Some days, you woke up knowing that your day was going to suck harder than all the black holes in this universe and beyond added together. Because how could it not, when you open your eyes in the morning to your alarm radio screeching out the ad for the new High School Musical movie.

Captain Reynold’s call a few seconds later didn’t make matters any more tolerable. He wanted me down at the station “ASAP”. With barely enough time to get dressed and not look like I’d just spent the night pub crawling, I hastily pulled on a skirt and made it out of the door in the black tank I fell asleep in.

It wasn’t until the hot air hit my face when I stepped out of the building that I realised I had slept past morning and straight into high noon – hottest time of the day during summer. I could feel the heat of the concrete seeping through the soles of my thongs and stinging my feet. The heat was made even more oppressive by the hordes of people outside during the Christmas holidays. That was the problem with living in the southern hemisphere, summer Christmases and it took longer for Santa to get to you from the North Pole, or so my parents told me when the promised pressie failed to show up on a few Christmas mornings. I put on my sunglasses and resisted every urge to dive back into the air-conditioned building behind me.

The drive down to the station didn’t make things any better, seeing as how it was already asking a lot for my 1984 Toyota to get started and going in the first place, let alone have working air conditioning. Nothing like a call from Captain Reynolds to get you scrambling in the pre-Christmas heat. As much as I loved living in Sydney, there were just days in summer that made me think that maybe even Satan himself would invest in some deodorant if he lived here.

Driving past the neatly trimmed hedges of the eastern suburbs, the posh side of Sydney, and sweating like there was no tomorrow, I felt a sudden bout of self pity. Large two storey houses sandwiched me on both sides, with lawns the size of national parks and greener than golf course grass. There was once upon a time when my parents, specifically my mum, hoped I would make it into med school and own a house like the ones I was cruising past. But just because I’m Asian doesn’t mean I’ll automatically get A plus in everything at school. And so when other Asian kids went to medical schools and law schools, I picked the most useless subject you could find in university and killed my parent’s hope that I would one day make the ancestors proud.

Okay, so maybe they didn’t say the bit about the ancestors, this isn’t Disney’s Mulan after all, but it was a decision of mine that caused about three years of strained phone conversations and greasy takeouts before my mum decided I was worthy of her home cooking again. There was one problem though, she’d been trying to hook me up with “well to do” guys ever since, like marrying rich would be the next best thing to being a doctor or lawyer who was paid more than a hundred grand a year. If I couldn’t buy them a water front house, then she’d make sure someone did.

A sharp honk from my right quickly snapped me out of my bout of self pity and I swerved back onto my lane a centimetre shy of getting close and personal to the car next to me. See what my mother does to me?

I managed to stay within my lane for the rest of the way and parked on a meter outside the station before the heat made me spontaneously combust into flames, which would save Captain Reynold the trouble of killing me himself if I was late. Again.

Stepping into the front doors, I sighed in relief as the cool air of the police station engulfed me, then cursed silently as my sinus started to act up from the sudden change of temperature. It was a hereditary thing from my dad, and now I could expect violent sneezing for the next ten minutes.

Joanna and Chris both looked up from the service desk as I released a violent sneeze – the first of many to come, but only Joanna gave me a friendly smile.

“You’re not late today!” She chuckled as my eyes began to water from the sneezing.

Before I could form a reply, Chris had already opened his mouth. “My god, you’re on time! Is it the end of the world?!” He put one hand to his brow in mock horror, like one of those 1920's actresses on the verge of a fainting spell.

I narrowed my eyes at him, another sneeze took some of the venom out of my glare. Just because he failed Police College and had to settle for being a receptionist didn’t mean he had to be Princess Biatchface towards me all the time. So I didn’t even go to the college and got the job he wanted, that didn’t mean I took shortcuts and got here without any cuts and bruises. At the least, I had to deal with douche bags like him who thought I was unworthy at the station all the time.

Joanna seemed to sense the potential for a good row as Chris and I tried to stab each other with our eyes and quickly stepped in.

“Well, you don’t want to make yourself late today. The meeting is in the conference room.”

That got my attention. Normally I was briefed on the phone and all I had to do was meet up with the detectives at the crime scene, do some translating, some cultural bridging to speed up the investigation, and that would be it. But today I was called in, not to mention asked to sit in on a briefing in the conference room, which meant that there was a lot more personnel involved in this case than usual and it wasn’t just your everyday neighbourhood disturbance call.

I made my way down the corridor that cut through the cubicles and offices and led to the conference room at the far end of the building - the belly of the best, I called it. No one made the effort to lean their head out the door and say hi, nor did I expect them to.

The moment I began to make my way to one of the two spare chairs left in the already crowded room I spotted Simmons doing the same, and knew that I was going to have to go on some sort of Herculean trial very shortly to get a chair from him and the large bag he was carrying.

Simmons, the guy most eligible to dress up as Santa Claus for the office Christmas party, unfortunately also the guy you’d most love to see drowned in his own weight worth of lard.

Sadistic? Me? Whatever gave you that idea?

The guy was a bastard, no other way to say it. Picture the biggest, meanest and ugliest bully you remember who made going to school more dreadful than the dentist's - he's that kid all grown up. But instead of beating up the scrawny kid sitting beside him for not letting him copy answers during the maths test, he was now trying to undermine me at the station for upstaging him in cases he stuffed up!

Ever since I gained Reynold's confidence for handling a case involving some Taiwanese immigrants who refused to speak to the detective in charge for being racist, Simmons has been on my back like a damn cold that won't let up. No guesses on who the detective in question was.

The room wasn’t large, so it didn’t take long for both Simmons and I to reach the chairs. Sadly for me and my short legs, Simmons got there a split second before me. Plonking his fat arse and equally as large bag onto the other spare chair, he proceeded to do an Oscar-worthy impression of a large angry hen and ignored me completely.

“Simmons!” I put on the smile I used when my mother tried to introduce me to another ‘nice boy’, “haven’t seen you in a long time. You lose weight?” I glanced down at his waist line to emphasise my point. Well, tried to anyway. Not my fault if the dude had so many crispy cremes he had no waist line to speak of.

Turning, he directed his attention from a corner of the room to me as if noticing me for the first time. He gave me an once over, as if examining a piece of meat gone bad, making me feel even more uncomfortable in a summer skirt instead of my usual jeans. I managed to stop myself from running home and scrubbing myself with industrial strength soap.

“Chan.” He acknowledged with barely a nod, then quirked a corner of his sausage lips. “A skirt? Aren’t those for girls?”

His whole body shook from the hilarity of his own joke. I say shook, it was more like watching custard jiggle during an earthquake. Each layer of flab swallowed the next as he guffawed, it was almost like watching a psychedelic screensaver, only less psychedelic and more vomit inducing.

I gave a short laugh. “Ha, you got me there. Real funny. Listen, can I take that spare chair off you? It’s pretty crowded in here and you’re not using it.”

Immediately ceasing his laughter, he eyed the chair on which his bag sat.

“I need it.” He put one large paw on the bag.

“How? You’re not even sitting on it.” I was starting to get annoyed, but tried not to show it since I knew that was what the SOB would enjoy.

“Yeah, but my bag needs it.” ‘My bag is more important than you’ was left unsaid, but I knew it was there and he knew that I knew.

For the millionth time of that day, I regretted not wearing my jeans and converse. I would’ve kicked him in the balls even if they were buried so deep underneath all that fat it'd take me a week to find them. At least. But the captain was coming in and everyone was quieting down. There was no need to cause a scene, especially when it was the police department – not my turf.

I swallowed and gave him the sweetest smile I could muster.

“Sure, no problem. I can see how you might need two seats to accommodate you…” I looked him up and down and lingered briefly on his pregnant midsection, “…and your bag.”

I found a corner to squeeze myself in as the captain began to brief his team on the case. It was a big case, multiple homicides with plenty of blood and young girls, an episode straight out of Law & Order.

I was going to be here for some time, and all without a chair.