I was in my second year when it happened. This time I was staying at a different hostel, Desasiswa Cahaya or Desa C, just next to Desasiswa Permai. But the occurrence did not happened there. It happened one night when my best friend and I were walking back to our hostel. We had just finished some work at our studio, it was actually early morning around 4.00 am, and was drizzling. We walked together in the rain under one umbrella. My friend and I were feeling extra scared that morning. We tried to walk fast but it was too dark.
Suddenly an army truck passed by and then stopped. It was quite normal for an army truck to go in and out of our campus, since there is a ROTU centre in the campus. I myself was once a ROTU but had to drop-out of it due to my packed schedule. The person next to the driver waved his hand signalling us to get into the back of the truck. We looked at each other, we thought why not, but how do we climb up the truck, it was quite high. Surprisingly both the army did not get out to open the back of the truck and help us to climb up. That was quite unbelievable, but we decided to climb up the truck no matter what. So I helped to push up my friend and then she pulled me up. Yippee! We finally managed to climb up, and the army immediately drove off heading towards our hostel. We almost fell off from our seat. We were quite shocked to find that they seemed to know the way without us telling and showing. So we asked them whether they know where they should send us. They suddenly said in stern voices, “Kami tahu, ni tempat kami main-main. (We know, this is our playground.)” We quickly got down and they drove off.
When we reached our hostel block, a group of girls were still up studying together at the lobby lounge. So they asked us where we had been and why we were so brave to walk in that kind of weather at that particular time. We told them that we were sent back by an army truck from the ROTU unit. One of the girls’ eyes almost popped out of their sockets the moment we told them of the ROTU army truck. She was a senior and a ROTU herself, and to her knowledge NO trucks will be moving in and out of campus after office hours. There were no reasons for them to do so and any vehicle movement must be recorded. So to clarify the matter, she said she will check with the ROTU office the next day. The answer was as expected, no army trucks were around at all at that time and no record of any movement of any vehicle. The ROTU office was closed after office hours on that particular day.
My friend and I must have met with two ‘friendly ghosts’ who ‘drove’ us back safely. Just in a bid to console myself, I suddenly remembered being told that the campus was once upon a time, a battleground and an army camp.
