Little Cozy Corner

Picture courtesy of XP. Heh. 

I’ve come to realise that it’s the little things that matter. The fact that I finally got myself my OWN phone made a huge difference in my work productivity. I got my work done faster and I was more efficient. Before this, Keith (the guy sitting beside me) and I were sharing a phone and it was tough especially when we were both rushing to finish some pretty urgent work last week. It’s frustrating coz when he’s on the phone, then I’d have to wait and vice versa. At one point, he had to temporary move tables so that he could call from another cubicle coz those phone calls were REALLY important and needed to be made by a certain dateline…more like dateTIME!

But yes, it’s the little things that matter and funnily enough, to me…they make me smile and sometimes giggle too. :hehe: Take for example how my colleagues thought I was nuts when I waited patiently for the window-washer men to drop by our floor today so I could take a pix of them daggling by their ropes [which I did] and washing the outside of my very tall office building. [I'm on the 14th floor!] I found it to be very intriguing and was thinking what thoughts were running through their minds as they dangled there, so high above solid ground. Although they certainly took the necessary safety precautions, I wonder if they had any ‘What ifs’, you know? Then I thought how they must either be nuts or real daredevils to be doing what they were doing! I believe we have 15 floors altogether but I could be mistaken, I have to find this out tomorrow though.

Then there was once, just a few days ago while on the train back from work, I saw this young mother [She could not be more than 30.] with 4 kids who were all below the age of 8. Despite having rather hyperactive kids all around her, she wasn’t tensed nor did she looked stressed. But I could feel MY stress level slowly rising as I watched her kids climb up and down the seats, swinging from the steel rods….it was indirectly driving me up the wall but she was oblivious to this fact. She was even playing ‘Police and bad guy’ with the 3 kids who couldn’t be more than 4 where she held his hands behind his back and said playfully, ‘You’re under arrest!’ and it actually amused the child! I could see him giggling away and while all this ‘fun’ was going on, she had accidentally lifted her right left and the pram with a baby in it, tipped back!! I pretty much exclaimed in shock and surprise [which is mak-jatuh...kononnyer melatah ler..] when the pram tipped over but she was cool, and obviously managed to grab it before it went totally over. And of course, some of the kids got a good scolding for making her do that to the baby and surprisingly, the baby didn’t even whimper…I bet s/he is already used to the tipping over. I don’t blame the kid though, the pram was overloaded. Then I was thinking, despite all these kids who were most certainly driving her up the wall, she didn’t look ‘tired’ at all. And it struck me how strong mothers are. How they adapt themselves to the situation, no matter how bad things get. I had a gut feeling that this was a single mother or perhaps a family where the father was practically non-existence but that’s just what I think - I don’t know the truth, it’s merely gut feeling. I’m not sure how this is related to the little things but I just had to share that little daily anecdote which I thought was something special….