Much ado about Jeans....

I met up with my ex-students, Carrie and Esther, from River Valley High School. It is always such a joy for a teacher to see her ex-students basking in the brilliance of success. We arranged to meet at Great World City at Ya Kun Kaya as Esther works as a Human Resource Manager in a company that is the main distributor of Levi Jeans in Asia Pacific.

Esther looked really chic in her lovely jeans, and we found out that the jeans cost a few hundred dollars! "Huh, jeans are so costly meh?" I queried with an air of Singlish flippancy. Somehow, speaking in Singlish made the conversation seem more relaxed and made us feel closer.

"Ya, some jeans even cost over a thousand dollars leh", replied Esther.

"You don't know meh?" asked Carrie with mocked surprise.

"You know lah, I never wear jeans, except for one occasion 30 years ago when I was studying at the University of Alberta. I bought a pair of jeans in a garage sale for 25 Canadian cents. Later, I shortened the jeans and made them into shorts as they were too warm for the summer season. That was the first and last time I ever had anything to do with jeans. I remember I bought it because my flatmate commented that her classmates found me a freak as I hardly wore pants, even during the cold winter. With so much blessings of "double insulation" who needs to wear pants anyway? I guess the Creator must have blessed me with extra "blubber" like the seals and penguins, so that I hardly felt cold even when the temperature was hovering around 5 to 10 degrees celcius. As I lived in the students' hostel at the campus, I did not even have to get out of the building as many of the buildings were linked together. Hence, I would often run to my classes after drowning my cup of hot coffee, and I would enter the lecture rooms, flustered and perspiring, much to the amusement of my classmates! I remember my best friend, Carol, once commented, "Choo, looking at you, one would think it is summer!"

When I went travelling during the winter season, I would often end up lending my jacket to the other members in the tour group, who felt cold despite having two to three layers of clothes on.

Hence for those of us who are overweight, let us look at the bright side of the weight. We do no feel cold so easily, and hence do not have to worry about heavy and cumbersome clothings!

Gan Chau