Thursday, January 6, 2011

Day 413: Temporary Tai Tai

A Tai-Tai is a Chinese term for the "supreme wife", which technically means your man is super wealthy and you are literally living like a queen. A tai-tai has no work to do since most of it would be done by maids and she won't be earning her own living since that part of life has been outsourced to the husband. Instead she would have tons of spare time and spare cash and can do whatever she wants with both of them.

I guess every working woman at some point in time or the other earns to be a tai-tai, even if for just a few days. I definitely do. I think it would be super cool to spend a few days not worrying about selling shampoos or worrying about keeping the house clean or worrying about anything beyond what I must be wearing for my shopping trip for the day. OK I don't like shopping, so maybe what i should be wearing to go to Starbucks to get Chai Latte.

And today, I got to feel like a Tai-tai. Very temporarily but of course.

It all started with the New Zealand embassy situated on Orchard road, a primary hang out place for Tai-Tais. The hubby and I went there to get our visas and realized that it would take a few hours before we would even be within a mile of the counter. It was like the whole world was planning a holiday in New Zealand. Super crowded.

So we hung around on Orchard road - at Kinukuniya bookshop, Starbucks etc. whiling away time and regularly going up to the embassy to check on the progress of the queue movement. And that's when I noticed all the Tai-Tais around me. Marching around with their shopping bags from Massimo Dutti, British India and such, sometimes with friends or maids tagging along, checking on their make up time and again, enjoying a coffee in Starbucks in a real cup vs. the takeout paper ones - and all this in the middle of a freaking Thursday.

And that's when I also realized that I am one of them, minus the shopping bags and make up. Here I was, also whiling away time in a Starbucks in Orchard Road, in the middle of a freaking working day!

It was AWESOME!

Small joy, I know... but it does feel really cool to not have to break your back in an office on a working day or for that matter scurrying some place overseas on a holiday, but instead just be in your own place and still be at peace and enjoy a cuppa without the weekend crowd milling around.

I enjoyed that bit of Tai-Taism a LOT.

587 more to go.

1 comment:

  1. You changed your theme! Nice look. Tai-tai-ism is excellent in small doses but if I know you at all, you'd get bored very soon with a life like that (and so would I!)

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