The Hunger Games

A few days ago, I was just minding my own business, as one does. To be specific, I was on the lounge, reading my latest issue of Vanity Fair, deeply engrossed in an article about Edward Snowden and the whole NSA scandal.

            Just then, Amanda walked in the front door, burdened with shopping bags from Prada and Gucci.

            “I’m not proud to say this,” she announced, dropping the bags onto the floor with a sigh, “but I’ve probably spent enough money in one afternoon to put three African orphans through Harvard.”

            “Well, don’t say it too loud, the NSA might hear you!”

            Amanda, who was just about to kick off her right high heel, paused. “What?” she asked eventually.

            “I’m just reading this riveting article in Vanity Fair,” I said, waving the magazine at her. “It says here that the NSA have the ability to turn on any mobile phone, even one that is off, and use it as a microphone.”

            Amanda sniffed. “Good luck trying to get any useful information out of our conversations!”

            “They might think we’re talking in code! And get this, the NSA has a five billion dollar budget!”

            Amanda sighed, her lovely eyes misting over as she thought of all the shopping she could get done at Prada with five billion dollars.

            Saffy chose that moment to storm out of her bedroom in a whirlwind of agitation.

            “You’re an hour late!” she yelled into her handphone which she clutched in a white-knuckled clench. “It’s now 1.30pm! Our reservation is at 12.30, and you’re still not here…Don’t you dare tell me to calm down! I don’t care if there’s a traffic jam on the PIE, you should have thought of that and left your house an hour earlier! By the time we get to the restaurant, it’s going to be time for dinner!”

            With that, Saffy stabbed the off button on her phone. Instinctively, Amanda and I ducked, though even in that moment of crisis, I couldn’t help but notice that Amanda had automatically stepped in front of her shopping bags to shield them from any collateral damage.

            Saffy glared at us. “What are you doing?”

            “Uhm,” I said from behind Vanity Fair, “we thought you were going to go all Naomi Campbell on us.”

            Saffy put down her phone and took a deep breath. “Honestly, I’m so angry with Bradley! He was supposed to pick me up an hour ago. Now, it’s 1.30pm and I am starving! It’s going to be at least after 2 by the time we sit down at the restaurant, and 2.30 by the time we eat! Who has lunch at 2.30?”

            “Have a biscuit now?” Amanda suggested as she moved slowly to pick up her shopping and edged around Saffy to her bedroom.

            “I don’t want to have a biscuit, I want to have lunch! Now!” Saffy snapped.

            Later that afternoon, after Bradley had shown up, having broken every speed limit to do so, and taken Saffy out to a very late and expensive boozy lunch, she came home in a considerably more cheerful mood.

            “Honestly, I’m so embarrassed!” she said. “I just turn into such a hormonal witch when I’m hungry! It’s like an out of body experience and I’m just seeing the world through this haze of red hot anger!”

            “Apparently there’s a word for that,” I said.

            “For what?”

            “For that feeling of anger, panic and aggression you get when you’re hungry. It’s hangry!”

            Saffy looked impressed. “Really? Hangry? That’s an actual word?”

            “I read it in a British newspaper the other day, so it must be true. It’s their language, after all.”

            “Well, I skipped lunch,” Amanda said, coming into the lounge room and wearing her latest purchases. “I was so busy shopping, I forgot it was lunch time.”

            “You see, I just don’t understand how people do that. How do you forget it’s lunch? It’s like saying you forgot to breathe!”

            “Well, that’s exactly what happened to me when I saw this handbag in Gucci!”

            “That’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever said, Amanda,” Saffy sniffed, clearly coming down from her post-meal high.

            Later, it occurred to me that Saffy would make the world’s worst spy. If she were ever captured, all her kidnappers would need to do would be to deprive her of lunch because by dinner time, she’d be ready to spill every single state secret she knew.

            “Imagine if she had high security clearance in the NSA!” I told Amanda.

            “Maybe that’s why there’ve been so many leaks,” she pointed out. “Maybe they’re all hangry!”

            Sharyn says it’s a good thing Singapore isn’t run by stupid people like me and Amanda.