Offer To The CEO

After hanging up from her reassuring call with Hou Yi, Anna's phone immediately started ringing. She noticed that it was Amanda so answered the phone.

"Hi Amanda. What did you forget to ask me?"

"Anna, why do you think that?"

"I know you my friend. If it was not important you would have waited until you arrived in Australia."

"That gets to my point. When are you flying out to Australia?"

Laughing Anna replied "See, I knew you forgot to ask me something. Seriously, we are flying out tonight. Given my collapse the other day, the obstetrician has made it clear that we need to break our flight into smaller flights, of no more than four hours at a time. That makes the overall trip somewhat longer, but it is what it is. And before you ask Yi's parents and grandparents as well as Jodie and her husband are flying with us as well. Why?"

"Well I need you to do a favour for me with the boss …"

"And your husband, his friend is dodging making the call."

"You have it in one. Junior and Ton are being difficult about coming, wanting to leave sooner rather than later and spend a few extra days out in Australia. We are telling them no, because the two of them are being …"

"Bratty."

"I could not have summed it up better. They are refusing to cooperate with either Tan or me, on getting ready for this short trip and in the end, I told them if their behaviour did not improve, we would leave them with my parents. They absolutely detest my parents as they take no nonsense from them."

"They did not like that?"

"When I told them that their response was to call me a wicked stepmother. Can you imagine me being like the evil fairy-tale stepmother? I am not wicked or mean. The reality is Tan and I actually give them a large amount of freedom, as they are seventeen years old. Tan and I decided that we needed to be firm with them about cooperation and behaviour and that made them decide I was the problem."

"As Tan turned and told them, trips during the school year like this are a privilege not a given. They responded that before we married Tan would have allowed them to go, regardless of anything. The funny thing was though, after they left us in peace Tan said that this is the one time that they would not have allowed the behaviour to have given them what they wanted."

"Tan had to tell them they had two choices, play nice and cooperate and we will take them somewhere they want to go at the of the year, or continue their behaviour and they miss out on both trips."

"What do you need then?"

"Can you get the boss to call Tan for me, he needs to ask a favour for me. I do not want to you to do that."

"Let me make a call. How are you getting there anyway?"

"Unlike your husband, we do not have access to a corporate jet for personal trips, so we have a commercial flight booked to Melbourne through Singapore, with a car arranged for us at the airport. We get there sometime Thursday."

"OK. If we do not talk, see you when you get to Australia."

With that Anna ended the call and called Hou Yi back, and he quickly agreed to call Yao Tan.

Five minutes later, Hou Yi called Yao Tan, and when he answered Hou YI's immediate response was "What is it I hear about my best friend being a total wimp?"

"Damn it, Yi, Anna was meant to …"

"Tan I know you do not to deal with me presently, so grow up. Give me a break I am entitled this week to be a little selfish given Anna and I are having our formal ceremony on Saturday. I am guessing whenever you and Amanda do the same, you will tell me the same thing. So, what is it I hear about those your two troublemaker boys?"

"The brats are sulking and being disrespectful simply because we told them a few things, about them coming and not getting their way about an extra holiday. They are even annoyed with us, because we told them, rather than having first class tickets on the flights they have premium economy tickets, given the last few weeks their behaviour has become bad."

"And they did not like it?"