Life off the road…
I never thought (though I had hoped, and rather often) that I would one day have a job that paid well, let me stay in swanky hotels absolutely gratis, hob nob with celebs, and attend all the best, flashiest, and coolest events.
Don’t call me ungrateful, but now that I have said job, it’s not quite as astonishingly glamorous as one might have hoped, and is, instead, work. Fun, glamorous work, but still work. Which is why I was stationed (hur hur) not at the station all of last week, but at the JW Marriott in KL all week, living out of a suitcase (well, the contents of my boot, which was about 4 plastic bags, 2 huge shoulder bags and many hangars worth of clothes) and generally feeling like I was on a holiday where the office would not stop calling – because they were frickin’ DOWNSTAIRS!
Still, in all fairness, I had a ball of a time, but it’s a funnny thing, living away from home in your own home city. True, I’ve got an apartment in the city anyway, and true, it’s just a combination of my own awful personal time management and my indecisive reluctance to lock in any major decorative ideas that I’m not already living there, but since I am currently still living out in USJ (forty five minutes to the city centre without traffic… hellishly, indefineably long with traffic) I only really go into the city on weekends, and don’t experience daily life in and around the bustling heart of KL. And let me tell you, it’s an alien experience.
Perhaps it’s the tourists, and the focus everything in the city has on these people, the only ones free to hang around blissfully unbusy at 3.30pm on a Tuesdaya and eat ice-cream, or shop til 2am, but when you stay in the city, despite the work, and the meetings, and the deadlines, there is still this strange feeling of being on holiday, which is hard to quell but deadly if accepted whole heartedly, since I was working, and working hard. Think 6am starts, 1am bedtimes…. and hangovers (ok, ok, so there was SOME fun…). But it was an interesting experience, wandering about during my free time, being a tourist in my own city… and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
So, my advice to anyone thinking of a holiday but not sure where to go or without the time or budget to afford, oh, I don’t know, a trip to Paris for 8 days, is to pop into the city and book yourself into a swanky hotel, and basically spend the weekend like a tourist (kinda similar to spending it “like a virgin”, only not so wholesome). Trust me, you’ll have fun, you may see your city in a new light, and you’ll no doubt get some shopping done you would never have normally bothered with. And it’s great not thinking about having to drive home after dinner in a hotel… just stagger upstairs. In fact, the whole week went by with me not even touching my car… I actually walked. In the sun (shock horror). For more than 3 minutes (gasp).
So go out and try it, but leave your phone off… especially if you’re on call for a shoot!
