Was feeling under the weather yesterday. Had a sore throat and the nose was drooling all the way. As I was leaving the office building, SBS service number 63 (SBS 2606 R) pulled up at the bus stop just outside the building. I decided to hop onto the bus rather than hoof all the way to RedHill MRT for my usual commute home by train. Since it was only the first stop from the terminal, the bus was pretty empty, so I plonked myself in the 3rd right seat from the back.
Feeling sleepy, I placed my phone in my right pocket with my portable harddisk. Fell asleep halfway through the ride back to Kallang. When I woke up, I was just one stop away. In my haste to alight, I didn’t realize my phone fell out of my pocket.
It was only when I wanted to check mobileiris for the next bus for my transfer that I notice it was missing. I panicked and ran after the bus for a few hundred metres. In retrospect, it was a really silly thing to do given the chaotic traffic in the Geylang area. When I realized it was futile to continue the chase, I stopped at a payphone and frantically called the wife. As I was ranting and panicking, she calmly ask me where I was and asked me to walk to Aljunied MRT where she could pick me up in the car and continue the chase.
After she picked me up, while I was still ranting on how careless I was, she asked me to check the bus route via mobileiris. It was then when I realized that I had Latitude turned on in Google Maps on my N97. The wife and I keep Latitude turned on for convenience. With it, we need not update each other on our whereabouts. I started Google Maps on the wife’s N97 and viola! I was able to track the location on the bus.
Based on the current location of the bus at Macpherson, we decided that the best place to intercept the bus was at Eunos. We drove to a bus stop along Jalan Eunos and ahead of the bus and waited for it. Thanks to the positional accuracy of Latitude, we didn’t have to wait too long for the bus.
As luck would have it, two buses of service number 63 approached the bus stop one after another. Thankfully, the models of the buses were different, and I remembered that the bus that I rode on was the older Volvo model. It was the 2nd bus and I boarded it. As the services were bunched up, the 2nd bus had only 3 passengers.
I immediately dashed to the seat and found my phone in the crevice between the seat and window of the bus. All this while, the guy opposite the aisle was staring at me. Come to think of it, I must have looked pretty weird, dashing to the seat and searching high and low for something. Anyway, I was simply overjoyed and relieved to have recovered my phone.
So thanks to Google Latitude, the wife’s levelheadedness, and a bit of luck, this episode has a happy ending.
aCeMaSk 
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