Almost pickpocketed!

Buying something for my mom is always a challenge. For one, she's a vegetarian and a rather fussy one at that -- she only likes chinese cuisine. The other reason is that she is a woman of simple needs and wants.

For the longest time, whenever I holidayed overseas, it would always be difficult for me to think of what to buy for her -- she usually wouldn't like any of the food product that I bought, even if they are suitable for vegetarian, and she doesn't need a lot of things.

Inevitably, I would always end up buying a bag back for my mom. I've bought her a Coach leather bag, a Liz Claiborne bag and a Longchamp pliage bag. All of which she would either complained that the handle of the bag was too thick, too short, not enough compartments or too small. And so, she continues to carry her worldly possessions in one of those kiddy-looking cloth gusset bags that she buys cheaply from the one of the shops in HDB Hub all over Singapore.

Last year, I finally nailed down the right features and specs and gotten my mom a bag that she would carry -- one of those signature Harrods gusset bag, with a lining and build-in zipper compartment inside the bag. And I pestered her for a while to swap her cloth bag for the Harrods bag.

In the afternoon, as she was reaching into her bag to grab her ringing cellphone, she suddenly realised that there was a long sharp slit on the side of the bag. With a loud exclamation to me, she told me her bag has a hole! For a while, I had thought that it was a defective side seam or something. But when I had a good look at the bag, I realised that the slit was too sharp, long and straight to be a bag default.

In fact, it looked as if someone had taken a very sharp knife or penknife and slashed the side of the bag, slitting through some parts of the inner-lining. And I observed too that there was a slight slit at the top of the bag, as if a person has wanted to slashed it from the top but becos it was double-folded and stitched, was too thick to slit through.

Checking through the items inside, thankfully, nothing had been stolen. However, my mom's ancient wallet (its a bulging crocodile-skin wallet that looks like it belongs to a museum and my mom has used for nearly 20 years!) was placed near the slit. We figured that the pickpocket must have tried to slit the side of the bag to get to the wallet. But becos my mom's wallet was so fat and crammed full of I-don't-know-what, the pickpocket couldn't extract it out from the bag after slitting it.

What's most amazing was that my mom has no idea when and where her bag got slashed. In fact, the slashed might have been there on Sat when she went to a crowded temple or along the way from her house to mine. Still, its amazing that everything was intact. Thankfully!

It has taken me years to find a bag for my mom and now, with a slash of a penknife, my mom's back to carrying one of her kiddy cloth bag. See, she's now carrying this red "Strawberry Shortcake" bag. Sigh...