hao keng bu!

So I had something really scary happen to me on the MRT the other day. I mean really horrifying. I was on my way home on Friday, finishing up a crossword in the newspaper and getting excited for the weekend to come. I was sitting on the end of a row of three seats and there were two other women next to me. The woman in the middle was carrying a bag full of persimmons and oranges and things. So as I was sitting there, continuing the crossword, I saw some movement out of the corner of my eye from the woman with the bag of fruit. I thought it was some bit of hair moving, but when I finally looked over at her sleeve where the movement was coming from I found that it wasn't a chunk of hair at all but a gigantic freaking centipede crawling around! She must have noticed it at the exact same time I did because right when I saw it, she jumped up out of her seat, throwing the entire bag of fruit into the air and furiously started beating at her shirt to get the insect off as quickly as possible. Me and the woman who was on the other side of the fruit lady immediately started searching for the bug, which was now nowhere to be seen. The train started slowing to the next stop, and the woman and I shared this moment like, "Oh man, where is that thing?" As the fruit lady was picking up her oranges which were rolling all over the place, the other woman and I were desperately searching our own clothes and and bags and hair, wanting to know where that horrendous thing was, but definitely not wanting to find it anywhere close. Finally, just as the MRT doors were opening, I saw it right there on the front of the other lady's shirt! Without thinking, I took my newspaper and totally beat this woman with it, causing the centipede to fall right onto the now vacant seat. She immediately was like, "Oh! Xie xie!" and I was breathing this sigh of relief saying, "Oh my god!" and everyone else around us tried to get a good look at it as they exited the train. The centipede was seriously, maybe five inches long and had a million of these long, comb-like legs coming straight out of the sides. I don't know for sure if it had the capability of stinging or biting, but it looked like it could most definitely kill a full-grown human being. For the entirety of my walk home from the MRT station I could feel things crawling on me and had to reassure myself that I indeed did knock it onto the seat and that it indeed did not jump back up in an amazing feat to hide inside my bag. So that was my Friday night story. Hao keng bu!