Ages to Go

My mother says one of the reasons she studiously avoids hanging out with people her own age is that they’re always complaining about their ailments. 

It all starts innocently enough, she says. Someone might mention, in passing, a little ache in the knee after a round of golf. Or a case of slight breathlessness after walking from the car-park and up the stairs to the club.

“And then, one day,” she said the other at lunch at Crystal Jade, “they’ll say that they need to get their eyes checked because they can’t see as well at night when driving. Invariably, it’ll be cataracts and for weeks, you have to listen about the upcoming operation, and for weeks after about the post-op results!”

From the other side of the table, my father looked up from his dumpling soup. “Who’s this?”

Mother waved a hand, the low light above catching the glint off her diamond ring. “Oh, that Mei-sian! The way she goes on about it, you’d think she had stage three cancer! Which, by the way,” Mother’s voice lowered into a hush, “is what Uncle Charlie has!”

My sister Michelle coughed into her soup. She dabbed her mouth, eyes wide. “Uncle Charlie has stage three cancer? Oh my God! But he’s so young!”

Mother sniffed. “If you can call eighty-four young, then, sure. The ladies at mah-jong were shocked because they all thought he was already dead!” She reached for a siew-mai, shaking her head. “Anyway, my point is, that’s all I get to hear about. Ailments. I’m so glad I never became a doctor!”

Michelle later said she wasn’t sure what was worse – listening to Mother’s friends talk about their hip operations and double by-passes, or her own friends about their children.

“A few years ago, every dinner party involved someone who was trying to get pregnant, or who was pregnant, or who had just given birth,” she said as we dodged and weaved our way through the Orchard Road crowds. “And now, they’re stressing about how little time they have with the children and feeling guilty because they’re at work. Or they’re pregnant again, so I have to listen to the pre-natal crap all over again! I tell you, it’s just never ending drama with these married couples!”

Meanwhile, my Sixth Uncle Harry just announced on the family group-chat that his cardiologist has discovered a potentially fatal faulty heart valve.

“Potentially fatal?” Saffy said when she found out. “I would have thought a faulty heart valve is, by definition, fatal. Isn’t that like discovering you have a hole in the hull of the ship? I mean, surely it’s just a matter of time?”

“They’re running more tests,” I told her. “They’re hoping they can fix it. Uncle Harry says that a few years ago, this kind of thing would have killed him but now, the technology is so much more sophisticated.”

“Isn’t he the one who married his secretary?” Amanda asked, proving once again her capacity to cross-reference family scandals like a true Korean soap opera addict. 

“She’s half his age!” I reminded her. “Mother says she and her sisters are on his case to grant them the enduring power of attorney rather than to his child-bride just in case she runs off with the loot while he’s in surgery.”

“She’s forty-five,” Amanda pointed out. “She’s hardly a child-bride.”

Saffy’s formidable bosom inflated. “I’m so glad I don’t have to deal with this kind of drama as I have no money for anyone to fight over.”

Meanwhile, all this talk about aging and ailments has encouraged Amanda to update her Medisave provisions whilst signing us all up for another comprehensive health check up at Gleneagles. “You never know,” she says darkly.

Sharyn says that she’s putting off having her check up for as long as humanly possible. “I very pantang! Skali they find I got brain tumour, den how?”

“I’ll come visit you every day at the hospital,” Saffy said loyally. “And I’ll hold your hand during chemo!”

Mother worries that Saffy is hanging out with the wrong kind of people. 

Fresh On The Boat

So, here we are on-board the Seabourn Ovation on a 14-day cruise up to Hong Kong.  

“Fourteen days?” Saffy had said a few months earlier when Amanda first floated the idea. “Do I want to be stuck with you guys for 14 days on a ship?”

“It’s a big ship!” Amanda had replied. “You won’t even need to see us if you don’t want to. Not even for meals. They have, like, six restaurants on-board. And there are only 300 rooms and every room is a suite with its own private balcony. And there’s Wi-Fi. Oh, come on, you’ll love it!”

Saffy had wrinkled her nose. “Won’t it be full of retirees?” 

Amanda stared. “Uhm…You just came back from aerobics at the local community centre where the median age is 67.”

Saffy shrugged. “Well, that’s only because the instructor is super cute and he’s got thighs that could choke a bear!”

“Well, they’ll have Ukrainian gym instructors on the Ovation, so you’ll love it!”

Saffy had remained unconvinced. “But it’s going to be so expensive! We’re not all made of money like you are!”

“You have no children,” Amanda had pointed out. “Think how much you’re already saving from not having to raise, house, feed, educate and entertain two ungrateful kids!”

“And who, when they turn fifteen, will tell you how much they hate you and wish you were dead,” I’d added, having just spent two hours at lunch listening to my best friend Karl moan about how he wished he’d never had his evil ungrateful offspring.

Which is how last weekend we found ourselves crossing the gang-plank at the cruise centre in HarbourFront to board the all-white Ovation, the pride and joy of the Seabourn line.

“Well, this is rather nice,” Saffy said, a little reluctantly, as she settled into the lounge chair on her balcony, a chilled flute of champagne by her side as she looked out over the leafy hills of Sentosa. 

By our second day out at sea, she’d basically fallen under a spell, spending hours on the pool deck, alternately lazily flipping the pages of volume two of ‘Game of Thrones’ and being hypnotized by the unending blue horizon that circled around us.

One afternoon, she leaned over her chaise lounge and peered at me over the top of her sunglasses. “Don’t tell Amanda, but I’m totally sold on this whole cruise thing.”

“Isn’t this just the life?” I murmured as I stretched supine on my towel, drowsy from the warm sun and hazily wondering if I could be bothered to lift my hand to check the time. “When’s lunch? I’m thinking of sushi.”

Saffy picked up her daily schedule and scanned the list of activities. “There’s lobster tonight at the Colonnade,” she said. “And escargots! Or we could do Thomas Keller?”

“I can’t think that far ahead,” I told her. “Let’s just get through lunch first.”

The passengers are, as Saffy predicted, mostly on the retiree end of the spectrum. Large contingents of Americans and Germans, almost all broiled by the sun and happy to spend the whole day playing bridge or parked by the pool bar drinking spritzers, and gin and tonics.

After lunch, we retreat to our suites for a nap, waking up just in time for afternoon tea of fluffy scones, cakes and cucumber sandwiches, after which Amanda invariably heads off to the spa for a manicure or a facial, whilst Saffy and I sprawl on the couch in my suite and watch the latest Hollywood blockbuster.

Tomorrow, we arrive in Thailand. All around us, people are busy planning day trips, their guide-books and maps spread out around them. 

“Do we want to go into Bangkok?” Amanda asked this morning at breakfast. “Or do a temple tour or something?”

Saffy’s bosom deflated with a sigh. “Not really. I’m too lazy to move. I might do an acupuncture session for my knee with that cute Japanese acupuncturist. And I want to watch ‘The Favourite’ as well. Plus there’s pizza at the Patio today.”

Amanda turned to me with an enquiring look. 

“There’s a dancing class that I want to try out,” I said. 

Amanda looked relieved. “Oh good, no one wants to go. I wasn’t keen to get off the ship either, but I didn’t want to spoil the party. Great, I’ll get a hair treatment, then.”

Tonight, there’s a magic show after dinner, an entertainment prospect that, if someone had suggested it on dry land, would have caused us all to raise our collective eyebrows. But here, out on the blue on blue of the South China Sea, with the salt-tinged air ruffling our hair, it just feels like the most natural way to end a day of complete, indolently pleasurable non-activity. 

Honestly? I could not be happier. 

Eating Disorder

It's hard to believe it's May already. It feels like the new year was just last week when our friend Jodie invited us to her home for yet another Chinese New Year dinner.

“Are you sick of loh-hei, yet?” she’d asked earlier on the phone. 

“I’ve had 12 so far,” Amanda told her.

“I’ve had 33!”

There was a brief silence as Amanda struggled to wonder if she’d misheard. “Thirty-three?” she said eventually. “How can you have had 33 loh-hei? This is only like the fifth day of Chinese New Year!”

“Oh, I started about two weeks before and as we approached the New Year, I had it for lunch and dinner with the family and my clients.”

“Thirty-three?” Saffy said when Amanda told her. 

“She’s so competitive! Just like at Uni!”

“I feel sick just thinking about all that sweet sauce!”

“Which is why tonight’s version is going to be Indonesian!” Amanda said. “She’s basically doing a gado-gado.”

Saffy blinked. “And what’s she using for the fish?”

“Otah-otah!”

“It’s going to be cooked, right?” I asked. “Because I’m not eating raw spiced mackeral!”

“She said she’s just unpacking the whole thing from the banana leaf.”

Saffy shrugged. “That’s just weird, but whatever. She just shouldn’t call it loh-heior Instagram us tossing,” she warned. “Can you imagine how that would look? All those great chunks of tofu and otah-otah flying up in the air? I don’t want to become a viral sensation for all the wrong reasons!”

Screaming with laughter at the image, we piled into a cab and zoomed towards Jodie’s apartment at Peach Garden. 

“God, that Jodie is such a China Doll,” Saffy said. “Even her condo sounds like a restaurant.”

When we arrived at the guard-house, Amanda poked her head out the window to announce who we were there to see. She hadn’t even opened her mouth when the security guard waved us through, leading Saffy to wonder if this sort of thing would also happen if we’d dropped by the Istana for loh-hei with the President. 

“The same thing happened to me the other day when I visited Shaun’s mother, do you remember?” Amanda said as the taxi pulled up at Jodie’s block. “I don’t think the guard even looked up from his phone. I mean, I could have been a robber for all he knew! He just happily waved me through.”

“Well, you’re in top-to-toe Chanel. You don’t exactly look like a robber,” Saffy pointed out, though I couldn’t help but think neither did the girls from Ocean’s 11. 

Amanda turned pink with pleasure that someone had noticed what she was wearing. “You know what the problem is? Singapore is just too safe! Which makes me wonder why anyone bothers with security guards anyway.”

“So that retirees have something to do!” said Saffy, HR executive to the Nation. 

“I mean, who would be stupid enough to commit a crime in this country?” Amanda went on, warming to her theme, though as Saffy later said privately, you could tell she was mentally role-playing her favourite fantasy as a PAP minister on the campaign trail. “You’d be tracked down, charged and jailed before you even had a chance to put your bag down to count your stolen cash!”

When we finally made it up to Jodie’s apartment, she said that after years of living in New York and being regularly terrified on her way home from work at night, she fully intended to live out the rest of her life in this country, secure in the knowledge that probably the most dangerous thing that would ever happen to her would be to go through an ERP gantry without enough money in her CashCard.

“So, did you read about that Go-Jek driver?” she asked as she carefully assembled her gado-gado loh-hei, which she’d since renamed galoh-gahei. “I’m telling you, this dish could fund my retirement. It’s just a question of clever marketing!”

“What about the Go-Jek driver?” Amanda interrupted. “You mean that girl and the ERP?”

“Yes! Did you see the video and how she was yelling that she was being kidnapped?”

“Hadn’t the driver brought her to the police station or something?” Amanda said, surprising us all with the depth of her knowledge of Singapore current affairs.  

“Only in Singapore,” Jodie said, in the solemn tone of a BBC newsreader announcing the birth of a new heir to the throne, “can you be kidnapped and the kidnapper brings you straight to the police station so that you can file a complaint!”

Amanda giggled while Saffy’s bosom inflated. “You see, that’s the kind of viral sensation you don’t want to be involved in!

To Pee or Not to Pee

Not to be politically indelicate, but the world is divided into two kinds of women: those who are done peeing in a minute, and those who aren’t. 

In the first group, the women might as well be men. A few garment adjustments, a ruthlessly efficient contraction of floor muscles, and they’re out the door. My Mother, the founding member of this group, even manages to find time to check her lipstick in the mirror. 

Meanwhile, in the second group, Saffy would still be marching up and down the toilet stalls, cautiously pushing each door open as she cranes her neck in to check the state of the floor, the toilet bowl and the general state of cleanliness.

Sometimes, nothing meets her expectations, in which case she will emerge from the bathroom with a look of grimness and announce that we need to go to another level.

“Oh God, Saff!” Amanda moaned the other day. “The movie is about to start, and you want to go look for a toilet on the next floor? What’s wrong with this one? I just used it and it’s fine!”

Saffy’s bosom stiffened. “There’s no toilet paper in there! How am I going to line the seat if there’s no toilet paper?”

Amanda shot me a look, but I was busy examining my shoe-laces. “Then don’t sit!” she said eventually. “Just squat over the loo!”

“Well excuse me if I don’t have your core muscles,” Saffy snapped, as she began moving towards the escalator. “I need to sit! Look, just go in first. It’ll just be the movie previews, anyway!”

“But those are the best bits of a movie!” Amanda called out, but Saffy’s back had, by now, disappeared into the crowd.

I turned to Amanda. “You squat?” 

“Sure! It’s the fastest way to pee!”

I hesitated. “But wouldn’t you have to be very careful about where you aim?”

Amanda gave me a look. “Unlike a man, you mean?” she said, never having forgotten that one time she was in desperate need to pee but there was such a long line to the ladies, whereas the men’s loo next door looked and sounded completely empty. So, she dashed in and nearly died of shock.

“Filthy and smelly!” she later told all her girlfriends. “The floor in front of all the urinals was wet!”

“Wet?” Cindy asked. “Why?”

“Wet with pee!” Amanda said in ringing tones that carried straight across the tables at Les Amis. Heads turned. She leaned in and lowered her voice. “Men can’t aim straight!”

Cindy, who’d been trying to get pregnant for years, sniffed. “You don’t have to tell me!” she said. 

Amanda waved her hands. “No, really. It’s disgusting. I mean, if you think about it, it’s basically a hose, right? You just aim it and direct the flow. I noticed that the urinals even have a little bee painted at the base.”

Cindy’s eyebrows arched. “A bee? What for?”

“Well, I asked Jason and he says it’s so that men know where to aim!”

Cindy put down her fork. “Shut up!”

“No, really! And yet somehow, they still miss and the pee gets all over the floor. Either that,” Amanda paused as she gave the matter some thought, “either that, or most guys have really small di…”

Cindy coughed as the maître d’arrived with the foie gras, followed by the sommelier to discuss the next wine pairing.

Leave it to Sharyn to find the silver lining in everything. “Aiyah,” she said the other day, after Amanda had complained that we’d missed the first two movie previews while waiting for Saffy to return from the loo. “At least, she only need to line the toilet when she outside. Not like my sister-in-law! That woman ah, really one kind! My mah-dur-in-law scold and scold her, you know.”

“Why, what does she do?”

Sharyn looked triumphant that for once, she was the centre of attention. She drew in breath, the better to prolong the moment. “You know when she go to toilet at home? She must oh-so line the seat with toilet paper!”

Amanda paused. “Wait. What? She lines the toilet seat at home?”

Sharyn’s mouth pursed into a thin line. “So strange right? Every day, the maid clean, but must still line. And she got bladder ploh-blem, some more, so she must go shee-shee every fie minute. Can you imagine? One day can use up tree toilet roll!”

Amanda sighed.

“Dat’s why kena scolding from my mah-dur-in-law! So you see, Saffy not so bad. Not like my sister-in-law. She really one kind!” Sharyn repeated.