Tuesday, November 06, 2007

A Friend in the Making?

There is this colleague in the office. Let's call her "Stout Chicken". I find her rude and agressive and there have been times where I told myself to stay away from her. We used to see each other along the corridor or at the pantry and neither of us would say hi or make an eye contact.

Over the past few months, I don't have a choice but to sit in for meetings with her. Yesterday, we were in KL for some presentation and I found out several things about her. Maybe I have a soft heart, maybe I have become wiser with age, maybe I have decided to look at the good side of a person, maybe I have no choice but spend time with her since we are both away (!) I've come to a conclusion that she is lonely and she wants friends. Afterall, she has been away for 15 years! Hey from not saying hello, we actually had dinner together yesterday! While I still find her very aggressive and rough on the sides, I've come to a conclusion that she is probably like that by nature. Being in a foreign land away from family and friends makes you a "tougher/ rougher" person perhaps.

In one of the conversations, she told me that she misses this particular snack and guess what I did today, I brought some for her this morning. I surprise myself for making an effort to remember what she wants and packing that snack from her. I think I must have surprised her too because for the first time, she gave me a wide smile while she walked along the corridor.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love this personal story of yours Zan- it's so true that we tend to make an internal judgement of a person in the first 3-5 seconds of meeting that person. And what warms my heart is that when put into a situation with the person you had a not so positive impression of - it took time and effort to really KNOW a person and see her/him in a different light.
Babs

noz said...

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