A good screw up

They are a dread couple from KL who blow into town too many times in the year.

The one is a poor excuse of a former BBC correspondence who never made a dint in his time. We are just tired of his braying insults at everything and everybody in Singapore (including us). The other is an insufferable shameless name dropper.

They always look us up to be wined and dined. We sometimes indulge them and end up wanting to kick ourselves for having been duped one more time. At other times, we make up excuses to not see them, like everyone else who have their wits about them.

We made the bad decision this time to take them out to dinner. Then the man's back went out on him and we called off the dinner.

An old schoolmate is in town with her husband whom we've not met. We had arranged for them to come over for dinner the day after we were to see the dread couple. Somehow, the schoolmate messed up the date so we decided we would go ahead and have her and husband over anyway, even if the man is in pain. We spent the better part of the day scrambling to get the home presentable, and put together a dinner of steaks with all the expected trimmings.

It turned out to be one of the best evenings we've had in a long while. We actually liked her husband!

By evening's end, we even agreed to visit and stay at their home in the country sometime soon.

After they left, we looked at each other and smiled. Sometimes, screw ups really work out better than the best laid plans.

I love a good screw up now and then. Heh