It’s 9.46pm KL time and the Malaysian Airlines flight crew have just cleared away the remains of the in-flight meal. I’ve finished browsing the newspaper, have read the in-flight magazine from cover to cover, and am now nursing my second cup of mineral water. I peer through the double-paned pressurised window but can’t see anything beyond the faint outlines of the aeroplane’s massive wing, reminding me of something that I once read about darkness not being a state of actual being but rather the absence of light.

With no inflight movies to keep me occupied, my mind starts to wander and plucks a random memory from my childhood — six-year old me, in a farm, with my mum trying to convince me to get on a carabao (a.k.a. Asian water buffalo). In the end, I firmly resisted all her attempts…then promptly regretted doing it ten seconds later as I watched the gentle animal being led away. Looking back now, it wasn’t so much the sight of the huge black beast with its massive curved horns that terrified me. The thought of sitting on the precarious perch on its back did strike some fear in my heart but that was only secondary. Don’t laugh at me now…but it was the thought of my bare legs rubbing against the carabao’s skin that horrified me because only a flimsy gunny sack would have protected my skin from all possible bites and other skin diseases upon contact! That experience has got to be my earliest memory of a regret in life.

In hindsight, my regrets in life seem to revolve more around things that I did not do rather than the things that I chose to do. Case in point: Sydney Harbour Bridge, year: 2007. DH and I were in Sydney for a short business trip. I saw a brochure advertising guided climbs on the iconic Harbour Bridge with the option of doing it in the daytime or at night. It was the price that made me decide to skip it. I tried consoling myself with the thought that I could do “next time”. But you know what? That “next time” never came. Our Australian customer’s orders did not go as expected. And I haven’t had the chance to go to Sydney since.

The same story happened when DH and I were in Interlaken, Switzerland. I saw a leaflet advertising tandem paragliding. Their tagline — “Discover why the birds sing” — was so enticing…but the practical side of me decided to forgo it because of the cost. Are you starting to see a pattern yet? But unlike Sydney, I did have the chance to visit Switzerland again two or three more times but I never had the chance to go to Interlaken again and find out for myself why birds sing.

Sometimes, my regret is something as mundane as not having any ice cream in New Zealand just because it was in the middle of winter. Again, no thanks to the “next time” excuse.

It took me a while to learn my lesson but I got to my senses eventually. And so in subsequent trips, I’d do everything that I could for as long as that thing did not break any laws of man or God.

• I hand-fed a school of fish at Pulau Dayang Bunting in Langkawi despite how scary it looked — as though the fish were piranhas bent on devouring my very fingers.
• I hand-fed a baby elephant some peanuts in Kuala Gandah Elephant Sanctuary,notwithstanding elephant saliva and all.
• I scooped a handful of fresh clean snow in the mountain top of Zermatt, Switzerland and crammed it into my mouth (it tasted like…well, ice!).
• I climbed all the way up Arc de Triomphe and Notre Dame Cathedral with Lola.
• I requested fondue for one dinner in Andermatt, Switzerland and ended up not being able to eat anything else because the pot of melted cheese was GINORMOUS and our host insisted that we finish it off!
• I flirted with death by eating fugu sashimi — fugu being fish that, if not handled and cleaned properly, can be toxic to humans — in Seoul, South Korea.
• I had henna patterns drawn on my hands and feet in Oman, never mind that it gave me an allergic reaction afterwards.
• I ate natto — fermented soy beans that smell like stinky socks that have been left to soak overnight, whose slime covers all your teeth, tongue, and the roof of your mouth — to impress a Japanese colleague, an episode that still elicits surprised yet appreciative looks from any Japanese every time I tell them about it.

I can go on and on except that I can feel the plane slowing down and commencing its approach towards KLIA. So I’m forced to cut this short. The bottomline of this story is simple: opportunities are like clouds; once they’re gone, they’re gone and may never come again. So if you are ever faced with an opportunity to do something you’ve always dreamed of and costs the earth but you might never ever have the chance of doing again…or perhaps you have the chance to try something weird or funny, my advice to you is to take it. For as long as it does not break any human or Divine law, and if it’s not something that you’ll regret in 5, 10, 20 years’ time, I say go for it!