thoughts from the little dot
I’m pretty sure folks know by now that leaders Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un will be meeting on 12 June in Singapore. As I write this, it is in the early hours of 11 June. Both leaders have apparently arrived in the city state but have yet to meet.
But here they are on an artist’s easel!
I chanced upon this talented gentleman in a mall, and he was kind enough to allow me to photograph him and his work. Thank you!
My family decided to spend the weekend at a hotel recently. One member had completed college exams, another had passed a test, and the rest just wanted to relax and have some fun.
On Saturday evening, the adults left for dinner within the hotel while the younger members went off in search of their chosen meal (no hotel buffets, thank you very much, we want Mac’s and fried chicken – go figure). When we returned, there was a gorgeous chocolate birthday cake and a birthday card on the coffee table, with compliments from the hotel.
None of us had said anything about celebrating a birthday, and certainly none of us had requested or ordered a cake. Yet there it was, with enough for all of us.
Apparently, the guest relations officers had seen the birth date on the registration card and decided to make the day extra special.
While the cynical might pass the gesture off as standard hotel PR or hotel gimmick, I would prefer to see it as a lovely, kind gesture. The young birthday girl was certainly thrilled to bits.
So, thank you, Pan Pacific Hotel. It might have been just another day in the PR office for you, but it was a special day for us all.
A teacher friend of mine recounted this:
Just before her exams, Joanne developed an eye infection that kept her from school for several days. Already nervous about having missed lessons so close to her impending exams, Joanne was understandably further upset when her vision remained blurry right up to the day of her first paper.
Her mother called the form teacher to explain Joanne’s situation. She would have preferred Joanne to skip the exams but Joanne refused. She wanted to try.
What the school did was this: every one of Joanne’s papers was reprinted in extra large font and every diagram was magnified. She was given extra time, and teachers were on hand to read aloud or record her responses if she needed them to.
Joanne sailed through her exams. And the school deserves an A.
Joanne’s situation reminds me of a briefing session I attended. One of the participants was partially visually impaired and had requested a seat near the front so he could see the screen better. He was ushered to the first row of the auditorium.
After the opening remarks, and before the first item was presented, one of the organisers approached this gentleman with a folder containing every slide and the corresponding notes in large font.
Thank you, organisers, and teachers at Joanne’s school. I am humbled by what you all did to make someone else’s experience a better one.
I’ve been a bit remiss in the kindness department lately. I created this blog to acknowledge and thank the folks who have shown kindness, either to me or to someone else; then I got distracted with the sheer enjoyment of reading the wonderful and diverse blogs, and writing about all sorts of other things.
Fortunately, my attention hasn’t been completely skewed. Some writers have advocated carrying a notebook around to jot ideas and observations. Thank goodness I took this advice! I’ve been writing down acts of kindness I’ve observed and I’m happy to share three of them today. I’ve also developed a fascination for notebooks as a result, but that’s another story!
I was having lunch with my BFF when we were startled by a man running past our table shouting, “Excuse me! Hello! Excuse me!”
In a foodcourt of casually dressed patrons, a man in suit and tie stands out. When that man runs and yells, everyone pays attention.
Turns out, he was running after an elderly man who had left his table but left his wallet behind.
I was at the bus stop near my place of work, and people-watching while waiting for the bus.
At the traffic crossing, everybody was hurrying to beat the lights. Right there, in the middle of the crossing, a woman suddenly stopped. There were quite a few annoyed glares as she was effectively holding up pedestrian traffic, and getting herself bumped into.
She went back to an elderly lady going in the opposite direction, and who was carrying two shopping bags. She took the bags from her and walked with her to the safety of the other side.
I had just entered my building when a middle-aged lady stopped me to ask if I’d seen a man in a black shirt go by. As it happened, he did indeed pass me moments ago.
“He dropped his keys!” she said, holding up the bunch and peering up and down the street. “Where’d he go?”
There was no one in black. The only possible place he could have disappeared into was the bank. Another man approached. “You looking for a guy looking for his keys? He’s in the bank.”
Off went the middle-aged lady to return said keys.
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DAILY PROMPT ~ SKEWED
Exactly six months ago, I received a call no parent ever wants to get.
The Munchkin, on the other side of the world, had developed an eye infection that was diagnosed as conjunctivitis. The Doctor’s eye drops and anitibiotics did nothing to help. In the photo she sent, she looked like the ultimate loser in an MMA punchup.
She returned to the Clinic a day later, complaining of headache and sporting half a swollen face. The Nurse Practitioner initially refused to let her consult the Doctor because she “had not given the anitibiotics sufficient time to work.”
The Munchkin recalls sticking her face into the Nurse’s, and demanding to know under what circumstances then would she be entitled to a session with a doctor? When blood leaked from her eye? Apparently, the Nurse finally took a good look at her and panicked, sending her straight in to the Doctor ahead of everybody else in the waiting room.
The Munchkin was then taken to Sunderland Royal Hospital, where an eye surgeon and his team were already waiting when she arrived. She was allowed to make that dreaded call, then was whisked off to get the infected fluid in her sinus cavity drained. The “conjunctivitis” turned out to be infected fluid building up under the eyeball and in her upper eyelid. And yes, it was that bad.
I was on the next available flight. 22 hours later, I was at the hospital and meeting with her surgeon and nurses. It was well past visiting hours but the surgeon had arranged for me to visit, and to stay as long as I wanted. The nurses offered hot tea and dinner, if I didn’t mind leftover beef pie. And then someone found a small tub of ice-cream.
Which is the point of this post. I can’t remember the names of every nurse who cared for The Munchkin. But if any of them reads this, or if anyone reading this knows a nurse or the surgeon at the Sunderland Royal Hospital who cared for a young girl with a swollen face (admitted 27 October 2017), please tell them I remain deeply grateful and thankful for their professionalism and care. I could never thank them enough for the level of reassurance, kindness and comfort they provided.
Thank you, Sunderland Royal Hospital and Sunderland Eye Infirmary.
This heart warming story was on the news so I thought I’d share it with you.
An elderly resident living in an apartment block recently had stomach surgery. Alone, hungry, in pain and unable to walk to the nearby market to get her meal, she turned to the only person within calling distance: the cleaner, Mr Kalam.
Mr Kalam, a foreign national, had worked as a cleaner in the neighbourhood for ten years and was a familiar face to many of the residents. While washing the common corridor outside of the lady’s unit, he heard her call out to him. She told him she had no food; could he buy some for her?
Mr Kalam did one better. He hurried to where he’d kept his belongings – a good ten minute walk away – and fetched his own homecooked lunch of curry and rice. Wanting to hurry back to the lady, he borrowed an e-scooter from another resident.
And was stopped by passing policemen.
Because cleaning crew are not allowed to use e-scooters, for their own and the residents’ safety, Mr Kalam had some explaining to do. Fortunately, the policemen were understanding and sent him on his way.
The elderly lady got her lunch and the police featured Mr Kalam on their Facebook page. Mr Kalam, whose supervisor credits him as one of the kindest men he’s ever met, received a letter of commendation from the Member of Parliament for that neighbourhood.
Thank you, Mr Kalam. I am humbled.
Years ago, when I was still at primary school, the family was scrambling around getting breakfast and packed lunches ready one morning. Amid the usual chaos of looking for items that only ever go missing at that hour, came the banging on the front door.
It was Sally, who lived six houses away, and she was frantic.
“Have you seen my mother?”
None of us had. Apparently, Aunt Lannie (everybody called her that) had been left alone at breakfast for mere minutes while her caregiver fetched more coffee or whatever it was she’d asked for. Those minutes were all it took for Aunt Lannie to disappear. Her family had looked everywhere at home and were in the process of expanding the search area, leading them to us.
I remember my annoyance that the school bus arrived at this critical point of developments, and we kids were herded up the bus. We would learn the rest of the story after school.
While waiting for the police to arrive, the menfolk had decided to spread out on foot, out of the neighbourhood and towards the city centre. My father took the path that would lead to the sports centre: an open track with a soccer pitch in the middle, spectator stands at one end and exercise stations at the other. This centre was a 15-minute drive from our home, making it unlikely that Aunt Lannie would have ended up there.
Yet, there she was. My father recalls his shock at seeing her sitting in the sand pit used for long jumps. How she got there in her nightclothes and one slipper, no one ever knew. My father’s problem then was how to get her home. He had no mobile phone, no coins for the payphone and, other than carry Aunt Lannie home, the solution was to flag down a charitable passing motorist.
At this point, I should explain that Aunt Lannie was 75 years old and had Alzeimer’s. She required round-the-clock supervision, hence the caregiver. On a good day, she might engage a neighbour in a lucid, normal conversation, but on a bad day, she would yell at whoever was passing to “take me home”. We could only assume she intended to head “home” when she went missing.
My father managed to stop a passing cab. He admits to some relief that he could honestly assure Aunt Lannie repeatedly he really was taking her home, particularly when she started fussing about being in the unfamiliar vehicle with two strange men. He also admits to panic when Aunt Lannie relieved herself fully in the cab.
Anyway, by the time I returned from school, Aunt Lannie had been lovingly bathed and seen to by her doctors. My father, the driver and some neighbours had cleaned out the cab, and I learnt that my father had actually taken every side road and back lane on his way to the sports centre.
I still remember that strange feeling that wrapped around everyone that evening when returning neighbours were told about the incident or spoke about their roles in it. There were no recriminations about how Aunt Lannie managed to sneak away, no “should haves” or “why didn’t yous”. There was only quiet gratitude that everything turned out well. And that strange feeling? I’m going to call it the spirit of a community that came together when a neighbour was in need.
April is the month of my father’s birthday, so I’ve decided to post one or two stories about him. I can’t verify any of these, but folks still talk about his exploits. He, on the other hand, pretends they never happened.
Years ago, when he was considerably younger, my father cycled to work. On this particular evening, he was cycling home when he heard an almighty crash behind him, and felt a warmish whoosh. He remembers panicking because he had no idea what had happened. He thought if he moved, whatever it was might happen to him too.
It was the scream and the thud that made him alight and turn around.
In the uncovered drain that still runs alongside the road, lay a young girl who had been hit by a car. The car, which had been travelling in the opposite direction, had been hit by a bus (the crash my father heard). The impact sent it across three lanes to hit the girl, who had been walking on the pavement, just steps behind my father. The car was upside down several metres away.
My father has never said much about what happened next, only that others checked on the driver and the passengers in the bus. The terrified girl (let’s call her Anne) kept crying and asking him to call her mum, so he got the number and went knocking on the doors of nearby houses (cell phones were a rarity then). He’s referred to this as the hardest call he’s ever made because he didn’t know how to soften the news, and he felt the mum’s anguish down the phone.
The emergency vehicles arrived and the casualties were attended to. Because Anne’s mum had yet to arrive, my father rode in the ambulance with Anne, after ensuring that the police officers would update her mum. I remember my father calling home from the hospital, then being really late for dinner. He was also missing his bicycle which, to this day, no one knows where it went.
I remember coming home from school about three weeks later and finding a family of five in the living room. It was Anne, her parents and siblings. She had a cast and healing bruises but was recovering well.
Turns out, the family had returned to the accident site to talk to the homeowners in order to locate my father because all they had was his name. Eventually someone told them where they thought he lived.
Anne revealed how he’d climbed into the drain to sit beside her after making that call, and kept her calm by telling stories about nothing in particular. It had meant the world to a frightened young girl, and the parents had wanted to thank him personally. His reply? Anne needed someone and she reminded him of me.
Today, our families still get together on festive occasions. There are grandkids now, and Anne’s mum still tells the story of how Anne first met the kind uncle.
1kindness2day 
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