Merry Christmas, Everyone! (Post-Note: And A Happy New Year!)

Ho ho ho to everyone! I just spent my Christmas Day lounging around at home with the brand-new owner of this toothbrush -

- yes, you've guessed it, it's The Boyfriend's. This new-found status was a result of part slow-won trust from my parents, part conniving weaseling from us (read: we never asked for permission. Yet.). With a fat portion of it coming from the latter reason.

... Anyway, cutting the irrelevant show of smug Couple-dom short, I shall deliver what I promised in my last blog entry: The answer to where I'd disappeared to for many, many days on end!

Alright, it was only 4 days in truth, but a little stretching of the truth always makes the story more interesting. My parents' wedding anniversary was last week, but it just happened that me dad needed to head down to Terengganu for work. So he thought he might as well bring my mum along and celebrate their anniversary there! The fact that my sis and I got to tag along was just a fortuitous (for us) detail taken into consideration by our dad - we were there to provide companionship for mummy dearest while he was away at work.

We stayed at two hotels in total - because the trip was hastily arranged, we couldn't get the resort of our choice. So my dad's colleague managed to book us this new place which, apparently, was "quite okay".

But it turned out to be more a chalet than a resort. And think lease-expiring Costa Sands East Coast in recent years, rather than, say, Downtown East. With staff who can't speak English very well. Or operate credit card machines. The lady at the reception counter returned dad's gold credit card (ie no credit limit, right) apologetically after she swiped the card with the magnetic strip facing up. After a long drive of about 7 hours up, that was a show of ill-training we could do without. We waited more than 10 minutes for someone with the necessary training to arrive and clear things up.

To make things worse, at the humble coffee house where we had our dinner later, the waiter spilled a glass of cold water on me, who was already suffering from a cold. Well, that was the worst of it, really. But there were a few other things I noticed about the place:

Crumpled welcome notes

A burn-hole in my sheets,

And, the most jarring one of all,

A smoke-detector/water-sprinkler (or something along those lines) built within the cornice and then painted over. Tsk tsk tsk.

So the next day my dad called up the hotel of our choice to check if they had any rooms available, and, to our utter joy, there were!!!

We packed in 10 minutes flat (our collective personal best) and waited for him to drive over from his workplace and pick us up.

Now I'm sure you guys heard of the floods in Terengganu right? Well, although we were in no danger of being evacuated, it did rain on our arrival at the swankier second hotel, the entire day. So there was nothing much to do but R&R. But the hotel room was designed with windows that opened from the toilet into the room, and you can actually watch tv while soaking in the tub, which was exactly what I did for about an hour that day! Such bliss. Sorry, no pictures allowed of that!

The next day the weather was on our side, and after breakfast, we went for a swim and a soak in the glorious sun.

See the sun on our faces??

*Sound of DJ scratching vinyl to an abrupt stop.*

I wrote the above on Christmas Day, but didn't get to finish it cos I've been a busy girl (what else?) and now, I really can't be bothered to finish it anymore! I was gonna share my story of driving on the treacherous roads of Malaysia, where drivers are fierce and roads are pot-holed, but alas, no inspiration lei. Let's just say I caused my parents two near heart-attacks when I swerved to avoid a dangerously close Benz, and another time when I took my dad's words to "dive in" at a parking lot literally. Maybe I'll upload a few more pictures some time soon, but for now I'm a tad can't-be-bothered.