However, although I usually find excuses unacceptable, you guys have to understand that I wasn't even in my hotel room until extremely late during those few days.
In fact, for almost the entire month that I spent overseas, the only time I spent in the hotel room was to sleep. As well as waking up, taking a shower, getting changed etc... You get the idea: simply put, I had absolutely no time to myself. Whatsoever.
And here I was thinking I had so much free time on my hands, I could relax and have no cares in the world.
So if I didn't have any free time, you're probably then questioning what was I doing that made me so exhausted and free-time-deprived.
The answer's simple: family gathering.
For the entire one month I was there, ate 7 course dinners. Now that sounds really great and all, but that's not if you're eating 7 course dinners EVERY SINGLE DAY. And it wasn't as if lunch, or breakfast for that matter were light meals.
Not to mention, with all these types of big meals, the hosts always have this great idea to order everything that screams "EXPENSIVE" on the menu. Sometimes, they don't even order from the menu, choosing to instead directly inform the chef their own "special orders". As one may have realised, most of these expensive dishes usually involve some type of seafood cooked in some 'special' way.
....I Don't Like Eating Seafood.
So. That little fact obviously makes everything all the better doesn't it? Since I can just simply say "I don't (like to) eat seafood" and get away with eating plain rice, thus avoiding the consequences of over-eating.
Wrong. So very, very wrong.
Within my family, most of them eat a lot. In fact, they eat almost anything, including seafood. So whilst everyone is happily munching away at their seafood fiesta, you might've also thought that they would've ignore me and leave me be.
However, what happens instead is the opposite: whilst they are happily eating, they seem to find the need to see everyone happily eating and enjoying the seafood. And yes, that also includes (unfortunately) me.
So, if I ended up choosing to not eat the seafood, they would endlessly continue to pester me about eating seafood, how that specific dish I'm intent on avoiding is a "rare delicacy" and blah blah blah. The final result, is that I end up eating it, as well as attracting a lot of attention, especially from my grandparents, who would then go on and on about how I really should be eating more, why I'm not eating more and etc. (this is not to say that I dislike my grandparents by the way- they're amazing)
I don't like attracting attention during these big meals, so in the end, to avoid any sort of that jazz, I'm left with the only option to eat the seafood, and all the other sorts of foods that I strongly avoid eating, such as celery (sorry celery lovers, but it's just not my cup of tea).
Hence, what happens is that I spend all night long (forcefully) eating these 7 course meals at fancy-pants restaurants, come back exhausted from all the socialising (as one would've guessed, one does not socialise with people in fancy-pants restaurants they same way they do with friends at the mall). And of course, gain weight.