Who is more Weird?

I was having dinner with some friends last Saturday and one of them, knowing that I ‘’travel a lot’’, asked where I had travelled lately.

I mentioned France, Jakarta, and East Java, and when I explained that, for France and Jakarta, it was ‘’obviously for work…’’ she interrupted, ‘’how would I know if it wasn’t for holidays in Jakarta – you always go to weird countries.’’

No country is ‘’weird’’. Yes, I may have travelled to less popular destinations (compared to say, Bangkok or Hong Kong), but Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam – they are nations in their own right, with their own interesting cultures and they deserve every bit of our respect.

They may not have fantastic materialistic shopping, or enviable hygiene standards, or disciplined traffic like Singapore’s, but they are not ‘’weird’’ or to be dismissed with an air of disdain. And their people are certainly more courteous and gracious!

It worries me that this friend of mine, a highly educated ‘’graduate’’ with various other papers (diplomas) and a soon to be ‘’child-care teacher’’, can make such a remark. This is not the first time.

She has condemned practically every holiday destination the group suggested – all due to her lack of interest in each… be it ‘’nothing to do there’’, or ‘’no shopping’’, or ‘’not interested’’ in most of the activities that can be done there. This is also the same person who has no interest in taking up any interests or sports. I still recall all of us trying to offer to do things with her (to improve her health and lethargy), eg, one of us could take her running, another cycling, tennis… but nothing interested her. And she viewed going to the gym with contempt – thinking that it was a mere ‘’pick up joint’’!

Fine. You can go shopping ad nauseam in Bangkok or Seoul, if that’s the only thing that interests you.

But please, no country deserves to be called weird. Go boost your general knowledge – and figure out what these countries can offer in terms of culture and heritage, if not customs and beautiful sights.

Has it got to do with Age?

I was dangerously homicidal, totally exasperated, and white-hot angry yesterday morning.

I had been talking on the phone to a ridiculously impetuous, incredibly rude, and indescribably arrogant woman trying to sell me a sponsorship deal.

Imagine, she was trying to sell me a service over a cold call, and yet she could afford to be rhetorical, intrusive, rude, unreasonable, sarcastic, argumentative and taunting. I think I must have been too shocked to yell back. But a large part of the reason for not ‘’giving it to her’’ was my determination to be her exact opposite, just so as not to stoop as low as her, and to be on higher moral ground. After holding my breath and hanging up, I was suicidal this time – feeling ‘’stupid’’ and telling myself that she did not deserve one iota of my ‘’courtesy’’.

This incident happened just two days after my dinner with my cousin Chris and her friends at her home.

Over dinner, one of them, Aggie, asked what we normally do to ‘’de-stress’’ or to get over frustrations. For me, it was easy – go for a run. For another, it was swimming. For my cousin, it was probably fighting back with the ‘’offender’’ in her younger days but these days, she would let go more easily.

But Aggie said something which made us silent for a while. She said that, in recent years, if someone irritates her, stresses her out, or turns truly nasty to her, she has learnt to deliberately calm down and tell herself not to mind it, and even made an ‘’excuse’’ to say that the ‘’offender’’ probably had a bad day, and that every one has his or her own ‘’bad days’’. It is her way of ‘’not reacting’’ that helps her get through the anger, and she asked if it was ‘’healthy’’ to bottle things up.

The discussion naturally ambled into a womanly concern – age. Has age mellowed us? ‘’If you don’t mind, may I ask how old are you,’’ Aggie asked me.

‘’What – you are so young!’’ she exclaimed. This is the first time I have heard this remark in years. I guess age is a relative thing. My cousin and her friends are in their early 50’s.

I know age has given me wisdom, hindsight, confidence and experience. But I don’t know if it will make me as calm and forgiving as Aggie.

Do I have to wait till I reach 50, to avoid feeling homicidal, be magnanimous, and say, ‘’she probably just had a bad day’’?