Jet Scream

Amanda just came back from a work trip to New York and she’s completely shattered by jetlag. Which is pleasing Saffy – a lifetime chronic sufferer of insomnia – no end, because for the first time in a long while, she finally has someone to spend the early hours of the morning with.

            “For reasons that have nothing to do with sex!” Saffy pointed out this morning. “Make sure you include that bit in your column! I don’t want people, and by people, I mean the police, to have funny ideas about me and my personal life. I’m very happy with my non-controversial, law abiding life here in Singapore!”

            Amanda says it’s just so odd that she is suffering this badly from jetlag.

            “I mean,” she said at breakfast, “I can understand it if I was flying economy and couldn’t get any sleep, but I’ve not been in that cabin since high school, so I’m not sure what the problem is!”

            Saffy said Amanda should stop talking like this in public as it’s exactly the kind of sentiments that led Anton Casey to start a new life in Perth.

            Amanda looked puzzled. “What public? We’re in our flat. And besides, how is that even the same?”

            “I’m just saying,” Saffy replied ominously. “The walls have ears!”

            “I wish you did,” Amanda murmured delicately into her hair as she poured herself another cup of anti-jetlag herbal tea.

            “I heard that!”

            I looked up from my 8DAYS horoscopes. “Seriously? It’s going to be like this? For how long?”

            The thing about jetlag is that it’s the strangest affliction. It’s night. You want to sleep. Your body tells you that you want to sleep. Out on the streets, the traffic has slowed down because everyone has gone home to sleep. And yet, there you are, lying in bed, your body tortured with bone aching weariness, but you’re wide awake. 

            Then, during the day, as you drag yourself to work on the MRT, you suddenly find yourself fighting to stay awake just in case you miss your next stop. And before you know it, you probably will fall asleep, your head lolling to the side and onto the shoulder of a complete stranger. And when you wake up, you find that you’ve just been uploaded onto YouTube and mocked on Facebook.

            Meanwhile, Amanda’s into day three of her jetlag. For two nights now, she and Saffy have been working their way through old recorded episodes of American Idol, sighing over Harry Connick, Jr.

            “He’s just so adorable!” Saffy told Sharyn at lunch. “So handsome. So clever. So witty!”

            “He and Keith Urban have such great chemistry!” Amanda added. “But I agree, if I had to choose, it would be Harry!”

            Sharyn sniffed. “I doan like him!”

“Who?” Amanda asked.

“Hair-ly, lah! So cheem! The first time I watch him, hor, he tell the contestant she sing on the lower register. At first, I think, how he know she work in a check-out? She only say she is a single mud-der! Then my son tell me that lower register mean voice range! Alamak, how I know? But Keith I also doan like. I think he got wear make-up!”

            Saffy shrugged. As far as she was concerned, Sharyn not liking Harry Connick, Jr was good news because that was one less woman she had to scratch and fight off should Harry ever come randomly into her life.

            “But you know who else I think is cute?” she went on. “Ryan Seacrest! I just want to pick him up and take him home!”

            Sharyn raised her eyebrows. “First got Blad-ley. Then got Hair-ly. Now got Lie-yan! Wah, your bed very big, is it?”

            Amanda, never one to waste an opportunity for a girls’ night out, asked Sharyn to join her and Saffy for American Idol night. “Come on, it’ll be fun!” she said.

            Sharyn looked doubtful. “Ay, I have to get up early the next day and work, ok? Maybe that’s why you got jetlag. You doan take care of your body, ah, I tell you. You think you still very young, is it?”

            “I always fly business class. I really don't see how I can take care of my body any better. Oh…I see what you’re saying! You mean I should be flying first class instead? Do you think that might be the problem?”

            Sharyn blinked, then looked at Saffy who stared hard into the distance. Later, when Amanda had gone back to the office to catch a nap at her desk, Sharyn asked, “Ay, I ask you, are you sure Amanda got go to Harvard?”

            “Don't get me started, Sharyn!”