It’s that time
of the year again when I start thinking about holidays.
Where should I go? The possibilities
are endless. Just as long as I am careful to eliminate the places I don’t want to go.
Just the other day, the travel agent
rang and asked if I wanted to go on an African safari in Tanzania.
“Got really good deal!” Sunny said.
“Some more, hor, if tree go, get
discount!”
I couldn’t get off the phone fast
enough.
“Is he mad?” Amanda said when I told
her. “He must think we came down with the last shower!”
Saffy looked up from her latest
issue of Men’s Health where she’d been engrossed by an article called ‘Lose
weight without exercise’.
“Why?” she asked.
Amanda blinked. “Hello? Tanzania?”
Saffy, who’d barely passed geography
in school, looked mystified. “Should that mean something to me?”
“It’s right next to all those Ebola
cases!” Amanda said, her eyes almost rolled to the back of her head.
Saffy pulled out her phone and
called up a map of Africa. “No, it’s not! All the Ebola cases are on the east coast. Tanzania is on the west coast! There’s a whole continent
between the two areas! They’re nowhere near each other!”
“But it’s on the same continent!” Amanda told her. My
head nodded like one of the spring toys on the dashboard of a taxi.
“Oh, I see your point,” Saffy said.
“No, let’s not go to Tanzania. I don’t want to end up on the evening breaking
news on CNN.”
Amanda sniffed. “No wonder Sunny was offering a
discount! Really, we should change travel agents!”
So, that’s one thing to stress about…where
not to go for your holiday. That, and
the conundrum of when not to go.
See, if you go too early, it’ll be like showing up
for dinner at a Spanish restaurant at 9pm – there’ll be no one there because no
self respecting Spaniard eats before 10pm, and there’s nothing more depressing
than sitting in a restaurant all by yourself picking away at a paella.
But if you go too late, then it’ll be like arriving
in the middle of the restaurant’s rush hour and the horrible waitress tells you
a table won’t become available for another two hours, which will make it
midnight by the time you get your menu.
My point is, timing a holiday is crucial. Too
early, and there’ll be no one at the resort. Boring. Too late, and you won’t be
able to chope a chair by the pool for
love or money.
Sharyn says this is clearly a
problem that only single people with no children have.
“Ay, you know I don’t take leave for
how long? Two year, ah, I tell you!”
“But you just came back from a trip
to the Cameron Highlands!” Saffy pointed out.
“You siow, lah! What holiday? Had to
drive there and drive back. Get lost four time. The road sign cannot read. My
eldest got car sick. My husband this cannot eat, that cannot drink, but somehow
got food poisoning! My youngest one upset because his iPad break. Who ask him
to be so fat and then sit on it? Sure got break one, what, right? Where got
holiday? Aiyoh, stay home better, ah!”
“I really should record all this,”
Saffy said. “And then on dark lonely nights when I’m feeling sorry for myself
that I’m not married with a family, I’ll play it back.”
“Yah, boy!” Sharyn said grimly, her
eyes large as saucers behind her Coke bottle thick spectacles.
Meanwhile, Amanda called Sunny back
and after telling him what a stupid idea a Tanzanian safari was, asked sweetly
if he had any other suggestions.
“Uhm…I doh-noe, leh. You everywhere
already go. Except…” His fingers rattled some keys on his computer. “Russia!
You want to go to Russia? You never been to Russia, right?”
Amanda coughed up the cappuccino she
was drinking. “Russia? Are you mad?
It’ll just be my luck if the Cold War breaks out all over again!”
Sunny paused, but gamely regrouped.
“Not cold, lah! Now is autumn! Still very shiok! Hello?... Miss
Amanda?...Hello?…” he spoke to the dial tone.
Amanda later said that it was quite
possible that Sunny and Saffy had gone to the same school. “Dumb and Dumber
Junior High!”
“I hate organizing our year end
holidays. It’s all just too stressful,” I told her. “I think I’m just going to
stay home this year and watch my ‘Breaking Bad’ box set!”
“Well, that’s really anti-social!”
Saffy said, dissatisfaction oozing from every pore.
“You
say you want to be single, mah!” Sharyn reminded her.
“Oh, shut up, Sharyn!”
1 comment:
Hi! Are you coming up with another book?
im hoping so!
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