It was a bright and sunny Friday afternoon, with the rays of the magnificent golden sun peeping through the magnolia white clouds which hung in the azure blue sky. That aside, 6E'04 met at Bishan MRT slightly before 2pm. Only Seiyee, Limying, Jiayan and Felicia were present at that time, though. A unanimous decision was made to head over to Mos Burger to stone. Tze Han joined in later and a series of gossiping and crapping ensued. The group also played zhong ji mi ma. Felicia offered to set the first mi ma, only to receive complaints proclaiming that o-ya-pey-a-som should have been used to decide the person setting the mi ma. This was an obvious attack at her lamentable attempt at being absolutely bull-headed. So they o-ya-pey-a-som'ed and Tze Han set the number - 23. With the current range being 1 – 25, it was Felicia’s turn to guess the number. She raised an eyebrow, exclaiming, "Don't tell me the number is 23!" before calling for 24. It was not the correct number. The range was then 1 – 24. As fate would have had it, Limying was the lucky person to strike the jackpot during the next turn, as she called for the magic number 23. The correct number was 23 indeed! Felicia then added on by saying that she had also set the mi ma as 23 during a previous round that had never been played. Coincidence? Read on. That aside, John arrived soon after and the group left for a hawker center at Bishan. Aaron came all the way from town to meet them, and they started playing cards. Seemingly a moment of randomness, one member of the group, presumably caught with both surprise and shock, exclaimed out loud and pointed at the table number - 23! It was almost all too surreal to be true for something that had once been perceived as being “seemingly random”. Coincidence? Maybe not.

Probably slightly unnerved by the spate of eerily unusual events that had just taken place, the group boarded the train towards Woodlands, parting ways with Seiyee (on a side note, there is a certain someone we all know who may not approve of this phrase. Not one bit.). So anyways, they reached Causeway Point at approximately 5.45pm, and decided to catch the movie entitled "All's well, ends well". Tze Han offered to pay for the group first using a $50 note that was in his possession, before collecting $6 each from the rest of the group. He was supposed to collect money from four people first, and simple mathematics would allow one to deduce that the amount he needed to collect was $24. However, only $23 was collected. $1 was clearly missing, as though it had vanished into thin air. Yet another encounter with the number 23. One which would not have occurred if the $1 had not mysteriously disappeared. 23, 23, 23. Could it have been fate? Furthermore, throughout the movie, the main character, on quite a few separate occasions, continuously chanted “1, 2, 3” before snapping his fingers. There was this unbeknownst charm within his actions which caught the group’s attention. “2, 3” seemed to remain especially reminiscent. 2… 3… 2… 3… At this point in time, it was clearly obvious that there was more to things than meets the eye…

After the movie had ended, Aik Hwee joined the group outside of the cinema and everybody had a rather hard time deciding where to go for dinner. Eventually, it was realized that finding a spot for seven people to eat was not the easiest thing in the world, and therefore the group decided to head for a nearby hawker centre which was situated just across the road. There was indeed space for seven and so dinner ensued. Following that, boredom caught with everyone, resulting in the group playing cards again. During the course of the utter card-chaos, one of the cards was lifted from the table to reveal… you guessed it – the number 23! The table number was 23, again! Things were starting to get really creepy by now.

The gathering came to an end not long after. However, when it came to the mysterious number 23, the story was far from over. Towards the end of the day, some members of the group did encounter 23 on quite a few occasions in a row. These encounters shall not be detailed in this post… you must be feeling spooked enough by now. Perhaps next time they will be posted. So stay tuned!

In all of our hearts remains one question – why 23? Why has 23 been encountered so many times in just one day in the span of a few hours? Is it trying to tell us something? Or was it simply pure coincidence? Have we been thinking just a little too much? You decide.

Oh by the way, this gathering took place on the 23rd of January. That’s 1.23 for you.