Was what I felt was bursting from the bottom of my feet, through my spines and slowly making its way up my tummy and finally to my head. I swear I could be nauseous with that thing.
Then, one might ask, why did I feel so?
This is the story:
When I was slightly short of a month from my 21st birthday, my body stirred and snoozed relentlessly at the alarm which was screaming away Maroon 5′s A Little of Your Time. I finally woke up at 11.30, switched on the computer, brushed my teeth, sat down in front of the blank screen and smiled to myself. Today is gonna be a good day. Only because I willed it as so.
Preparing my notes for the seminar that was about to take place shortly at 12.30, I left the room and went on to have a small bottle of coke as lunch, whilst walking briskly towards my destination.
Upon reaching, my thumb drive popped out of its homely PSP pouch and happily plugged itself into the IBM laptop that was already waiting eagerly for the interaction. And interact they did. The seminar went underway, of which I would not elaborate further than these two words: better resume.
Thus I left the class promptly at 2.30 and made my way from Canteen B (had a quick bite of hot dog and cheese buns) to the NBS Student Lounge for a good session of air con, relaxation, DJ Max and evil Loco Rocos. Soon, but not so soon, 4.30 came and I left the soft comfortable couch I was sitting on for a hard blue plastic chair that awaits me in tutorial room 103.
Rummaging through my bag and quickly stuffing the Apple iPod Nano (3rd Gen) that Ying so romantically bestowed upon me to keep me occupied when my heart was yearning a lot for her in the cold streets of Melbourne into the PSP pouch it always resided in, I realised one truth. And the truth is, the most valued possession that I have to date, a value of which is almost invaluable, has disappeared from its happy confines of the pouch.
My thumb drive is missing.
Raced my heart and out my body went from the classroom I had barely entered not 30 seconds ago. I knew I had sticky, bewildered eyes thrown and plopped all over my back but it didn’t matter. Everything was unimportant as compared to my thumb drive. It had all the confidential information I had, all the animatics and all my sweat and blood that I had quite unwillingly sweated and bled for in the past 1 year in it.
I ran. I ran as quickly as my tumbling feet could go. A sense of insecurity quickly set in as I raced down the corridors of the College of Engineering so fast, I thought an elephant was coming through. I sprinted across the South Academic Spine, down the stairs, through the General Office of Nanyang Business School, down another flight of stairs again before making a left turn to Seminar Room 9. Feeling heady and thick with nausea, I twisted the door knob and stepped it.
The seminar room was one that I had never stepped foot in for the past 2 years of my life, one that I had just stepped into 2 hours ago. The room was dark, almost lifeless, which the odd and occasional twitching of the screens of all the IBM laptop terminals on each and every desk. Slowly walking up to the terminal I had sat on, my eyes peered over to the far side of the computer.
And there it was.
It was still happily engaged with the computer, who looked so blissful together, yet seemed to miss me terribly. As if in a bid to say, “I really love being here with serial no. RN23-OA1P-X97Q-GP4F, but… Where did you go?”
I let out a long and measured sigh, disengaged the beautiful thumb drive and grasped it tightly in my hands.
“I’m sorry I left you here all alone. It won’t happen again.”
That was the story. 
Afterward, I was contemplating whether to miss the class or just join it again. It would have been mighty embarrassing if I did.
But that was exactly what I did. And it was, without a doubt, mighty embarrassing.
