Let’s take a
little trip down memory lane, shall we? Back to a time when our fathers used
Brylcream for hair control; when our mothers set their hair in a contraption
that largely involved a shower cap with a nozzle attached to a glorified vacuum
cleaner set on blow; back to a time when kids played Police and Thief, and
tossed little bags of sand called five stones. Back to a time when you actually
had to get up from the couch to change channels on the TV set.
Do you remember? For those of you who can’t, trust
me when I say that they were the best of times, the golden years of our
childhood and innocence.
Those holidays are etched in memory. I remember large
rented homes by Changi beach; entire families disgorging out of aging jalopies,
boxy Mercedes and Ford Cortinas, packed with baskets, pillows, bags of food and
a whole lot of cheer, each of us looking forward to a week of sand castles.
Back then, no one really knew how to swim, so ‘swimming in the sea’ was a
metaphor for wetting our toes and screaming loudly when a tiny wave rolled up
to our waist.
Those holidays were the highlight of our year.
Of course, there were always tales of Auntie So and
So taking her kids to Malaysia, to Cameron Highlands. It might as well have
been the moon. You can’t begin to imagine how glamorous Cameron Highlands
sounded. And when Uncle Whatshisname took his family to London, it was as if
they were going to have tea with the Queen of England. “They’re going on a plane?
Wahhh!” we cried with envy, our little brains – apparently sophisticated beyond
words by school holidays by the beach – unable to comprehend an event of such
magnitude. “They’re going to see Big
Ben?”
So much has changed. We’ve changed. We take
a holiday every few months. We hop onto a plane to anywhere that promises Wi-fi
coverage, a cocktail and a shopping mall.
Recently, my mother grumbled to me, “You young
people take the plane like the rest of us take the bus. You need to save money!
Work hard now. Enjoy yourself when you retire!” she said sternly, pointing her
chopsticks in my direction over the dinner table.
My sister rolled her eyes. “Ma, we won’t be able to
lift our luggage by then, let alone get on
a plane! We’re traveling now because we can! Besides, flights are so
cheap now. Not like in your day!”
It occurs to me that we take so much for granted
these days. No one ever takes a holiday at home anymore. Do you? We’re always
on our way to somewhere. We’re on a perpetual rotation roster in airport
lounges. We speak in code – Why are you taking SQ? I thought MH had a better
deal. EK goes to Melbourne?
In their
day, our parents took holidays because it was a treat. Today, we take holidays
because we need to. Our lives are a pressure cooker of deadlines and
rushing impatience. Recently, I tried to imagine a life without instant
messaging, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, emails, overnight couriers, roaming
handphones and immediately felt light headed.
A holiday abroad represents a chance to get away
from all this madness, even if it’s to other pressure cookers like Bangkok or
Beijing, but at least it’s someone else’s
madness. You’re just there on a holiday.
A holiday is now a fantasy, an escape from our
unbearable present into a parallel universe that involves only a passport, an
air-ticket, a room key, a bottle of suntan lotion and, in the case of my
flatmate, Amanda, a separate suitcase filled with all her string bikinis.
A holiday is our one true lifeline to sanity, our
only escape from the spectacularly stressful drudgery that is our life in the
twenty first century. It makes worthwhile all those ridiculously long hours
spent slaving in front of the computer, those appalling appraisal meetings with
the boss you loathe and that tiny dog kennel that you call your flat and for
which you need to work another 30 years to pay the mortgage.
So, yes, we need our little tender mercies. And if
that means booking a flight to another pressure cooker city (hello Hong Kong!),
then more power to us.
But what scares me the most is that one day, a
generation from now, someone will look back on all this and announce, with
authority and conviction, that these were the best of times, the golden years
of this generation’s childhood and innocence.
1 comment:
hmmn nowadays people cant do without wifi on their holidays... we seem to spend more time on the virtual world than the real world wherever we are. it may really turn out be a thing of the past... our kind of holidays without smart phones.. just not so long ago.
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