Together…

over the oceans.

On this day last year, I stepped foot on the beautiful islands of Maldives for the first time ever.

As always, trips to faraway places bring sweet memories.

If anyone tells you that the Maldives is amazingly beautiful and breathtaking, its people warm and friendly, its air fresh, its sea blue, that it’s paradise on earth – well I can confirm that it’s true.

If you ask what visitors to Maldives do - you’ve got the concept wrong. In Maldives, one must perfect the art of doing nothing. Yea that’s right. We understood this clearly when we asked that very question a few days in to the guy who runs the resort on the island we were on.

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Part of doing nothing includes snorkeling.

Having decided to call it a day of snorkeling, I began climbing up onto the boat. It was at that moment I felt my left contact lens sort of peeling away from my eyeball.

I took off my goggles, and true enough, it had come off, probably because some sea water had come in contact with it and caused it to shrivel.

I looked up the boat, and my three Maldivian snorkeling bodyguards were peering at me with concern.

I couldn’t salvage the contact lens anymore - it was contaminated and couldn’t go back onto my eyeball. Never mind, I thought, I’ve got another pair, before dropping it into the sea.

I continued lumbering up to the deck of the boat, and it wasn’t easy with my flippers and all. At the same time, I could hear some commotion on the deck.

The moment I got on deck, I noticed there were only two people on deck. Where the heck was the other one??

And then I saw the dude. He had dived over the other side of the boat… to save my contact lens!!

*******

If you were young at my time, you would know the Thundercats (come out with the movie already!).

I loved it, although I actually had to go to Wikipedia a couple of years ago to finally understand the storyline.

Anyway, I have this one black t-shirt with the Thundercats logo emblazoned on it.


With a t-shirt like this, you don’t need to say hello. People, men and women regardless which part of the world they come from, can’t help but smile, especially when you’re on an island where you get end-to-end in 7½ minutes. You’re like a shrink cajoling people to go back in their mind to a happy place. And they do…

And when I wore this:
someone wearing this:
said, "Nice t-shirt." I said,"Yours too!"

*******

At the International Airport, while my roommate was checking out the souvenir shop, I was sitting guarding our bags. I couldn’t but overhear the conversation going on between an aunt and her nephew.

"Do you love you mum?"
(I assume he said no, because I wasn’t looking)

"Do you love your dad?"
(I assume he said yes - see conversation that follows)

"You love your dad and not your mum?"

"Do you know that your mum and I, we never saw much of our dad because he was working so hard…"

"You hate your mum because she didn’t get you what you wanted?!"

"I think your mum deserves an apology from you!"

All the while, I was listening, thinking to myself that this aunt was doing a great job putting into perspective the little boy’s misguided hate towards his mum. The boy was crying yes, and the aunt was bringing him on a long guilt trip, but sometimes, kids these days need that. They need reality to slap them real good, kick them real hard, and make them sweat.

And for goodness sake, your mum had brought you on a holiday to the Maldives!!

*******

Maldives though, is under threat of global warming – its beautiful islands could sink beneath the ocean within 100 years. They had a cabinet meeting undersea this one time in October 2009 to highlight the threat of global warming to their nation. I hear they have a youngish cabinet and hopefully they get to the depth of the issue soon.

You see, I would like to go back there one day, and really hope the coconut tree we planted by the beach would not be growing out from the seabed instead…