Failed Holidays

As my fingers move in a less than graceful manner over the keyboard, typing out replies to the *gang over some future plans, I ** imagine having my fingers crossed that this year's plans will actually be successful and pan out as we hope. So yeah, if you're reading this... please cross your fingers on my behalf too... after all, April  2006 (when we had our last vacation together) seems like such a long time ago, boasting changed faces, different hairdos, lost baby fat and new wardrobe over the years and a plea for us to update our photo albums.

Anyway, this act of replying e-mails made  me take a peek at my sent folder and I had gone down history lane as far as 2007, before I realised that the bunch of us had so many incidences where we had taken fully baked plans and some 3/4 baked ones and poured cold water over them - unintentionally of course, due to leave issues, epidemics and other such crazy stuff life decided to throw at our faces. The plans over the years are as follows.

2007:
Boracay. The plan was too near Christmas and ticket prices were an issue. The e-mail exchange lasted for only about a week before we dropped the subject to focus on a friend's wedding around the same time as our plans.

2008:
Trip to Egypt. RTG was working there and had enticed us with plans that included a trip down the Nile river. Turns out, a few weeks into our discussion and planning, she finds out that she's being relocated out of Egypt in a e-mail titled: Transferred! - Don't Kill me (as if we would). So we wept imaginary tears for the Nile and the excitement we had to miss.

This was taken during a 'successful' road trip with the sister and cousins

2009:
Cambodia. If there was a master of all plans, this one had to be it. Unfortunately, we started planning in March for a holiday that was far away in November. E-mails stretched into pages with research. It was meant to be a week long break, after all... and being us, we were very thorough in our research. We wanted to explore Angkor Wat, and get a glimpse of a particular lake that was famous in our school geography exams among others. Our plans came crashing down the moment H1N1 came into the picture, robbing us of our vacation as a group. And then it turned out that November was also not a very convenient month for at least two of us.

2010: 

a) Climbing Mt Kinabalu. Actually, only RTG and I wanted to do this with ES cheering from afar.  AW had conquered Mt Kinabalu while still in her twenties. Unfortunately, falling sick a few times in the last few months had made my gym sessions inconsistent and I'm afraid I'm not strong enough to pull it off. Well, we had some booking problems as well, it seems.

b) Morocco: Probably in 2011.

c) Beijing: Was discussed and contemplated on, but you need a few extra days there. Visiting the Great Wall would have been excellent, but one of the gang doesn't have enough of vacation leave left to pull it off.

d) Plan under discussion: The one we're currently working on. Ok, this one better work out!

* we are a small faction of the older, larger gang - around 10 people, who mostly have either married or whose favourite topic of discussion would be how to raise your kids right. It is a sad state we're in at the moment though, because I'm here, in Malaysia, ES is in Singapore, RTG in Mexico, and AW (who is actually married - but whose other half is stuck in China) is currently globe-trotting before having to finally settle in Singapore as well. I've not seen these people for over a year, as the last time they were all here together was while I was away in Japan.

** I was typing, you see. So I couldn't really cross my fingers physically.