what came into me. Something just knocked me on the head and I decided to agree to go ride on an ATV yesterday morning with my friends. They have persuaded and dragged me to go with them before but only this time did I agree. To be honest, it was such a fun experience I ever had. But however much fun it was, I think it would probably be my first and last time. Just as long as I had the ‘experience’.

But before I was going on the ATV, Mama couldn’t help feeling really worry for me and I completely understand that since the Singapore incident happened. She kept on telling me to be careful and asking me, “Do you really wanna do this? It’s dangerous.” Saying how scared she was for me but I assured her that I’ll be absolutely fine and there’s really nothing to be worry about. So yesterday, my friends and I finally went for it. Our ATV session ride only took about one hour where we would drive into the deep jungle and stop at a waterfall. But through it all, or 'behind the scenes', my friends and I obviously had some misfortunes along the ride. There was one time where I would accidentally drove my ATV straight into a cliff because I happened to lost control but I managed to steer it immediately back on the right path. Moreover, we also had to cross over some bumpy, rocky and muddy paths where there’s uphill and downhill roads. My favourites are definitely riding on those uphill roads where I can just accelerate the motor engine to the maximum and going crazy as I was riding up these rocky paths and shouting like a monkey with a ‘Mission accomplished’ wide grin on my face. However, those rocky downhill paths don’t like me very much. Mm-hmm, no. We were told that we had to do a double break whenever we come across those very steep downhill roads. But since the pulling gravity of the earth happened to be extra strong that morning, I really felt like the earth was pulling my ATV down like a magnet. As I was going through these very steep downhill roads, I pulled on both of the brakes with as much energy as I can muster. But to my horror, it was still going down very fast! And I couldn’t even understand why it won't slow down and stop since I was already pulling these two breaks with my butt off. There was even a time where I thought to myself “Oh my God, I am not going to die today. No, I am still too young and still too precious to die at this age. I still have a lot more going on in the future. No, please stop!” That was literally what I was thinking as I was going down the road. And by some God’s miracle, the ATV eventually stopped right at the bottom of the downhill road and I thought to myself again which you know that whole thing where people say ‘You Only Live Once’? Hell no! Screw that! Screw. That. I love my life too much to be risking it like this again. You only live once, so that's why you have to take extra care and extra love your life because life is too precious. Don't do risky activities where there's a potential-death sign at the end of the line. I had an accident once, and it is not going to happen for the second time now. 

But overall, I couldn’t deny the fact that I was really enjoying myself with the girls. It’s been quite a while since we did something adventurous like this together. We really enjoyed every second of the ride through the jungle and it’s definitely one of those moments where I would cherish and smile back over the memory with my girls for the years to come.