Snacks & Snippets (Random Thoughts)

Hrmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.....

Seeing I have an hour to kill, I should blog for the sake of blogging.
Work is at an odd hour today - 5p.m. till 9.30p.m. on a Friday night. It's late night shopping and everyone has got their pay cashed in. Ka Ching. By end of tomorrow, the weeks' pay is gone. Why? Because tomorrow, the horses are out of their dens and on to the tracks. It's Caulfied Cup time!

See the pretty ladies in stilletoes; their fancy bird-feathered hats; the champagne glasses bubbling with Moet & Chandon; their pretty painted smiles and starry white teeth.

See the men in their polished shoes, smoothed out hair, gleaming manicured fingernails; their practiced jokes; their alcohol breath; the black and blue smoke coming out from their credit cards.

Ah... spring.

And how do we measure an act of decent kindness?

Is it a smile to a stranger? A hug to a mourner? The chair to an elder? Or is it the value of generosity you put in the bowl of a beggar?

I was standing in KFC last night. We were ordering dinner. A scruffy looking guy asked us for a dollar. My companion asked, 'Why do you need a dollar? Is it for drugs?'. The toothless twenty-something man said no. But instead of giving him money, my friend bought him a meal. The act I witness, is something I read in books, made in movies, imagined in dreams. If he was trying to impress me, I was. But seeing that it wasn't a date, I view it as an act of genuine thoughtfulness and generosity.

The scruffy toothless young man wolved down his Zinger meal. Walked out of the door without saying a word of thanks. Came back in again and started where he left: asking patrons for a dollar to spare.

My parents have always taught the kids to be nice to the people you meet. It pays to be nice. You never know when fate will bite you in the rear end.

I was waiting for the doors to open. 9 a.m. shifts aren't my personal favourites. Another girl was there. She looked familiar to me. Where have I seen her before? School? She's definitely Malaysian. We exchanged niceties. I told her what I thought, found out she's three years younger than I am (rules out school, I rarely remember anyone apart from my year). Work? Hrm. Nope, never worked with magazines.

Waitaminute, did I say magazine? But of course! She was one of the finalist for the first seventeen Magazine Star Search! She did her cheer leading act on stage. Helps her mom with her batik designing business. Sister to four other siblings.

A few thousand miles away from the streets of KL. Three years later. I meet my past in front of Sportsgirl in Melbourne, Australia at (now) 9.10 a.m. on a rather warm spring morning.