Last Tuesday night close to 1 am (well practically it was already Wednesday) I heard a continuous clunking sound from downstairs. I knew that sound right away, the sound of a trolley being wheeled. But at 1 am?? So I went out to the balcony to check it out. Yep, I saw a man pushing an empty shopping trolley in the middle of the road. He was wearing dark clothings. He looked clean cut, didn’t seem like a homeless guy. Definitely not a ghost. What was he up to?

So I kept watching him as he pushed the trolley down the road, “cling clung cling clung”, like he had no care in the world. Even the dogs who notoriously liked to bark and chase after joggers and cyclists just stood there staring at the guy. He went passed our building, and as he reached the garbage bins area at the back of a nearby restaurant, he stopped and started to rummage through the bins. Oh, he could be collecting recyclable items, I thought to myself. I’ve seen people collecting cans and tins from garbage bins before, but those who were on foot I only saw doing it at town centres. I have also long known that, in the area where I live, at around 2 am everyday, a man in a white van would make his rounds to every garbage bins area to collect cooking oil tin cans.

Now, back to the trolley guy. Without care about the noise he was making, he reached his hands inside the large bins like it was no one’s business. Half of his body disappeared from sight. He found a plastic barrel, emptied its contents and put it on the trolley, and off he went. With the barrel now on the trolley, the clunking sound of the trolley wheels became muffled. Hmmm…perhaps he was not looking for recyclable items after all.

I continued watching him pushing the trolley down the road until he disappeared from view.  What an anticlimax to a potentially interesting thing that went bump-in-the-night.