You know how people always say they need a holiday to recover from their holiday?
Those are the kiasu people who try to cram every single activity possible into their short holiday, at the expense of sleep, just to get their money’s worth.
And end up feeling so shagged out by the time they get home that they just want to go to sleep for the next 48 hours without waking up.
But they can’t because they have to go to work the next day, which is like five hours away.
So, my friends and I kind of fell under this category of people when we went to Kuala Lumpur over the Christmas weekend.
The nine of us started the drive up at three in the morning and arrived at eight. Over the following three days, we ate four meals a day and packed the hours between with shopping, clubbing and driving (lots of driving around to get to places with to-die-for food).
For three days, we did nothing except rush from point A to point B to buy everything we wanted to buy and eat everything we wanted to eat.
We were so pressed for time that we even missed the Christmas countdown. At 12 midnight, we were all still in our respective hotel rooms scrambling about to wrap our Christmas presents for each other for our Secret Santa game.
People are so funny, you know, the way we stress ourselves over nothing.
In retrospect, though, our stress was well worth it because, in between, there were many pockets of fun.
We laughed, we cried, we suffered the usual holiday ailments of sore throat, gastritis, diarrhea and impatience, we chewed each other up over punctuality (men, tsk), we laughed some more, and we bonded.
One of the most powerful simple pleasures in life is laughing at inane things with people you love. And I mean the kind of laugher that makes you cry because your stomach hurts from laughing too much.
Despite all the crazy rushing and lack of sleep, this is one of the best Christmas celebrations I’ve ever experienced.
Except that it’s not the Christmas. It’s the people.
To my delinquent friends of Studygroup, thank you for everything.
