Tour of the underground

Went to catch a movie last night with a group of friends after class. Watched 'Knowing'. It’s a pretty silly movie if you ask me. Perhaps it was actually a long advertisement trying to sell GPS navigators to those who want to save their own lives. Or perhaps it’s a movie that tries to debunk the facts from DSM IV and says that you are not crazy if you hallucinate and hear whispers.

What ever it is, I left the cinema laughing …. Thinking ‘oh! How happy those two kids will be’ (you’ll have to watch it to understand it.

Anyway the highlight of the movie only came after the movie, finding our car at B2 G2. Yea, the bad thing about 1 Utama is that they close most of the exits in the mall, shut of most carpark lifts and lock the staircase entrances. Its like a trap … a fire hazard, unless you want to jump of the balcony of the 5th floor carpark.

So there we were, walking round and round 5th floor till we finally found a lift … that only brought us to ground floor. Well, better than nothing. We went to the ground floor and made our way manually to B2 only to walk around and around and around. With no guards around and no red coded pillars around, we were lost. And being stuck in the basement, a flooding hazard, I was sweating like a pig.

Thank god we had 2 guys with us. If not I would have freaked out! So our next most rational thing to do was, go back to the ground floor and walk along the road side. At least I get a better bearing of where we are and where we can head too. So yup, we were stuck at the new wing but our car was at the hotel. Whee ….. we walked along the highway and crossed roads, only to walk back to the basement of the unloading bay.

It was the only area that had lights. So back into basement one and we walked round and round, trying to find a ramp, a flight of stairs or a lift that brought us to B2. None!! It was stuffy and stinking of garbage …. I can’t imagine this is 1 Utama. And along the way, we bumped into a few other stray lost kittens like ourselves … what kind of management is this?

Finally we found a guard on a bike … showed him the picture of our parking spot B2 G2 (thank god for camera phones) and guess what!!! HE DID NOT KNOW WHERE IT WAS!!!

But he took one of my guy friends around on his bike, searching for the car …. And it took forever. In the end, we found out that they had to exit 1 Utama, go in through the One World Hotel carpark and only through the unloading bay to B2 G2. This is the ultimate underground maze! And this adventure took us almost 50 minutes!!!

A lesson to be learnt! Always park near the cinema if you are watching a midnight movie! Never trust ‘MORE PARKING’ signs that lead you from the new wing to the old wing to the hotel … and most important of all … always carry pepper spray as you’ll never know when you’ll be lost in the basement again.