Okay, I know its a fire drill and not the real one, but I am kind of pissed-off!

Zairul, one of our colleagues in charge of this, warned us a week earlier that a fire drill will occur next week, and hey, I should have known its coming on Wednesday morning… see ‘Ramadhan’, see ‘fasting month’, see ‘tired’, see ‘early morning’, see ‘mid-week’… If I had wanted not to be ‘pissed off’ I should have guessed Wednesday morning and lurked around the ground floor area such as the library or studios…but I was at my room and…RRRRRRIIIIIIIINNNNNNGGGGG…….

Dominic came to my room and saw me getting ready to leave. He asked me ‘if its the fire drill?’. I wanted to answer, ‘yes, of course it is, dodo brains’, but I did not as I do not think Malaysia and Australia is ready to go to war yet and he is a professor whereas I am the real dodo brains without the prof. or doc…haha, but that’s not the point… I was thinking to myself, ‘why is he taking this moment to make friends with me’, because all the while we only exchanged ‘hi’ and ‘how are yous’ at the corridor… never mind.

I was more worried about, ‘who the #@&*% is going to take me down the stairs?’ Okay, its not like its the Petronas Twin Towers and I have to climb down 50 stories or something like that, but they did say ‘ 4 minutes and you must be out’ (because if not the faculty will fail in the fire drill exercise)… and Zairul did reply my email earlier saying that someone will come for me??

Of all things, the technician (forgot his name, sorry yah…) actually did set a ‘fire’ and of all places at the 3rd floor of the escape staircase of exactly the one that I need to escape into…hmmm??

Even from the 2nd storey I would fear tripping or falling while going down or people rushing and pushing me or something every disabled people would have fears of, as they do not want to add another impairment to their already unfortunate circumstances (you can figure out that its not necessarily ‘Independent Living’ here in Malaysia, from my fears, huh…). So on the way out I complained to Roselina about what’s going on (Dominic had since left as I ignored him), and reminded her to say to someone at the gathering space outside (30 meters from the building mind you) that I am here. And off Roselina went of course (as she’s not the designated person to assist me, okay…)

A minute later, the tecnician who set the 3rd floor stairs lobby on fire (well, not exactly the whole floor, but probably something in a tin bin…) came down and he escorted me to safety. He had a bemused face on, but at least he knew he should assist me.

As I went down the stairs carefully, the firemen came! Most of them were not concern about me, and a few were bemused as well. I am not sure if they were ‘amused bemused’ or ‘concerned bemused’, as you know Malaysians have this unreadable expression which you want to say to them, ‘hey, say something, like ‘who is helping her?’ or ‘how come we created the fire on the same staircase as where the disabled person had to come down with?’ Urggghhhh….

I told the Deputy Dean who had kindly asked about how I managed but he also had that expression of non-commitalness which Malaysian often has, but at least he said, ‘Next time we must make sure someone comes for you’.

Thanks Deputy! BTW way congrats for getting a 89% success with the fire drill, but I should think its a fail, don’t you, really?