The Unexpected
20111102 @ Wednesday, November 02, 2011
“We
took the joys beside the pain, with not much to lose but so much to gain”
A lesson I learnt
today is to never judge a book by its
cover. Today was rather sore, Jia
Yi talked to me and she was saying how hurt she was and the fact that a certain
friend of hers seemed to be a stranger. It isn’t the friend you think it is.
Surprisingly, I
realized that if she hadn’t told me I would have just continued to think that
there was nothing wrong with their friendship, and just let her be. I felt so
sorry for her; she almost cried telling me about this void that her friend left
in her. Just then, I realized that I was going through the same thing. So in my
attempt to make her laugh, I told her that I’m experiencing that with 3 people
and then she ‘Woah-ed’ and we high fived. I said that I felt like my friendship
with those specific people was like a love story, the one where only 1 of the 2
was missing the other. She laughed and high fived me… again.
I saw a side of Jia Yi
that I never knew existed. I think we talked for what seemed like an hour or
more. We started laughing at the fact that if someone was crying, I would feel
so awkward that I would just sit or stand there like some kind of lamp post.
Then she asked me an
odd question “What do you see in Chinese people? I don’t see you hang around
with Indians often.”
My reaction was . . .
“I don’t know. I hang around with everyone.”
But really, I knew
why. I’m not trying to say anything about Indians, because not only Indians do
it.
I never liked hanging
around people who speak in their own language just so they can say something to
one of their friends without you knowing what it is. I have been in positions
when I would be loafing in a group of Indians or Chinese people and all of a
sudden they would start speaking and laughing with each other in Tamil or
Cantonese, assuming that I didn’t understand what they were saying. It was one
of my sore points in Titanium, and my childhood.
The annoying part was
sometimes they would be talking about me. I remember pretending to not
understand just so they would continue talking and once I was bored with them I
would go to my other friends.
I specifically
remember this one time, during a dance camp that my friends forced me into
going for. There was this group of Chinese friends we made, and during one of
the breaks between rehearsals, they started talking about me in Cantonese. One
of the girls in the group that had started the entire gossip session was one of
these girls that I later realized just wanted to fit in. After about an hour of
pretending that I didn’t understand their gossip about me and just starring at
the tiles on the floor, I stood up and started talking to them in Cantonese
saying that if they thought all this while, I never understood what they were
saying, they were wrong. I told them how I understood everything they were
saying and put up with their gossip for the past 5 days and that I couldn’t
take it anymore. I can never forget the look on their faces. I haven’t spoken
to most of them since. I occasionally go out with the ones that later
apologized, the ones that apologized were the ones that didn’t say anything…
they just listened, so it was easy to forgive them.
This has happened with
Indians speaking in Tamil. Only I never could speak in Tamil, so I just sent
them colorful words in English. Good ol’ English.
Those were the days when my Cantonese was
fluent. Now, I’ve practically
forgotten most of it. Yet, people seem to forget that.
Jia Yi said that her
friend continuously seemed to forget that she was there and would constantly
speak to her other friends in her mother tongue knowing that Jia Yi didn’t
understand. She asked me if I’ve gone through such a thing…
I nodded then told her
about a recent incident. There was a day when I was sitting in one of the empty
classrooms with a few friends and one of them, I guess you could say we were
somewhat close started to speak to a few others in Cantonese or Mandarin, I
don’t remember which one it was. I found it funny that she forgot I understood
what she was saying, so later when she was telling me how one of the other
girls there did something, I told her that I knew. She asked how? Then I told
her that I heard her telling the others in Cantonese. Her expression changed,
not only was there embarrassment but there was a slight hint of what I like to
call “How could I be so stupid?”
Those moments are
priceless.
Carpe Diem and Press On
