This week I had been mentioned, featured and now 'interrogated' yesterday!

First I received a call from a very excited guy who saw the kayaking article in “Happenings” magazine and would like to book one of our kayaking trips and I suggested the Rainforest trip as it is our most popular trip. He said that he’ll call me back and he did to confirm the trip for 2 persons after asking me a number lot of questions. He knows how to kayak but not his younger sister who is also a non-swimmer. Not a problem as we can give him a single and the sister can be on the double with either me or our Sarawak kayaking champion, Azmi or State triathlete, Bev who's a qualified swimming coach. He said he’ll call back to reconfirm the trip for saturday as we're fully booked on sunday.

Then he called me back and said that his mum wanted to talk to me! Turned out that he’s 19 and the mum wanted to ask me a 'few' (it was a whole lot!) questions about the trip which I answered and after being duly reassured that this is not whitewater kayaking or rafting; I suggested that perhaps she and her husband or friend can join in as we have taken people from 6 to 66 on the trips without any problems. I could understand that as a mother, she's naturally concerned that the trip must be safe and not dangerous for her children. She said very polite and nice and said that she’ll call back to reconfirm as they want to discuss this amongst themselves first. She did and this time it was her husband on the line!

And a rather gruff call it was too with him 'demanding' to know 'who I was' to run the kayaking outfit! No kidding! He also wanted to know if I know how to handle kids ("Are you in the teaching line?") and I told him that I have 3 of my own (and also 5 dogs!) After answering all the same questions that the wife asked including a few original stupid ones bordering on being rude and derogatory ("You know how to kayak right?"), he was still undecided on whether to let his 2 children go kayaking with us and then started to bargain with me on the price! I was more amused than annoyed by all this. Curious as to where this kiasu and kiasi (and kialang) person is from, I asked and he tersely replied that they’re from KL. I then mentioned to him that just yesterday we took out a family of 4 from kiasu-land Singapore (lawyer husband, wife and 2 wide-eye lovely daughters) who stayed at the same 5 star hotel (and they were NOT kiasu nor kiasi); and they thoroughly enjoyed the trip. I still have their room number and he can get check with them if he like to. I then remembered that the general manager of the hotel and his wife and friends had also taken our trip previusly and he could check with him as well. Perhaps this concerned father is just being lousy with words and does not know how to conduct/handle himself well. He's probably a nice guy - must be right? Since he's taking his family on holidays and putting them up in the nicest hotel in town.

He said that he’ll call me back, but he never did last night. I must admit that I’m glad he didn’t! *sigh*