Diary_28 Sept: Way happier than a whale

I’m not sure how a whale would think when roaming down below the thousands miles of the deep sea but there’s one thing I definitely know: I’m so grateful today.

This morning had not been an easy one. There was a weird old man who pretended to “kiss” me over the air when he walked past me to the rubbish bin which was just steps away from me. I was terribly scared and wondering in that very few seconds about whether he would just run over me, hug me tight and literally kiss me. Feeling so scared, I walked fast down to the next floor of the building I’m living in.

It totally ruined my morning and early work mood until I’ve naturally and gradually slipped into the normal mood of teaching some of my students. Some students, to me, are really my angels. I sweep away my sadness, fury, fear or whatever negative emotion that is lingering my heart and bothering my mind at the moment just when I am starting to teach or communicate with these angelic kids. To their parents, maybe they are living headache. Yet, to me, they are what is indispensable to balance my work mood or moody day after coming across unreasonably savage customers or fearfully weird dudes.

The happiest and most grateful incident took place near the end of today. When I lacked the changes / coins that I should have carried with me in my wallet when I got on board a bus, I started to feel uptight as well because the smallest amount of dollar notes on my hand was HKD 100 and if there was no passenger on the bus who could lend me five HKD20 notes or something like that for me to get one HKD20 to put into the coin box of the box, I would have done something that was extremely awesome to the bus company and probably other passengers that walked behind me but aweful to the “health” of my wallet, which was just to throw my HKD100 dollar note into the coin box of the bus!!

Fortunately, I was not so sociably restrained at that moment (and magically). It enabled me to literally ask a stranger for the changes and dollar notes I badly needed at that critical point of time. The first young man I asked help from was a wi-fi guy who was in a uniform of a wi-fi provider and who was nice enough to show me his wallet for all dollar notes he was having on hand and sorrowfully told me about not being able to help because all he’d got was just one HKD 50 dollar note. Oh! I was so stupid ! I could have asked him to give me that HKD 50 dollar note if I didn’t want to ask other people on the bus or, even worst, if there was no one except from him at that moment on the bus! Well, luckily this was not my situation tonight.

I could have actually asked him to transfer me the rest of the HKD 50 via electronic payment and, at the same time, give me the actual HKD50 note on his hand, in exchange of my HKD 100.

Never mind. The truth was that he suggested me to move one step forward, which otherwise might not be the step that I would take. In other words, without his kind advice, I might as well put in my HKD100 dollar note into the coin box on the bus and left shamefully and feeling as lame as nothing on the planet! Unluckily, this bus didn’t support electronic payment. I started to feel that it was just like a scratch of claws on my back if there is not enough cash in my wallet even though I’ve kept thousands of “money" on my e-wallet. While the traditional way should be preserved, the new way of payment should also be ready for passengers to avoid such kind of unhappy incident on a responsible passenger who didn’t mean to pay nothing for a very late night bus ride, shouldn’t it?

The happy ending of the whole story was that I took the advice of this nice wi-fi guy who encouraged me to ask the mother and son sitting at the back of the bus. The mother said yes to my odd request from a stranger asking her for five pieces of HKD20 dollar note for taking a bus! If I were not a girl, I would very likely be regarded as a scammer — at least I nearly mistake myself as one!

The benevolent mother asked her son to lend me so by her eye contact with her young and helpful son. With their help, I finally could manage to pay what I should pay for this bus ride.

Thanks God! I couldn’t have been more grateful than today.

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