That horror movie lady.

Whenever I'm walking alone anywhere - whether through corridors or into bathrooms or through the carpark - I always hope that it will be as boring as possible. Incident-free, i.e. I don't see anything or hear anything. And it's always been that way, largely thanks to my heightened sense of oblivion, until Thursday night in my hotel.

You know how creepy hotel corridors are when they're empty, right? Even if it's a five-star hotel like the Hyatt, with plush wall-to-wall carpeting and scented decor? You peep out the peephole and pray you'll see nothing, absolutely nothing?

On Thursday night, I got my exam results and was pretty ecstatic - okay, that's probably an understatement because I burst into tears (of joy and relief) when I saw the four HDs lined up in a row. I had been TERRIFIED of failing my Marketing 101 paper. I still remember crying in the car while driving home after that dreadful exam! Who would've guessed that despite an abysmal performance in the exam that I would have gotten a HD? Whoa! Thus the tears :P *shy.

So anyway, I was celebrating in the hotel bar with a lychee martini, my parents, my dad's BFFs (aww, isn't it cute that grown-ups have "bros" too? haha), and mostly my iPhone to keep me entertained and to check my exam results in the first place. At about half past ten, I had hyper-ed myself into exhaustion and decided to call it a night, so I bade goodnight to everyone and headed off back to my hotel room - by myself.

Seeing as that hotel is like my second home, I knew my way around and wasn't afraid to waltz up to my room. Ding! The elevator doors opened. I strolled through the corridors towards my room. Until I heard the woman's voice.

Yeah. All the corridors were totally empty - or so I thought - and suddenly I heard a woman's voice. I felt like she was calling me, so I walked a few steps back until I found the corridor where her voice was coming from. And then I saw her.

I would describe her as a middle-aged Asian lady. I couldn't tell if she was Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese or something else altogether. And even worse, I couldn't tell which language she was speaking to me in. She kept waving me over, like "Come. Come." She had one foot in the door to her hotel room, and one foot in the corridor. Why? I didn't understand. I spoke to her in English. I don't think she understood me.

I would've tried Korean, but all I can remember is Hello and Thank you. :( All I could understand was that she wanted me to go into her room with her.

So I stood there, frozen. What to do, what to do? I ran through the options in my head: go back down to the lobby and get help for her. Go to my room and call for the front desk to come up and help her. Or walk down that corridor and see what she wanted to show me.

But what if she dragged me into the room and murdered me?!

I know Hyatt guests aren't usually lunatics, but still! I watch way too many crime dramas to ever walk into a stranger's hotel room. But just before I was about to head to the elevator and get help from the lobby, the elevators doors went Ding! and another Asian lady walked out.

"Annyung haseyo? Hello? Do you speak any Korean?" I asked her quickly.

"No, I'm sorry, I don't speak Korean. What's wrong?"

"There's a woman this way, she keeps calling me to her room but I don't understand what she's saying. I'm not sure if she's speaking Korean," I explained, and we both started walking towards that middle-aged lady who scared the bejeebers out of me.

And then suddenly the new lady said, "Oh, I understand what she's saying! We can understand each other. It's okay, I've got it." And she went into the room, smiling, and they closed the door behind them!

I was relieved and yet totally panicked at the same time. I listened for screams of terror that could sound from inside that room any moment now. All I heard were the ladies' voices conversing in a language entirely foreign to me. So I gave it 30 seconds, then decided to head back to the safety of my own room.

When my parents finally came up to the room, they found my story very funny :(
And Mei said, "You are the most paranoid person I know."