A photography lesson that was not meant to be

My third sister drove me to Fort Canning for a photography lesson on Sunday morning.

Alas! When we were about to reach Fort Canning, we were met with a traffic diversion! Apparently, a marathon organised by the army was going on and the starting point had to be Fort Canning!

We took a huge detour to another entrance and it was closed till 11.30am - the time my class would end.

I alighted and climbed the steep steps of Hotel Fort Canning, lugging my camera, flash and tripod along. By the time I reached the meeting point where the 'main building' (the instructor could not put a name to the building! I later realised that his 'main building' referred to 'Fort Canning Centre', while I had gone to Hotel Fort Canning), I was 20 minutes late.

To my utter dismay, nobody was there. The instructor didn't even have the common sense to give us his handphone number, or get our phone list from the office! I could call no one. No one could call me.

I called the office and apparently no one was in the office. There was only a voice machine prompting me to leave a voice message which I certainly could not at that point of time - the only thing I would be able to manage were vulgarities I assure you!

I'm so upset. It was a perfect weather for the class. I was so excited over the class. I skipped church and the time to spend with my kids for the class. I carried all the annoyingly heavy equipment all the way there.

But the instructor didn't even bother to check if Fort Canning was used for any event. He didn't even have the numbers of the participants and he didn't even have the common sense to give us his number when he knew that we would not station at the meeting point! It has been a long time I last felt so terribly upset. It was something that should not have happened just by a simple gesture of giving us his phone number, but it did because someone did not have common sense!

No doubt the instructor was helpful - I had asked him about stuff other than the lesson topics and he was nice enough to give me extra information and suggestions, but I am sometimes frustrated with the half-baked English the lessons are conducted in and the bomb was triggered by this outing that was not properly troubleshot.

Already, I had felt that I had not learnt much from this course despite paying the same amount of fees as the photoshop class which I had reaped much from, and now this had to happen. It takes a further knock on my confidence with Photographic Society of Singapore which has received at least one good review from a clubsnapper. The review had that PSS courses are better than the courses or workshops offered on Clubsnap. My experience is definitely the opposite!