I believe the tagline in my current line of work is…

“We’re all rushing to wait.”

Oh, how much more accurate can that get. We will all be busting our asses off for a designated deadline, which always is less than 3 days away (read: always), and then when all the compilations are done, we’ll sit and wait.

Wait.

Argh.

It’s been a crazy start to the new job. Funnily, it felt as if I’ve been there forever. One thing about working for me is that the same old faces will not change. I had Yazer a couple of times to whine to. I’ve had Farah in my office till almost 2am the other night. Shahreil was helping me out the other day. So was Liza and Zai. And J was my companion for the Canon shoot.

It was raining on Thursday at the reservoir just before we started the shoot. Invy had wanted me to charge his laptop for him there, so obviously I had to ask for another favor from the grumpy old uncle who guards the reservoir. I had asked for a few favors from the old man the day before (to remove a boat from the jetty, to loan me some screwdrivers), and honestly he was being quite a fuck nut about it. I thought, well, if he gets nasty again, I shall resort to paying him for the electricity.

So I knocked on his shabby hut to ask if he was kind enough to let me charge the laptop there. There were a few of his Indian workers sitting around, and though I felt a tad uncomfy, I plucked myself and went in. I tried to be nice and all smiley, asking the old man if he has taken lunch, or what time he was knocking off from work. Surprisingly, he told his worker, “Can you please grab a chair for the lady to sit?”

He turned out to be nice after all.

In that dingy hut that smells of sour wood and old furniture, he offered me coffee and cigarettes, to which I politely refused. After a few chats with him, I realized how mundane and lonely these people can be. More old men came over to the hut, and as their life stories unfold, I realize that perhaps all they need are people who will want to listen to them. I must have been there for 3 hours or so.

Most of the time, I believe I need to do very big things to make people feel that I am sincere. But when these group of elderly said their ‘Thank You-s” to me when I left, I changed my mind.