Wherein I return from holidays, having missed the elections

I missed Singapore's elections, having been overseas in Malaysia the last couple of days.

It wans't really a big deal, since my area was uncontested and I wouldn't have gotten to vote in any case, but I am a little miffed that I missed out on all the excitement and voicing-out-of-uninformed-opinions that comes together with the whole package.

I am even more miffed that my trade-off involved a series of blandly uninteresting days in assorted Malaysian states, without computer access, English television or (this hurt the most) soft cushions for my behind. For you see, a Singaporean trip to Malaysia typically involves much riding of coaches along bumpy roads and eating of foods purchased from hawkers of dubious hygiene standards, resulting in posteriors getting jiggled a lot and over-utilised.

To gloss over a trip that deserves no description, I spent a half-day in off-season Malacca seeing colonial sights and the other half-day in shock that I had finished with the tourist attractions (with the happy exception of the crocodile farm and local zoo). Needless to say, I found it boring and went instead to Pulau Tioman, where I ended up trapped in an equally boring beach resort where a bunch of Swedish people had decided to host the a Family on Vacation With the Most Kids competition.

In an embarrassing show of how pampered Singaporeans can be, I also refused to come out of my air-conditioned room to enjoy the splendours of Tioman's beach because it was too hot. The lobster-red caucasians did little to reassure me that I would be fine in the sun, though I was certain they had a cache of morphine somewhere to dull the pain of their scorched bodies. I am a little tanner from my ten-minute swims in the morning - the other Singaporean trait of making the most of your money was too much to resist.

I did no shopping, sampled none of the local delicacies (Malacca was so empty I had to eat KFC - the beach resort offered fried rice or hunger) and ended up sleeping a lot. I also finished To Kill a Mockingbird and half of Tender is the Night, a testament to my boredom (I found Fitzgerald's prose about as interesting as a dip in the sea at noon - not at all). As a Singaporean, I must say that this holiday was a disappointment.

As a person who really just wanted some time off work and to get some sleep, it wasn't so bad.

And now I have to go and get Malaysia out of my system again.

Chapter One

Once upon a time there lived a little girl, who lived with her grandmother on the top of a tall hill. They lived in a tiny cottage, which was approximately cube-shaped, though no one had really had the liberty of measuring the sides of said cottage. It had a roof made of tin, that the rain would pour onto during the monsoon period, and the little girl would lie awake at night listening to the pattering sounds it made as it drowned the world about her.

The little girl and her grandmother subsisted by selling confectioneries, which they would prepare early in the morning. They couldn't make much, the grandmother being old in her years and a terrible sight to behold when forced to be mobile, but they made what they could. Tiny sweet-cakes, coconutty treats and layered flour pastries they would knead and bake as the sun rose steadily from behind the hill on which they lived, until it was loftily above them. The little girl would then bundle up what they had produced in a little cloth, slinging it around her neck, and go out their little cottage and down their tall hill, so as to sell her pastries at the tiny town below.