Time Share Holidays

A few days ago, I received a phone call from a guy named Johnny who wanted to share with me about vacations - actually a time share under disguise as a "holiday plan". My phone (flat batt) died on me and I didn't bother with it again.

Then yesterday, Johnny called me again and said he wanted to intro holidays to me. I recognised his voice so I told him that he had called me previously. Anyway, as a reward for listening to the holiday idea Johnny said that I would be given $100 worth of dining vouchers at Marriott - yeah I am a glutton for anything that says FOOD, so I said OK and persuaded HH that he had to go as well today.

We arrived at Ngee Ann City and made our way to the Marriot Vacation talk. Whilst we were waiting, HH and I strategised about our answers and how we were going to react to the sales pitch and how we were going to wrangle our way out of buying a holiday.

Some guy met us and took us to a desk to chat about holidays. After some pleasantries, he asked about our holiday plans and where we go on holiday and how we planned our holidays. So I told him that HH and I travelled so much for our work that our idea of a holiday would be to just stay at home and do nothing.

Then continuing on that thread - I told this guy that there were occasions where we got up in the morning and wondered which city we were in. After a while, all hotel rooms look the same and sometimes, we forget our hotel room numbers or get them mixed up. :D ))

I also fed him the story of my friend Vivien who works for a telco company and how she went to Hong Kong for a meeting for 5 days - left Singapore early on Monday morning and returned on Friday evening, had a hot dirty weekend with her husband and disappeared to Kuala Lumpur for another 2 days for another round of meetings. Then her husband went off for work for 2 weeks and they hadn't really spent much time together that month!! BTW this is a true story that Vivien told me. Horror for trying to maintain a marriage or any relationship, as far as I know.

I think this guy knew that he could not sell us anything because we filled in the form or questionnaire and our answers were hilarious.

One question was: how many days do you spend on holidays - and the Marriott idea of holiday is NOT BUSINESS TRAVEL or staying with relatives, and my answer was ZERO.

Another question was: what is your idea of your an ideal holiday. My answer: besides the "stay home, do nothing" answer, I wrote "sleep, no phone/internet/email, beach, book, someone to do cleaning".

A question on where was the last holiday we took elicited the answer: Sentosa Island for 4 hours, Malacca, Penang and Kuala Lumpur.

Can you imagine the guy mentally shaking his head in horror at my answers??

Anyway, we got the information on how these time share holidays worked, the cost and our commitment.

Our next ideal holiday? STAY HOME AND DO NOTHING, GET SOMEONE TO DO THE HOUSEWORK AND LAUNDRY!!

That's good enough - no need to impress people with exotic locations - we only need to impress ourselves!

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