A Career Change

At some point during my 3 days stay at Redang over the weekend, I did seriously consider a career change! I want to be a beach boy (or bum)!!!!!

Why? I think they have such fun! Well, initially that was my thought anyway. From my observation while at the Redang Beach Resort, a beach boy does the following:

7-8am: get up, yawn, stretch. Get dressed (if he was undressed the night before) and head on to the outdoor restaurant area. Pick up broom, yawn some more, stretch some more and start raking the sand...pick up pieces of what ever there is to be picked up; you know, cigarrette butts, empty beer cans, sweet wrappers etc etc. By which time he would have gone through half a pack of cigarrettes.

8-9am: get a nice hefty breakfast. Food there was good! Smoke a few more sticks. Yawn a little.

9.30 am!: Its snorkeling time! Time to get everyone ready. Announcements are made over the loud speakers accompanied by hulla-in-the-bayou music that would have made Mr Rourke proud (remember Fantasy Island?). All the beach boys would be half naked by now, showing off fabulous tanned bodies with firm abs.

10-12.30 pm: Get all these city folks into the boat and take them snorkeling! Find a helpless chick or two and hold their hands throughout the entire time in the water! Yummy!

12.30-2 pm: Back at the resort. Everyone eats. It's lunch break. Time to rest. A few more sticks to puff off.

2.00-2.30 pm: What? PU or BO break???

2.30 pm-4.30 pm: Snorkeling time again. Read above.

4.30 - 5.00 pm: Tea time. More smokes. Talk and laugh and joke. Pose for a pic or two with requesting babes.

5.00 - 7pm: Volleyball time! (or kayaking, or whatever). The key word is entertain, entertain, entertain! Act macho, play volleyball like there is no tomorrow and look picture perfect, ala Top Gun (remember the volleyball scene?). More smokes in between.

7-8pm: Get ready to party. Set up the sound system at the beach front. Adjust the lights. Clear the place.

8pm to whatever time: PARTY PARTY PARTY!!!!! Wooooooooooooohhhhhhhhooooooooooooo!!Dance the macarena, lambada, ketchup song, oyster sauce song, whatever. Dance and dance and be happy. Get everyone to dance. Smile lots. Make loud happy noises! Drink even. Burp!

Anytime between 2 am to I don't know: Stumble off to sleep.

Isn' t that nice? Compared to my dowdy job of endless ward rounds, endless stream of patients in the clinic, endless clinical meetings, endless reviews and re-reviews; their job looks a lot like fun. Sigh!

Actually one of my ambition is to be a beach bum! When I was in standard one, my teacher asked me what I wanted to be. You should see the grave look of concern when I said I wanted to be a 1. A noodle seller; 2. A street sweeper; and 3. A cowboy. Those days these are the people I see everyday around where I stay (no, I don't see cowboys but I thought the Lone Ranger was pretty cool).

The next day my visibly distressed mum was summoned to see the equally distressed teacher. The verdict? "Your son lacks ambition", the teacher proclaimed.

And so my now even more distressed mum took me home and by the next time the teacher asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I was suitably coached to say almost ad verbatim: 1. A teacher; 2. A doctor; and 3. A scientist! (IT was unheard of back then and engineers were considered non-profitable; lawyers were crooks).

Call it fate or whatever, I have achieved all my ambitions, the second set I mean. By 1990 I was a scientist, by 1997 I was a doctor and by 2000, I became a lecturer. Now what?

My secret ambition is to be a beach bum. Stay in a van (or caravan), own a couple of water scooters which I will hire out for RM50 per 20 minutes, sit on my straw mat on the beach, sipping pina calada, taking in the sun while my children run around half naked on the beach while my exotic wife makes dinner... sea food naturally. :-)


Unfortunately there were no vacancies available at the resort. I wouldn't qualify anyway because of the following reasons:

1. I don't chain smoke. I don't even smoke. If I have my way, I would have banned smoking the world over.
2. I don't have an awesome body with washboard abs.
3. I don't have pierced ears. Yes, all of them have pierced ears.
4. I don't have pierced lower lip, or belly button or anywhere else on my anatomy.
5. I don't like to wear G strings on a chronic basis. An hour tops for foreplay or whatever but I doubt I can wear that uncomfortable piece of lingerie for long.
6. I don't drink (ok, a beer once in a blue moon is ok but daily? No way)
7. I can't hang out with chicks! My exotic wife will kill me!
8. I can't play volleyball to save my life.
9. I love to swim and snorkel but to do it 24/7 could be a tad nauseating.
10. I can't dance! Have 2 left foot. Blame my parents.
11. I don't want to end up having COAD or lung cancer.
12. And finally, for all its banality, I do LOVE my job.

I don't believe that the grass is greener on the other side. For all the fun image these wonderful guys portrayed, I am sure they have their fair share of hardship. I think their job is to create fun for city folks like me, for them fun is pretty routine. Fun is their job, and when it's a job, it's not all that fun anymore, is it? It's a vocation.

So, my plan? Be a beach boy on a PRN basis. I kinda like the idea, very much indeed.