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teams considering her innocent demeanor. We hit one hundred kilometers per hour and quickly passed Rally Car 3, the bodybuilder team. Esther was driving and Meng had a map pressed against half their windshield.
    Several of the teams were heading north on the J1 ahead of us, continuing the caravan style from the morning. Typical Singapore group mentality, I thought. But Rally Car 4, Quaid and Norris, was taking a different route, already on a fly-over exiting the J1, believing as I also intuitively guessed that north was the wrong direction.
    “Take the exit!” I shouted at Jamie pointing at the fly-over.
    She veered across the four lane highway, nearly sending a group of mopeds into a lorry overloaded with leaning stacks of white plastic resin chairs. We flew up the exit in the direction of the Ang Mohs. By the time we crossed the fly-over, Rally Car 4 had disappeared onto one of the serpentine side streets ahead.
    “Continue straight until we reach Jalan Yahya Awal, this map says it’s a large street that will take us close to the city centre and shopping district.”
    Jamie pushed the rally car around some idling cars at a stop light, driving up on a partially raised sidewalk, bystanders leaping out of the way for their lives. Our car flew along the road, literally taking flight as it bounded off large humps and sags in the poorly maintained road. I hit my head on the ceiling twice before I could secure my seat belt. Felix was filming it all, trying not to voice out his terror whenever the rally car lost the road then smacked back down to the ground. Sparks flew from the front bumper as we hit the first of many large cracks in the asphalt. I made it a point to scream out occasionally for the camera but I wasn’t scared, I had every confidence in my Jamie’s motoring skills.
    “There!” I pointed to the road ahead, “Turn left.”
    “Gotcha.” Jamie jerked the wheel, the car careening across the large intersection and back south again towards the humungous pink shopping centre.
    The traffic lights ahead turned in our favor and I breathed a sigh of relief and knew fortune was on our side. There was no stopping us until we found our taxi stand. After about two minutes of swerving and zooming, the rally car skidded to a stop outside City Square shopping centre. There were five taxis sitting idle and empty next to the taxi stand. The drivers were squatting on a small bamboo platform underneath shade trees, having what looked to be a meal of fried banana, roti canai and coffee. The two of us jumped out of the car and ran toward the taxi drivers, Felix on our heels.
    “Adakah anda fasih berbahasa Inggeris?” Do you speak English? I asked the group of men in Malay.
    One of the drivers raised a hand.
    “Bolehkah Anda Membantu Saya?” Can you help me?
    While Jamie and I had some Indonesian roots and were forced to learn Bahasa as our Mother Tongue in primary and secondary school, which is primarily the same language as Malay, but neither of us retained much and those two sentences were about the extent of my bilingualism.
    “You want teksi what?” the taxi driver asked.
    “We go fast Jalan Kota Masai, so how?” Jamie continued for me, her Manglish (a Malay-English mash-up) was much better than mine.
    “I take, you follow, $20 ringgit.” He said, sliding down from the platform and standing before us, wiping grease from the fried bananas onto his threadbare trousers.
    “Go, Go, Go!” I yelled to Jamie frantically craning my head, looking back along the street we’d come in search of any sign of the other competitors. We didn’t want the other teams to discover our plan and follow suit or take advantage of our ingenuity and trail us to the event.
    We ran back to our car, doors slamming, and the teksi pulled out in front of us.
    The teksi was an ancient Proton that looked as if it someone had welded two cars together at the midpoint, a real piece of crap on wheels. We waited as blue smoke spewed from its tail pipe