neighbors

Hoping to develop a routine in my life, I left home early this morning. At the lift lobby, I bumped into the neighbor who stays right at the other end of the level. This was the first time I talked to him after I reached back to Singapore and it surprised how much he knew about my family and I. It shamed me to know how little I know about him. All the basic information about him - I knew. To me, basically he is the insurance man who married a teacher and they have 3 daughters. However, to him, I am a person with a life. He knows that I just came back fom Paris, he knows that I doing my Master's in NUS, he knows that my dad was sick, he knows that I like to take photos, more surprising, he knows that I am single. It didn't take long to figure out the neighborly goodwill which my mother has accumulated for the family.

So instead of having bunch in school, I asked if he wanted to join me for breakfast at the market. Probably surprised by my gesture, he agreed. "Insurance is flexi-hours", he said. We spent the next half hour talking about france and his clients. He really met a lot of interesting people in his line of work. He told me how he cooly rejected troublesome clients, debunking the myth that I had about 'all insurance agents care about is their bottom line'. Perhaps I what happened yesterday was still fresh in my head, I readily agree with him that some people are just not worth the trouble. We continued for a while more and he offered to drive me to school.

I can teach your daughter french. I offered.