Hidden gems in the Algarve

I was looking at this lady who was busy journaling. Her male companion was staring at an insect that rested on his pen. He was probably someone with the national geographic and  she a travel writer or they may be just tourists with nothing better to do in the Algarve.

Travelling is always fun but digressing from the usual group tour whereby we trail behind a tour guide who holds a plastic bottle up high is certainly better - given that we know the routes of the strange country or better still if we have a friend who is nice enough to bring us around the strange country.

When I first learnt that we were going to the Algarve for a holiday, images of beer guzzing youth, crowded beaches and noisy nights flashed by – not exactly what I would make a beeline for. Known for its good weather and beaches, the usual tourist heading for the Algarve  would check into a hotel usually in Albufeira, go to the beach, sunbathe and return to the hotel. He will do this every day until it is time to catch the next plane home in his new tanned skin. Nothing wrong with that, except that I would prefer to experience more.

So I was pleasantly surprised to find out that a wonderful friend, Michael Henchy was there to collect us at Faro airport and unknown to us he had drawn up a meticulous plan to bring us to scenic sites in the many towns in the Algarve: Alcantarilha, Gaio, Monchique, Lagos.  To add icing to the cake, he was extremely punctual and manoeuvred the narrow and often steep lanes of the towns with such dexterity.

To me some things make a wonderful trip:  a comfortable bed, elements of culture, great food and friendly people.

I am easily pleased and a clean place to stay with basic amenities will make me happy. Imagine driving through high and ornately decorated cast iron gates into the rambling grounds of a beautiful hotel in Alcantarilha. The added bonus of us being the only guests there made me very happy indeed.

Portuguese architecture is beautiful.  Archways and textured walls bathed in bright yellows, reds and blues reflect the vibrancy of Mediterranean life. Hand painted tiles with asymmetrical designs or pictorial images in colours not unlike that of Holland’s Delft blue never fail to win my approval.  Flat roofs remind me of lazy days when idle kings would walk and view his subjects. Such was the flat roof that King David of old walked and saw his future wife Bathsheba.

 There is this chapel in Alcantarilha   that is decorated with human skulls and bones because the grounds that the chapel was built on was a graveyard once. Strangely, there is nothing spooky about looking at the skulls adorning the walls  in Capela Dos Ossos unlike the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Kampuchea where looking at the skulls left me with sleepless nights. But then again, the circumstances were different as the skulls in the museum were those of tortured victims under the Pol Pot regime.

I saw the cork tree, the eucalyptus tree, the pepper tree and even myrrh shrubs on the way up to Foia (Monchique) which is the highest point in Algarve.  I learnt that you can actually peel cork from the tree trunk just like a sheep being shorn. I saw little mounds of stones carefully stacked for good luck, similar to that along the Camino Walk.

Walking on cobbled stone streets conjure scenes of horse drawn carriages or wagons scuttling away in the dark.  I tasted trickling spring water, home-made butter lemon buns, fruity yoghurt in glass jars and juicy pomegranates fresh from the tree. Deliciously prepared cataplana or Portuguese seafood stew and bacalhau com natas (creamy cod) will whet any seafood lover’s appetite. Incidentally, Sir Cliff Richard has a vineyard in Guia and the piri piri chicken originates from this part of the world as well.

A trip is never complete without some shopping. After hours of walking around the Faro old town, there are benches to lie down under a shady tree and let the Peruvian playing ‘Time to say goodbye’ on his musical instrument caress the weary tourist to sleep.

Finally, friendly people make  all the difference – people who make you feel at home and at ease. It sounds odd but to me, language is not a barrier if I do not make it a barrier.

Sitting in a restaurant and having the waiter explain to you in animated gestures, halting English and fluent Portuguese what the name of the restaurant ‘ A Cisterana – Casa da Pasto’ meant, was a lesson in itself. In another instance, a hotel worker tried to apologise profusely in Portuguese about the disruption of the internet service  in our room. Strangely enough I could make out what he was trying to say, the important bits anyway. This reminds me of another instance in Seville where a Spaniard explained to me in Spanish about the bull fight and I understood the gist of it.

I think I could sit for hours just sipping aromatic coffee and then suddenly getting shocked out of my wits when the bells pealed unfailingly. What made it more endearing was that the bells pealed twice every hour...once before the hour hand reached the designated hour and again when the hour hand reached the designated hour. This was certainly most beneficial to those who needed to be reminded of  the time. An enigma indeed.

So to all who love travelling, if at all possible, go down the road less travelled. Seek out the hidden gems in a new country and you will be amazed at what you will find. And in the words of Arnold Swarzenegger, I would say to the Algarve, ‘I’ll be back.’

Source: http://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnist/hidden-gems-in-the-algarve-1.390520?cache=03%252F7.198169%3Fpage%3D0%3Fpage%3D0%2F7.72648%3Fkey%3DKuala+Lumpur%2F7.321287%2F7.323459

Rekindling Ties

When we talk about a gathering, we are talking about people coming together. Throughout 2013, as part of a tourist-led initiative, Ireland is opening its arms to friends and family across the globe, calling them home to ‘gatherings’ in villages, towns and cities.

The Irish diaspora is not unlike the Chinese diaspora whereby economic turmoil in generations past had forced the people to leave their homeland in search for survival and a better future. Over 70 million people worldwide claim Irish ancestry. 

                                                                A scene in Strokestown

Amidst a rich culture of song and stories, one of the gathering’s most poignant returns took place in Strokestown, Co.Roscommon in July. The scene whereby the descendants of an Irish Famine boy was welcomed home 167 years after his family had to emigrate was emotional and heart moving.

Daniel Tighe was 12 when his family was forced to leave Ireland in July 1847 when his  father died and his mother Mary Kelly, in an act of trying to hold the family together, left the country with her five children.

Famine monument in Sligo

She boarded a Famine ship for Quebec, never to reach there. She and three of her five children died on the journey and only Daniel and his sister Catherine (9) survived. When Canadian farmer Francois Coulombe needed a boy to help on his farm outside Quebec, he chose Daniel and Catherine became hysterical and clung on to her brother’s leg, sobbing. The Coulombes said, “We’ll take them both.” And they did. Daniel’s descendants still live on the farm today and the Canadian parents allowed the children to keep their surname. Daniel never forgot the image of corpses being thrown overboard before coming into Grosse Ile, one of the islands located in Gulf of St. Lawrence Quebec, in Canada.

                                                                                                                      

Families get separated all the time – usually for economic reasons, where one generation wishes another generation  a better life, a greater head start. My father came from China for the very same reason, and now I see many young Malaysians leaving the shores of the country they call home, never to return.

There is yet another type of separation which I feel is equally as  painful and costly – that is the separation by choice or because of bad blood. Family feuds have left members estranged from each other, with no resolution but only that of great remorse when one of the parties lies cold in the casket and there is no turning back in time and no more opportunities for apologies. 

We all know of at least one relative who is not speaking to another, one son who has left home with no forwarding address,  one aunt who has not seen her niece, one child who has never known she is adopted, one parent who has never met the child she gave up for adoption.  So there is a mushrooming of agencies trying to put families together, societies committed to tracing the family tree and lots of money spent along the way for that bit of essential information which could hopefully close the aching chasm within.

In fact both my parents were adopted so I never really knew who my biological grand parents were and even my surname is not my grand dad’s surname. If I had my ancestral roots documented, I can imagine the stories I could write about, the streets of the little village out in China somewhere where I could trod.  I can also know whether I inherited my artistic bent from any of my grand parents.

I do not want my children to go through that, so I have put together bits and pieces of trivia as well as significant information about who they are, who their parents are and who their grandparents are.

And they are all packed in 3 plastic files with their names on them, together with mittens, hand prints cast in plaster and the first lock of  shorn hair.

Source: Columnist, New Straits Times, 20 October 2013

Heaney's Verses More than just Poetry in Emotion

When I first read about the Stendhal syndrome I was intrigued. The illness is named after the famous 19th-century French author Stendhal (pseudonym of Henri-Marie Beyle), who described his experience with the experience during his 1817 visit to Florence in his book Naples and Florence: A Journey from Milan to Reggio. Apparently, it is a psychosomatic disorder that causes rapid heartbeat, dizziness, fainting, confusion and even hallucinations when a person is exposed to art, usually when the art is particularly beautiful or a large amount of art is in a single place. 

I therefore reason that if there are curious reactions to beautiful art , then certainly there must be a term to describe the condition of one who is overwhelmed by the writings of great literary geniuses and Ireland has no shortage of such.

The recent demise of the poet Seamus Heaney on 30 August 2013 is a real loss to Ireland. The nearest I got to knowing the poet was through his poems and also by walking past his house in Sandymount, Dublin.

The similarities we share are an eye for detail and a love for the written word.

My first introduction to analysing poetry was during my Form Six days when I did the English literature paper four. Granted, poetry is not everyone’s cup of tea. Having said that, a good teacher and an innate passion for poetry appreciation transcends the bumps along the way and the combination of both finally led me to pursue a degree in English literature.

At 18, in a hot classroom with fans whirling, we learned to make sense of cultural imagery that was so far removed from our daily existence as light is to day. 

How similar could tropical heat and broiler chickens be to Yeats’ trees in their autumn beauty and nine and fifty swans upon the brimming water’? How similar could hibiscus shrubs be to Wordsworth’s host of golden daffodils?

And yet, we all survived. Imagination is a strange thing. We can paint vivid images in our mind just the way we read about them and we can even feel the same emotions that the poet wants to portray if not more. Such is the power of the ‘squat pen that sits between the finger and the thumb’ that Seamus writes about.

It is all about familiarity.

When imagination meets reality and they both harmonise and agree, that is when the magnificence of the written word dawns.

In his poem ‘Digging’ Seamus wrote about two main activities – potato planting and turf cutting.  I have planted potatoes and understand how ‘the spade sinks into the gravelly ground’ and how ‘the rump stoops in rhythm through potato drills.’   

The last time we got some turf from the bog, it was exactly like how Seamus described his grand father ‘nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods, over his shoulder, going down and down for the good turf.’

It became very familiar again when he talked about appreciation and acceptance.

How did the people in his town react to him being awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1995? In his own words to a friend, initially, they ‘ignored’ it for the most part. Then after his passing, I waited for the national television stations to screen tribute after tribute to Ireland’s pride, only to find that the number of documentaries on Seamus screened by the BBC far exceeds that.

Then I thought about  our very own Tan Twan Eng who won the 2013 Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction for his second novel The Garden of Evening Mists and  Tash Aw who won the 2005 Whitbread Book Awards First Novel Award as well as the 2005 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Novel (Asia Pacific region). How many Malaysians have actually heard of them or read their works?

I have recorded the televised tributes to Seamus and I will watch them again. I have audio recordings of his readings and I will listen to them again. I have his poems and I will read them again.

And then unlike Stendhall who wrote about being ‘absorbed in the contemplation of sublime beauty... I reached the point where one encounters celestial sensations… I had palpitations of the heart… Life was drained from me. I walked with the fear of falling’, another kind of reaction could be born.

This time it would be a positive reaction related to the written arts.


Source: http://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnist/heaney-s-verses-more-than-just-poetry-in-emotion-1.374592?cache=03%252f7.198169%2F7.173253%2F7.480262%2F7.478218%2F7.478218%2F7.478218%2F7.490557%2F7.490557%2F7.490557%2F7.490557

Following the food trail

I like to cook and have always enjoyed the  Discovery Travel and Living Channel. My favourite hosts are Ian Wright, Samantha Brown, Anthony Bourdain and Bobby Chinn. These are the people who would show you the fun of travelling to exotic places and trying out new delectable morsels of food.

So imagine my surprise when I learnt that Peter Ward of Country Choice and American celebrity chef and World Café host Bobby Chinn were going to be at the North Tipperary Agricultural Show – a  place for cattle, poultry, horse and pony showing classes and show jumping as well as many other competitions including the best floral displays, photography, art, baking, cooking, needlework, fruit and vegetable produce.

Not one with great spatial intelligence, I surprised myself by getting to the destination without any hitches and I was early as well. Peter Ward, the friendly and charming man who together with his wife Mary, established Country Choice, an independent delicatessen, café and supply business,  told me that Bobby would only be on an hour later. So that gave me some time to walk around the fair, admiring prized four legged creatures: Hereford, Angus and Friesian amongst others. 

                                

What is it about food anyway?

I firmly believe that any true Malaysian is a great lover of food. Not any type of food, but a wide variety of food. The thing about us is that we are eager to try cooking and tasting new stuff. It is not uncommon for us to ask our hostess for the recipe of the most gorgeous lime pie. Most people will happily share the recipes but some will make us swear that we will only use the recipe for domestic purposes and not to start a business.

Then there are some who would just travel for miles to other towns just because the satay is superb in Kajang or the bean sprouts are crunchier in Ipoh. The travelling may be tedious but the food makes it all worthwhile.

So far, I have tried many recipes, some of which are successful and some not. But the greatest achievement for me is baking bread, something that I would have thought impossible. Nothing beats the warm loaf wrapped in a tea towel and sitting on the window sill. Somehow the smell of bread baking in a kitchen gives the home a totally different meaning altogether.

Most times I have also altered recipes to suit my guests’ taste buds.  Tofu and tamarind-based dishes can be as strange to my guests as cold tongue and kidney pie are to me. I find that the more well- travelled my guests are, the more ready they are to enjoy and taste a variety of food beyond the bangers and mash. I made some mango custard dessert for a pot-luck at a local gathering and no one touched it. Unfazed, I made the same dessert at an international gathering and it was zapped up immediately with compliments all round.

Initially I found the Chinese takeaway dishes very strange indeed, not at all like what I am used to. As they try to cater for their customers’ tastes, Chinese dishes have morphed into a blend of eastern spices and western portions, so I could never actually finish a meal all by myself at a Chinese restaurant.

Following the food trail like any endeavour is a journey and it all starts in someone’s kitchen, usually our mother’s. Although my mother used to chase me out of the kitchen because I was more of a pest than a help, I was determined to try out all sorts of recipes. Table manners are also very different where I come from. Those who are younger will make sure that the older ones are seated first out of respect. Then we will ‘invite’ our parents or elders to eat before we did.

At a Chinese restaurant in Dublin, my daughter ‘invited’ me to eat before she started tucking in. Then I heard a Chinese mother ‘chiding’ her own daughter (probably she was born and bred in Ireland), ‘See the girl is asking her mother to eat first, I never hear you saying that.’

Another wonderful custom that we have is we like to share our food. Whether we are at home, in school or in the office, we will readily share what we have with others so we could taste each other’s food, thus forging a kind of camaraderie.

So after an hour wandering around the fair and having scrutinised the cows and horses, I went back to the Country Choice stall and saw the back of a very familiar person sitting on a chair. Like an excited teenager, I went around the chair and asked,

‘Hi, Bobby could I take a photo of you?’

Bobby grinned and said ‘Now why don’t we get someone to take a photo of us.’

Source: http://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnist/following-the-food-trail-1.360807?cache=golhyfvvipwqzn%2F7.14219%2F7.14219%2F7.245988%3Fkey%3DKuala+Lumpur%2F7.478218%2F7.478218%2F7.478218

Strange thing about teenage years

SEVENTY thousand young people were screaming at Leicester Square, London,  on a Tuesday night. They had waited for hours; some were said to have camped out overnight on the street, and they were not disappointed. Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne and Niall Horan arrived in style.

Who?

The fact that I was not impressed by the names of the Great Foursome, a.k.a. One Direction, is because I had left my teenage years a long time ago. I am a parent the worst nightmare that a teenager could morph into.

The teenage years are the strangest ever. It is when everything is about I, me and myself.

If people talk, they are talking about me. If they do not talk, they are not talking about me. I speak in hyperboles. I write in hyperboles.

I even dream in hyberboles. If I fail in anything, the humiliation is magnified many times over. If I am successful, I believe everyone should know what I have achieved and if he does not, I wonder whether he is living on Earth or on an unknown meteor.

If I am committed to a viewpoint, I will defend it to death. If anyone has contrary ideas, I will have to sit down and have a very long discussion with the person ... no, not a discussion, but perhaps more like an argument. My energy is boundless and my dogged determination to get something that I like, usually a popular product that other teens have, is almost unshakable.

That is the teen in me, shouting from the mountain top.

The most common phrase a teen will use in a parent-teen argument is "You don't understand. During your time it was different". But then again, is there any difference? On the surface level, the setting may have changed.

Technology has advanced, toys have changed, holiday destinations are more exotic but underlying principles and teenage experiences, whether specific or general, have not changed much.

Now that I am a parent and am on the other end of the continuum, I can see that there is a great similarity between what I had experienced and gone through and what that young person is going through now. But, of course, when you are a teenager you do not realise that.

I was watching a documentary about the Bee Gees. I enjoyed their songs tremendously when I was a teen and there was this clip that jolted me back to my past. I saw Robin Gibb cupping his ear with his hand as he sang Massachusetts. I remember I was so engrossed in watching the very same performance over a black and white television, oh so many years ago. It was very rare in those days for national television to air a pop group singing and it must have been on one of the festive days.

So there I was watching Gibb cupping his ear, mesmerised until my mother said: "I think he has an ear ache."

I was aghast that my mother would even mention such a thing about this demi god and highly irritated that my precious time with the Bee Gees was interrupted.

I attempted to correct her by saying that he was trying to deaden the side noise so he could hear his own voice better.

Ignoring my reply, my mother contemplated and came up with another more ingenious suggestion.

"I think he must have a toothache."

My face reddened and if my mother had not gone to the kitchen to check on the rice boiling over the charcoal stove, I would not know what I could have done to her.

So now, many years later, when I see Gibb cupping his ear on a flat screen television, I laugh loudly to myself and wonder why I was so uptight over the cupping-ear incident once.

Whether it was a ear ache or a toothache or a sound technique, what did it matter?

Oscar Wilde said, "youth is wasted on the young" and there is a Chinese phrase that goes: "I eat salt more than you eat rice", meaning that the older person has gone through more experiences than the young person would credit him for.

Tell it to an adult and he will shake his head knowingly. Tell it to a teen and he cannot believe that the adult has gone through what he is going through.

I hear that in Dublin, patient parents queued for more than two hours with their excited children to get a good seat in one of the two cinemas that had premiere screening of the movie One Direction: This Is Us.

At a time like this, I am so glad my children have outgrown the phase of going in that direction.

Read more: Strange thing about teenage years - Columnist - New Straits Times http://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnist/strange-thing-about-teenage-years-1.351333#ixzz2eK4RZGhI

Drivers of Success

I met up with some Asian friends whom I had not seen in 30 years and congratulated each other on how like fine wine we have aged, and jokingly, talked about the gold bullion that we have locked in a safe deposit box somewhere -  the latter I take to denote success or how far we have come in life through dogged determination and sheer hard work.

So, what is it with Asians and a spirit of excellence?

According to a New York Times 2012 report, Asian-Americans constitute 5.6 percent of the nation’s population but 12 to 18 percent of the student body at Ivy League schools.  The percentages are astounding: 24% at Stanford, 18% at Harvard, and 25% at both Columbia and Cornell. More Asian Americans over the age of 25 have bachelor's degrees and advanced degrees than any other race or ethnic group. Besides outperforming their colleagues in school, Asian Americans also bring home higher incomes than their non-Asian counterparts - almost $10,000 more annually than the rest of the population (2002 statistics).

My take is that it is not that we are born Asian that we reach for excellence, but rather how we are raised.

 There have been so many reports and books written about the Asian concept of  hard work and success and when I chance upon yet another, I never fail to give it a good read. I guess it is partly to double check whether I have been doing the right thing especially when others do not practise the same parenting techniques that I do.

In Top of the Class: How Asian Parents Raise High Achievers - and How You Can Too, the daughters of Korean immigrants  Dr. Soo Kim Abboud and Jane Kim discuss 17 ways parents can raise children to love learning and maximize their intellectual potential. Abboud is a clinical assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and Jane Kim is a lawyer who specializes in immigration issues

I tend to agree with the overall slant of the book.

One of my friends told me that I have always been an achiever. I find great contentment in achieving and living to one’s full potential. In agriculture terms, when I put my hand on the plough there are no half measures, no laid back attitude -  whether it is being a lecturer in the classroom or in planting potatoes in my back yard. To me, we are given a spirit of excellence and to settle for anything less is to sell yourself short.

The spirit of excellence sets the child apart from his peers. I can identify greatly with Dr. Soo Kim Abboud’s concept of clearly defining your child’s role as a student and then steering her towards her potential.

Asian children are brought up with three clear cut rules:

·                                 Respect your elders (teachers, people who are older and people in authority) and obey your 

                  parents.

·                                 Study hard and do well in school to secure a bright future.

·                                 Mediocrity does not garner praise. Hard work and praiseworthy performance do.

The final ring of the school bell does not mean freedom from learning and education. Studying still takes place at home – homework, assignments and sometimes even doing additional workbooks given by the parents themselves. Besides doing household chores, studying  is a normal way of life away from the multitude of distractions that others face once school ends.

I respect educators, and this respect is passed on to my children as I view the educators as collaborators - not adversaries. I strongly believe that if children do not respect their educators, then they will find it difficult to embrace their roles as students or subordinates,  not only in the classroom but in the home and society as well. It is sad that while Teacher’s Day is celebrated in Malaysia and in other parts of the world, Irish teachers in the town where I live do not enjoy the same celebration. If I am not mistaken, my daughter was the only one who made appreciation cards for the teachers during Teacher’s Day this year..

I do not know how it has evolved such that children are rewarded for mediocre school performances, for fear that any challenge or correction will permanently damage their children's self-esteem. 

To me, I believe in both effort and result, commiserating with the child’s ability.

Anything less is underachieving, indiscipline and looking for short cuts in life.

Source: New Straits Times 25 August 2013

Travelling Pains

I love starting out on a journey and reaching the destination. The beginning of a journey is full of excitement and fun, especially to a new place. The searching of exotic getaways, great deals and finally booking the package creates an adrenalin rush. The luggage comes out of the store room, clothes are neatly packed and liquids are stored in a transparent bag.

What I do not like is the travelling in between especially if it is many hours by air or by sea. Somehow the inner biological system shuts down when air flight time hits anything above 10 hours. Travelling by sea is even worse for me as minutes after the cruise ship has left the dock, and the waves become choppy, I would be yearning for a quick return to shore again. Even the wonderful dinner buffet in the dining room becomes an indescribable blur.

There are good days and there are bad days. On good days, I can tuck in and relish every piece of morsel served on board the plane. I can even watch three movies and then fall sound asleep immediately after. But on bad days, which are becoming increasingly more often, I cannot even watch anything on the screen except to check on the flight route. More often than not, the graphic plane on the screen seems to be stuck at a certain location. This is made worse by my constant checking of the watch to see how many hours I have flown thus far. Believe me, as if in cohort with the stationary plane on the screen, the hour hand hardly moves.

Recently I was seated on the upper deck of a splendid Airbus A380. This is a double-deck, wide-body, four-engine jet airliner and the world's largest passenger airliner.  It promises the weary traveller everything that she wishes for. But then again I could never agree with the varied smells within an enclosed area - three very distinct ones are grease, perfume and medicated oil. Covering my head with a blanket to block out the smells for the most part of the journey rendered little help. Tablets for air sickness did nothing for me. Seeing that I could not consume anything for the 12 hour flight, the concerned air-hostess made me a cup of hot chocolate. Sad to day, I threw that up as well.

I know there are bags for air sickness but because vomiting is an involuntary action of the body to empty the contents of the stomach we sometimes end up throwing up in the toilet of a plane instead. Now this is tricky business. It is completely awkward to be down on the knees and throwing up into the toilet bowl. The alternative is to stand up and make sure the involuntary projectile is directly aimed at the toilet bowl – a mean feat especially when you are groggy and cannot even stand straight. It is also utterly useless to throw up in the basin especially when the gooey stuff refuses to flow smoothly down the sink hole and you would need to manually soak up the gooey stuff with tissues and then throw the tissues into the toilet bowl. ( whereby you will regret not throwing up straight into the toilet bowl or into the bag in the first place) Finally, you will need to wipe down the basin with a good blob of liquid soap and warm water in order to leave it respectable and clean for the next passenger.

What is it that makes travelling so difficult?

As I fly over Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas, I feel like my body is disintegrating like thin wisps of mists over the continents and the oceans. It is as if I am leaving a part of me here and there. Ridiculous idea - of losing parts of me in Capri or Monte Carlo - but until I can fly with the ease of a bird; that helps explain the nausea and the discomfort that I feel incessantly.

Even when the plane lands, the ordeal is not over yet. I am talking of long queues at border controls and the strict screening of luggage. The last thing you would want is a straight faced immigration officer who glares or makes fun of you.

I remember a few decades ago, an immigration officer asked me where I was studying and I said the name of a university in Malaysia. He quipped, ‘Are there universities in Malaysia?’ Even now, I meet the occasional over enthusiastic immigration officer who takes pleasure in torturing the weary soul with a snide remark.

Once we step out of the airport we face the intense heat and humidity or on the other extreme the biting cold and the chilly wind. Then we go through jet lag and when others are sound asleep we stare at the ceiling and when others are happily photographing the orang utan  on the feeding platform, we wish for a platform to rest our sleepy heads.

So why do I still plod along across continents and oceans?

When the ordeal of a long journey is over, it is also forgotten by and by. Just like child birth, when it is all over, we go on to have another.  Yet another day arrives and I find myself queuing at the airport counter to check in and to get the boarding pass.

As the departure gate closes and I enter the plane, I say a silent prayer that this time round there will be no smell of grease, perfume or medicated oil.