Fast Track

The other evening, I caught up with my pal Ann at Coriander Leaf.

            She arrived in a blaze of this season’s Versace and a slight whiff of Chanel No.5. Dumping her bag (Dior) and her cardigan (Miu Miu) on the chair next to her, she sank into the seat and moaned. “I’m exhausted and I’m so hungry! If you presented me with a slab of filet mignon now, I don’t know whether I’d eat it or sleep on it!”

            “Why are you so exhausted and why are you so hungry?”

            “I had meetings all morning, and then I had back to back meetings in the afternoon, and then somewhere in the middle, I forgot to have lunch!”

            I frowned and stared at Ann. Without warning, my mother’s voice spoke up inside my head.

            For those of you who’ve not yet had the misfortune of meeting my mother, it helps to know that she always says that people say the most ridiculous things. And, according to her, the most ridiculous thing anyone has ever said to her was: “Do you machine wash your underwear?” Mother says what made the question even more unfathomable was that the person asking it was the sales assistant at the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show in London.

            “Not that it’s any of your business, dear,” Mother murmured, “but I have people who do my laundry. So I don’t really need to know whether a machine is involved.”

            The sales girl turned pink. “No, madam, I ask only because our new ‘Lacie Thongs’ are quite delicate and they really should be hand washed.”

            “Wait a minute,” Amanda said when I told her this story over afternoon tea. “Your mother. She shops at Victoria’s Secret?”

            I sighed. “Oh don’t ask me why. She follows the Victoria’s Secret Fashion show religiously every November. She knows all the model’s names and, I don’t know, maybe she feels if she wears their bras, she’d look like Adrianna Lima or something!”

            “I love your mother,” said Amanda, not for the first time wishing my mother was her mother, instead of her real life mother who, from what I’ve heard, is a real witch.

            “Aiyoh, so bad! How can you call people liddat?” Sharyn said, shaking her head with disapproval.

            “No, Sharyn,” Saffy said. “Amanda’s mother really is a witch. She prays to the full moon, makes dream catchers and reads tarot cards.

            “Hah? Where got? I thought Amanda mudder is the legal counsel at X---?”

            “By day, she is. But on the weekends, she moonlights as a spiritualist!”

            Sharyn was agog. “Really, ah? How come I doh know?”

            Amanda looked martyred. “I try not to speak about it, Sharyn.”

            Saffy said the idea of my mother being asked if she hand-washed her delicates was going to keep her entertained for days. “I mean, anyone looking at the woman could tell you that here is someone who probably doesn’t even know where her kitchen is in her house! Some people have no sense.”

            Which then reminded me of my dinner with Ann the previous night.

            “What I don’t understand,” I said, “is how anyone could ever forget to have lunch! I mean, it’s twelve thirty, one o’clock. You have lunch. What’s there to forget?”

            “I always forget to have lunch!” Amanda said, a statement Saffy said she simply couldn’t wrap her head around. I nodded, pleased by the solidarity.

            “Although,” she went on, “I must say the jury is still out on this intermittent fasting thing that Sharyn has gotten me on!”
            Her best friend perked up. “Issit working? Have you lost weight?”

            “It’s only been a day, Shazz! But I feel thinner! That’s got to count for something, right?”

            Apparently, how intermittent fasting works is that you have dinner and then you don’t eat anything till lunch the next day, the idea being that you do a mini-fast in between.

Amanda looked skeptical. “And what’s that supposed to do?”

“Fine-tunes your metabolic rate!” Saffy said with confidence. “Or something.”

“Yah, yah! Fine tune!” Sharyn said, her thick glasses magnifying her eyes to such an extent, she looked like a particularly deranged Chinese Minion. “I lost tree kilo orredi!”

“That’s probably the dumbest diet I’ve ever heard of,” Amanda announced.

Saffy’s bosom inflated. “It’s not a diet, it’s a fast!”

Amanda looked unconvinced. “It’s a farce, is what it is!”

Saffy replied she couldn’t wait to drop two sizes and fit into a Victoria’s Secret ‘Dream Angels Stars Ruffled Corset Top’. “That’ll show you!” she told Amanda, even as she reached for another ang ku kueh.