Exhaling on the ‘throne’

==================================
IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL.

The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarySchneider.SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find.Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.

==================================

Monday February 25, 2008


Exhaling on the ‘throne’

According to a report, the loo will be the place where many people will breathe their last.

BUT THEN AGAIN
By MARY SCHNEIDER

I’VE JUST read a disturbing report that says: “Most people will die in bed, but of the group that don’t, the majority will die sitting on the lavatory.” I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my last breath to be inhaled with my knickers about my ankles in a room no bigger than a broom cupboard. Like, how undignified is that?

“But why are so many people passing away in the loo?” you must be asking just about now. Well, according to the experts, it’s because some terminal events, such as an enormous heart attack or blood clot on the lung, result in the same bodily sensation that you usually experience when you want to go to the little room.

Reading things like that will scare the hell out of anyone getting on in life. Can you imagine living in terror every time you feel the need to go to the lavatory? No wonder so many old people are constipated.

Whenever I’ve thought about dying (and it’s not been that often), I’ve always imagined myself snuffing it in the middle of the night. I have pictured myself happily dreaming about my great grandchildren, not even feeling the slight tightness in my chest, and breathing in the lavender scented air for the last time as I float out of my octogenarian body to go to wherever it is I deserve to go to. No drama, no tears, no pain ?

But now I’m not sure. Now I think I have been overly optimistic and need to update my thoughts on dying.

Firstly, my children have recently announced that there won’t be any grandchildren, ever. Secondly, I don’t specially care for lavender, although it’s possible that an impaired sense of smell might see me getting used to all sorts of odours as I get older. Thirdly, knowing my luck, someone will find my body in an advanced stage of rigor mortis perched upon my en suite throne instead of ensconced in the softy, downy comfort of my superior-sprung orthopaedic bed.

Sometimes, we don’t need to know all the details. But whenever you do get fed more information than necessary, do as I do: share the bad news so you won’t be alone with your angst.

But there’s much more. The same report also says that a smaller number of people die on special occasions. It seems some of us will put off dying just so we can squeeze in another birthday, or Christmas, or the birth of yet another grandchild. Like, how selfish is that?

If I’m convinced that I’m going to die sometime soon, I wouldn’t want to delay things unnecessarily just so I can watch my family carving the Yuletide turkey one more time. If I were to do something like that, future Christmas-es would never be the same for those left behind. Forever etched on the collective seasonal memory would be a vision of me, face down, in the Brussels sprouts.

The same applies to dying on a loved one’s birthday. If you really want to spoil a party and steal the limelight, clutch your heart, heave your last breath and collapse backwards onto the birthday cake. It’s called leaving your mark.

Still, something good has come out of reading that report. It has forced me to think in detail about how I want my body to be disposed of after I’m gone, something that everyone should think about, old or otherwise.

I don’t want my death to be a mournful occasion. Instead, I want it to be a celebration of my life. Instead of a traditional wake, there should be a huge party: good food, wine, dancing, jokes ? I also don’t want to be buried. There will be no children reluctantly pulling weeds from my graveside on the anniversary of my death every year. I want them to think of me fondly, as opposed to viewing me as an annual chore.

I want to be cremated and have my ashes spread around a favourite spot in my native Scotland. I refuse to have my incinerated remains put in an urn and placed on a mantelpiece. Although he doesn’t want children, my son might get married, and his wife might not take too kindly to a vase full of dust taking centre stage in the living room. I mean to say, can you imagine what will happen if she had a tiff with my son? Before you know it, I’ll be flushed down the loo or sucked into the bowels of a vacuum cleaner.

Like, how undignified is that?

Coming from behind

==================================
IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL.

The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarySchneider.SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find.Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.

==================================

Monday February 18, 2008


Coming from behind

BUT THEN AGAIN
By MARY SCHNEIDER

A GOOD friend recently flew into Penang from Britain to have a holiday with a difference.

Instead of soaking up the rays by the sea and slurping cocktails poolside, she chose to soak up a dose of anesthetic and have a couple of kilos of fat slurped out of her body by a cosmetic surgeon.

Once the domain of the rich and famous, cosmetic surgery is now within the means of the average man/woman on the street.

Indeed, people from all walks of life are now electing to have parts of their body either reduced, augmented or refined. And, sometimes, all three at once.

When my friend first told me about her plan to achieve instant reduction via liposuction, I was a little concerned. I’d heard so many horror stories about the procedure: the pain, the lumpy, asymmetrical results, the fatalities ...

I don’t know about you, but there’s no way I would put my life on the line for a smaller butt.

My friend assured me that there was no risk of her conking out on the operating table due to a large blob of dislodged fat clogging up an artery.

According to her, liposuction horror stories are a thing of the past. In fact, liposuction is supposedly one of the most popular cosmetic procedures in Britain today.

Seems there is little that can’t be lipo-suctioned: the neck, the knees, the earlobes, the brain ...

However, when my friend told me she was going to have some of her extracted butt fat injected into her lips to make them look fuller, I balked.

As far as I’m concerned, there’s only one place for butt fat, and that’s in that fleshy area at the top of your thighs.

It was obvious to me that my friend had already had part of her brain lipo-suctioned while asleep.

“But what happens when you put on weight?” I asked. “Surely butt cells in your lips will behave as if they are still in your butt. And you’re always complaining that you only need to look at a chocolate cake for it to end up on your butt.”

“Nah! That’s not going to happen,” she said nonchalantly.

But I was on a roll and not listening to her.

“Can you imagine going on holiday,” I said, “participating in some over-indulgence, as people are inclined to do on holiday, and returning home with lips the size and shape of scatter cushions?”

“That’s not going to happen,” she repeated.

It was obvious that the woman was in complete denial.

Why, a man with butt fat transplants could sit down next to her, only to have his huge, over-plumped lips explode and splatter all over her, and she would still think nothing adverse was going happen as a result of the procedure.

“How can you be so sure that the size of your lips won’t fluctuate with your body weight?” I asked.

“I just won’t put on any more weight for the rest of my life,” she said, almost defiantly.

I’m sure her family way over in England heard me laughing at that one.

“But if you were so disciplined, you wouldn’t be contemplating this type of surgery in the first place?

“How can anyone fail to put on weight, even just a little, when they become old and sedentary?” I said.

When they wheeled my friend out of the operating room, her lips were humungous. I was horrified. It was like Daisy Duck had assumed human form. I could only stare and smile weakly at her.

“Don’t stare at me like that,” she said as soon as she was settled in her hospital room. “The swelling will go down over the next week or so, and my lips will look naturally gorgeous.”

The next morning, she was discharged from the hospital with her swollen body encased in restrictive compression garments, her extremely unnatural-looking lips drawing stares from all and sundry.

Every morning for the next week, I drove my friend to the doctor’s surgery so he could drain accumulated fluid from those parts of her body that had been lipo-suctioned.

Then, at the end of one week, she flew back to Britain.

I spoke to her two weeks after her surgery and asked her how her lips were.

“They look fabulous now,” she said enthusiastically.

“Has your husband kissed them yet?” I asked

“Oh, yes. He says they feel different.”

I don’t know about different, but it sure gives a whole new meaning to the expression “Kiss my butt!”

Feeling nauseous

==================================
IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL.

The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarySchneider.SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find.Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.

==================================

Monday February 11, 2008


Feeling nauseous

BUT THEN AGAIN: By MARY SCHNEIDER

Food poisoning can’t stop this woman from finishing this column. Really.

AS I WRITE this, I’m recovering from a bout of food poisoning. I feel as if my body has been squeezed through a wringer; my head aches, my stomach feels the way it does after you’ve done 100 sit-ups for the first time in years, and my tongue feels like sandpaper.

I haven’t eaten in two days. Anything with a smell, edible or otherwise, has my stomach doing flip-flops. Indeed, my heightened sense of smell has me noticing things about my surroundings that have gone undetected until now.

For example, I didn’t realise until yesterday that the living room rug has a slight odour (which I can detect when I lie on it prone), that cleaning fluids smell obnoxiously toxic, and that car deodorants smell nothing like the natural products they claim to mimic. There’s only one thing that smells pleasantly of pine, and that’s a pine tree.

Someone suggested I eat crackers or plain toast until my stomach has settled. But toasted bread vaguely reminds me of the bottom of a parrot’s cage, and the piece of cracker I attempted to eat a few hours ago just lay on my tongue with the consistency and flavour of a piece of cardboard. I doubt there is anything that would tempt me to eat, ever again.

My pharmacist suggested I take charcoal tablets to speed up my recovery, but they only succeeded in giving me a black tongue. Not that I’m particularly bothered about the colour of my tongue – I’d gladly stain any part of my body an unnatural hue if it meant a quick recovery. Similarly, chewing a chalk-like remedy failed to bring the necessary relief.

I’ve told a few people about my condition, but so far I haven’t garnered much sympathy. If I were recovering from a heart transplant or suffering from a rare blood disease, I’m sure everyone would rally round, make sympathetic noises and possibly send me flowers. But food poisoning elicits nothing more than a cursory, “Oh, I hope you feel better soon. When can I expect your article?”

I did think about calling my editor to say there wouldn’t be a column this week, but I doubt the food poisoning claim would fly. Editors have heard every excuse under the sun, and it was only a few months ago when I called mine to say that I couldn’t write because of a bad reaction to my dentist’s local anesthetic. Before that, it was the bubonic plague. And even before that, my computer had crashed just as I was putting the finishing touches to a brilliant piece of prose.

I’ve only had food poisoning once before when I had the misfortune to come down with a bad case of Delhi Belly that came to a head on a flight from India’s capital to Kuala Lumpur. There’s nothing worse than having a window seat when you have to keep running to the bathroom. Fellow passengers who smiled politely at you as they took their seat when they first came on board take on an air of impatience after the fourth “excuse me”. They don’t care that you’re saving them from projectile vomiting.

Since I couldn’t depend on these passengers to save me should my condition have taken a turn for the worse, I asked an air hostess if she could check on me every half an hour or so, just to make sure I didn’t slip into a coma brought on by the severe depletion of electrolytes in my body.

She smiled politely and said she would, but beneath her polished Estee Lauder veneer, I detected a lack of sympathy. Had I been a business man in an Armani suit sitting in the business class section, her reaction might have been slightly different. As it was, I was a pasty-faced, middle-aged woman with damp hair and wrinkled clothes sitting in economy class.

She never did come back to check on me, but I was too ill to worry about it.

This time around, I have two teenagers and a maid to take care of me. I believe my maid is in the kitchen cooking something gruel-like for me. She is a determined soul who takes remarks like “I don’t want to eat anything,” as a personal challenge. As for my children, they have been acting as my personal sounding board, just to make sure that this week’s column doesn’t sound as if it were written by someone on mind-altering drugs.

Thinking about it, though, mind-altering drugs might just be what I need right now.

It’s a dog’s life

==================================
IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL.

The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarySchneider.SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find.Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.

==================================

Monday February 4, 2008


It’s a dog’s life

But Then Again
By MARY SCHNEIDER

I AM a dog. Well, at least according to the Chinese zodiac I am. And according to an article I recently stumbled across on the Internet, people born in the Year of the Dog “possess the best traits of human nature.”

I’m inclined to agree with this gross generalization. But then, I’m inclined to agree with anything that depicts me in a positive, glowing manner. Like all good dog people, I have a deep sense of loyalty. I am also honest and inspire other people’s confidence because I know how to keep secrets. Unlike rat, snake and monkey people, I suspect.

But ... and there’s always a but ... “dog people are somewhat selfish, terribly stubborn, and eccentric.”

If these are some of “the best traits of human nature”, I hate to imagine what traits non-dog people possess.

But there’s more. “They (dog people) care little for wealth, yet somehow always seem to have money. They can be cold emotionally and sometimes distant at parties. They can find fault with many things and are noted for their sharp tongues.”

I don’t know about you, but I feel there’s something wrong with that last paragraph. It’s as if the author is saying that dog people come by their money in a suspicious way. And if I’m cold emotionally, what would I be doing at a party? Cold people don’t go to parties. They like to stay at home and play games like “Revenge of the Killer Dog” on their computers.

Although I normally don’t find fault with anything or anyone (don’t forget I’m honest), I don’t have anything good to say about the writer of that article. As for having a sharp tongue, I only reserve that for really irritating people, like most Malaysian drivers, pushy shop assistants, people who look at me in an odd way, women who wear strong perfume, and people who walk slowly in front of me in crowded shopping malls. Oh yes, and the designers of shopping malls. Other than that, I’m probably the sweetest, most amiable person you’re ever likely to meet.

The zodiac article does redeem itself when it concludes by saying that dog people make good leaders. But then again, perhaps an emotionally cold leader isn’t such a good thing. As far as I know, Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini were all cold leaders. And they didn’t get up to much good.

It also seems that I am compatible with people in the Years of the Horse, Tiger, and Rabbit. Of the few friends I do have (due to my emotional coldness) none were born under these zodiac signs. Indeed, if the zodiac article is correct, I have aligned myself with a bunch of eccentric, bad-tempered loners. Not exactly the sort of people you want to have around you at a party.

I’m not even all that compatible with my children. My son is a snake person and my daughter is a pig person. Interestingly enough, people born in the same year as my son “never have to worry about money; they are financially fortunate.” He’s obviously benefiting from all the money I seem to have. Or maybe it’s because he’s memorised my credit card numbers.

My daughter, on the other hand, in true pig-like fashion, is kind to her loved ones and very loyal. When I’m old, I’d much rather have a kind, loyal pig taking care of me than a snake. Besides, the zodiac article asserts that snake people are usually good-looking and sometimes have marital problems because they are fickle. Maybe good-looking people can afford to be fickle with their partners because they know that it’s relatively easy to attract another mate if their marriage fails. I certainly don’t want to be stuck in the same house as a disgruntled daughter-in-law during my twilight years.

Dogs are also not all that compatible with people born in the Year of the Rat. Typically, rat people are charming and highly attractive to the opposite sex. But they are stingy. They are also quick-tempered and love to gossip. But all is not lost for people contemplating having a baby during this coming Year of the Rat, because rat people are said to “work hard to achieve their goals, acquire possessions, and are likely to be perfectionists. Their ambitions are big, and they are usually very successful.”

In short, children born this coming year will likely grow up to have fabulous careers and every luxury money can buy, but they won’t share it with anyone.

I think I’ll stick with the pigs.

Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Double standards

==================================
IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL.

The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarySchneider.SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find.Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.

==================================

Monday January 28, 2008


Double standards

BUT THEN AGAIN
By MARY SCHNEIDER

I’M familiar with the sort of remarks some people make when they see a pretty young woman with a much older man, especially if the man has a beer gut that eclipses his feet and a comb-over that, viewed from atop, looks like a dead tarantula straddling an ostrich egg.

“She must be after his money,” they will say. “Otherwise, why would she be with someone like that?”

Still, the way I see things, if a young woman wants to trade her youth and vitality for an older man’s wallet, they both get exactly what they want.

When the late Anna Nicole Smith married her second husband, oil baron J. Howard Marshall II, when she was 26 and he 89, many people felt repulsed by the union. After all, here was a voluptuous young woman in the prime of her life hitching her wagon to an octogenarian in a wheelchair.

Marshall’s family were especially upset (there was the matter of his only son’s inheritance at stake) and claimed Anna was manipulating the old man to get her hands on his fortune. After his death, they even tried to have him declared incompetent during his 14-month marriage to the former Playboy playmate, just to ensure that any promises made to her by him wouldn’t be legally binding.

Did anyone every stop to think that Marshall was also manipulating Anna to get his hands on her nubile body, something that would have been impossible for him to do without his money? As far as I’m concerned, their marriage was a trade-off between two consenting adults; something they both benefited from.

Still, there are some spring/autumn partnerships that don’t involve a much older man financially compensating a younger woman for having to put up with wrinkly flesh and flaccid muscles.

When my mother married her second husband, she was 39 and he was almost 60. He wasn’t a wealthy man, so money wasn’t the attraction.

Looking back, though, I can see how my stepfather must have appealed to her. He was an infinitely patient man with a great sense of humour and a sharpness of mind that had been honed by his life’s experiences. He brought a sense of stability into her life, kept her grounded and adored her in a way that only a mature, confident person could. In return, she infused their relationship with a vivacity that kept him young. Of course, it also helped that he didn’t have a paunch or a comb-over.

Nonetheless, when my mother first married my stepfather, the gossipmongers in our village were kept busy. Terms like “cradle snatcher” and “old enough to be her father” were commonly used when the newlyweds were being discussed over afternoon tea.

Ten years later (two years after burying her second husband), my mother married her third and present husband, a man 18 years her junior. Despite the age difference, they have been together for more than 20 years now.

Of course, this relationship provided even more fodder for the village gossipmongers. It would appear that marriage to a much younger man is still not as socially acceptable as marriage to a much older man – even several decades on.

Women like Demi Moore, Joan Collins and Susan Sarandon, who all have much younger partners, do not even raise an eyebrow in Hollywood, where, quite frankly, almost anything goes, but in rural Scotland (or rural anywhere, for that matter) such relationships are still frowned upon.

I recently had a date with a man 13 years my junior. He was charming, attentive, laughed at all my jokes, and didn’t once give me the impression he was ogling any of the other women in the restaurant where we were having dinner. In short, he was the perfect dinner companion.

And no, I don’t have a penchant for younger men. And no, I don’t look especially hot for my age. And no, I don’t have a lot of money in the bank.

Nonetheless, when I was first asked out by this man, I politely turned him down. After all, I didn’t want to spend the evening worrying about my jiggly underarms, or the wrinkles around my eyes, or the cellulite creeping down the back of my thighs. At the end of the evening, though, I didn’t even notice the age difference.

Since then, I’ve been thinking about the advantages of having a younger partner. If things work out, he would be strong enough to nurse me through a coronary by-pass or a hip replacement operation. And I’ll never wake up in the morning and have him look at me in that odd way that heralds the arrival of Alzheimer’s and hear him say, “And who are you?”

To hell with the gossipmongers!

Bring back the shine

==================================
IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL.

The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarySchneider.SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find.Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.

==================================

Monday January 21, 2008


Bring back the shine

But Then Again: By MARY SCHNEIDER.

I HAVE many fond memories of Penang’s Gurney Drive. I can still remember the first time I visited that famous seafront road more than 25 years ago. As I stood by the wall that overlooks the sea, enjoying the breeze gently blowing inland, I detected a movement out of corner of my eye. A small black cat was running in my direction. I turned to get a better look, and that’s when the cat began to veer away. Only it wasn’t a cat; it was a rat.

I’m not fond of rats, or mice, or any other rodent-like creature capable of gnawing briskly through my jugular vein in the middle of the night. Even the hamsters my children had many years ago (31 of them at one stage) scared the bejeezus out of me whenever they were out of their cages.

I still have vivid memories of a childhood movie that featured giant killer rats that terrorised a sleepy neighbourhood, gnawing the residents as they slept in their beds at night. This horror flick had such an impact on me that even the mention of the word “rat” can set the hair on the back of my neck on end.

But I digress.

My first sighting of a Penang rat on Gurney Drive elicited an immediate reaction. I let out a scream so devastatingly loud that everyone within earshot (about two kilometres) turned to look in my direction.

When my companion, let’s call him The Ratman, discovered that a rodent was the cause of my distress, he began to laugh. It started as a soft, almost throaty laugh and slowly morphed into a body-shaking spasm.

At that moment, a bolt of lightening shot out of the heavens and penetrated The Ratman’s skull, reducing him to a small pile of smoking ash.

That’s not what really happened, although I did see it unfolding clearly in my mind’s eye. But that’s not a fond memory.

My next memory was created the following year when I was walking along Gurney Drive with my sister, who was visiting from Britain. As I was pointing out the various restaurants that lined one side of the road, I tripped over a broken paving stone and landed on my face.

My sister was more sympathetic than The Ratman, so I had no cause to vaporise her. Still, a small group of people stopped to stare at the Caucasian woman with her knickers on display. Some of them thought I had been drinking. I know so because I heard the loud whispers.

But that’s not a fond memory either.

Fast forward a quarter of a century, and what do we see on the Gurney Drive of today?

Well, some things have changed. For example, a lot of money has been spent beautifying the pavements. I know so because I had a little tussle with one of them the other night.

On the night in question, I’d just parked my car at the roadside near one of Gurney Drive’s upmarket condominiums, when I heard my passenger muttering. It seems that the pavement on her side of the car was so high that she couldn’t open her door. Not wishing to spend the evening stuck in a Proton, she was forced to crawl in a rather ungainly manner over the handbrake and out the driver’s side of the car.

I’m not sure why the state government makes some of Penang’s pavements so high, because the elderly and the disabled must have a hard time manoeuvring them.

No sooner had I locked my car door than a man appeared at my side demanding money. He told me that I could leave my car at the side of Mount Pavement all night for a fixed amount. How naïve of me to think that the cars parked on Gurney Drive incurred an hourly rate.

A few metres down the road, I encountered the most horrific stench emanating from the grids covering a roadside drain. The possibility of tripping on a loose paving stone had been eliminated, but the smell coming from that drain was enough to knock out a small elephant. And to think that all of this was located in front of one of Penang’s most expensive addresses.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not part with several million ringgit to live in that sort of neighbourhood, view or no view. Oh yes, and the rats are still there.

Contrary to what I’ve just written, I do love Penang, but I think it’s time the authorities got serious about bringing back the shine to The Pearl of the Orient. Besides, I would like a fond memory for a change.

Been there, done that

==================================
IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL.

The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarySchneider.SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find.Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.

==================================

Monday January 14, 2008


Been there, done that

But Then Again
By MARY SCHNEIDER

The not-so-fun part about being an expatriate is having to play tour guide to visiting family and friends.

I would make a useless full-time tourist guide. When it comes to visiting sights I’ve seen before, I have all the patience of an alcoholic let loose in a winery.

Once I’ve seen a tourist attraction, savoured its uniqueness and absorbed its history, I’m done. In this respect, I’m sure I’m not alone. I think most people would find it boring to, say, visit the Taj Mahal four times, or “ooh” and “ah” over the Crown Jewels in the Tower of London once a year (I didn’t even ooh and ah over them the one and only time I saw them) or trudge up the numerous steps to the Batu Caves every couple of months – I have yet to even do it.

Still, living as I do in Penang, far away from my native Scotland, I’m often called upon to act as tourist guide when family and friends come to visit. With each successive visit though, I find it becomes harder and harder to feign enthusiasm for Penang’s famous landmarks.

In the past, despite my reluctance to once again make the energy-sapping trip to the topmost part of the Kek Lok Si Temple, or recount the tales behind the ornately-carved Khoo Kongsi Temple, or visit the Snake Temple for the umpteenth time, I’ve usually managed to muster a display of outward eagerness that belies the numbing torpor that grips my brain.

After, say, the hundredth sighting of the same creatures at Penang’s Butterfly farm, it takes a certain theatrical skill to be able to exclaim excitedly: “Oh look! It’s a Raja Brooke butterfly! Isn’t that beautiful?” Similarly, although I don’t care if I never see a reclining Buddha again, or a “cute” macaque monkey intimidating tourists into surrendering their food in Penang’s Botanic Gardens, I’ve mastered the art of faking fervour for them, just for the sake of my guests.

Over the years, I’ve developed an itinerary that presents my visitors with a well-rounded insight into Penang and its people. The first stop on the Schneider Penang Tour is usually Fort Corwallis, where Penang’s founder, Sir Francis Light, is reputed to have fired gold coins into the jungle that once covered the spot where the structure now stands, thereby inducing his men to hack through the thick, mosquito-infested undergrowth in the hope of finding a doubloon or two. And voilà! The land was instantly cleared, providing a vacant plot for the construction of the Fort’s original wooden stockade. Or at least, that’s the story I’ve been told.

I don’t know how many times I’ve told this somewhat fantastic tale over the past 25 years, but it trips off my tongue as easily as the folklore of my own country.

It’s quite pleasant sitting in the air-conditioned comfort of my car as I recount such stories, but the moment I have to step outdoors and clamber around the grounds of the Fort with my guests, I feel myself shrivel inwardly under the hot sun.

“Will you just look at that!” I say, feigning excitement as I point out the Fort’s Sri Rambai Cannon for the gazillionth time. Then I will dish out a brief history of the big gun, which usually ends with a description off Sri Rambai’s purported fertility powers.

I’m not sure what it is (possibly the drastic change in temperature), but Scottish people who have never been known to have a superstitious bone in their body will either eagerly reach out to stroke the cannon, or keep their distance from it, depending on their desire to go forth and multiply.

Fortunately, there is only one fort in Penang and only one fertility cannon. There are, however, numerous temples. Temples that I’ve seen so many times that my eyes glaze over just at the mention of their names.

The next time I have visitors (next month), I think I will give them options instead of the usual grand tour. After giving them the lowdown on all the major temples in Penang, complete with photographs taken with previous visitors, I will ask them to choose the three temples that appeal to them the most. After persuading them that visiting too many temples in a short period of time will turn a perfectly good brain to mush and leave them confused when they return home, I’m sure they will see things from my point of view. Then, there are the perils associated with spending too much time outdoors in this tropical climate.

Perhaps I’ll introduce the Shopping Tour, or the Movie Tour, or the Restaurant Tour.