Doing More Than My Bare Minimum
Quite bummed to not get 2 of my course options for next semester. This was in the morning, and even as I successfully shut it out throughout the day, the worry came back once I stepped out the MRT after travelling back from work. I was very much thinking about what to do for myself, what my best course of action was, as I paced across the park connector.
As I was heading towards my car parked along the Frankel Avenue - Changi Road junction, I saw a man, luggage and duffel bag in hand, iPhone in the other. He accosted me for help and it appeared he had no data connection, with only an address of his destination. I recognised where Lorong 110 Changi was, and pointed towards it, before I heard a moan of frustration when he half-thanked, half-lamented that another passer-by directed him my way, away from the Lorong where he was at some 30 minutes ago. Now, that sucks.
“Actually this is my car. Put your luggage in, I’ll drop you there,”
Firstly, he was rather surprised that a passer-by from whom he only hoped to get directions from after giving up, happened to have his car right by his side (it was quite the hilarious sight, really). Secondly, when he got in and we drove off, he couldn’t stop heaping praises on Singapore. Clean and Green Singapore. Efficient Singapore. Orderly Singapore. That’s when I got all ‘Singaporeans react to Nas Daily’ in my head as he told me how he was here for the Singapore FinTech Festival and that it was so well organised, and people were nice, and now I was nice to him too, yada yada.
Let’s just say that I was sure he was Vietnamese, but I didn’t want to just say it in his face - we’d only just met. But this guy reminded me, albeit indirectly through his appreciation for a Singaporean such as myself who truly saw no trouble dropping him off at a place he’d need 20 extra minutes with his bulky load to get to without a car, to be much more grateful for my country and not be so bitter about the arguably little things (think ‘first world problems’) when there is, well, an immediate neighbouring region that struggles and yearns for the structures and systems we take for granted at times.
As I dropped him off, I was glad I did not previously have it in me to only care for myself and merely ‘do my bare minimum’ by pointing him in the right direction, but follow through so far as to present him a Singapore that I myself would like to have portrayed to its visitors.
As this man, Nam, thanked me for the ‘n’th time while unloading his baggage after our 5 minute conversation and ride, I saw a smile in someone so close to leaving the country with a slight yet impactful inconvenience to ruin his experience, reminding me again that there are many things we can do, when we are not thinking about ourselves too much. During that 5-10 minutes, I was in no way thinking about my modules for next semester, and it felt so liberating.