I've been a sort-of antisocial brat these few weeks (yes, even through the lunar new year) -- blame it on the amount of things to do, but I always think it is more a mental thing: I cannot multitask well, and maybe because I "know" that, I stay at that.
Then today I came to campus, canceled a meeting with my supervisor, and:
- went for lunch and met Rimbun + Davin at the canteen,
- went to Computer Center to renew my student card and met Christian who was there for the same matter,
- walked back to lab through the Forum bazaar, stopped by the Milo dispenser truck, and was greeted by someone who mistook me for his friend's Beijing friend.
Third encounter was quite amusing. Kiasu-ness led me to take the free Milo. The crowd at the more spacious side of the truck led me to go round to the "back", where only one other student was there. When he greeted me and I didn't recognize him, I approached nevertheless because I thought for a second that he was someone in charge who wanted me to take the glass he'd filled instead. (So far-fetched.)
Upon seeing that I didn't know him, he apologized for being mistaken, but I knew I did forget people, so I tried to extract some explanation. He then asked if I was from Beijing, so I thought maybe I met him (and subsequently forgot him) while I was in Beijing. I said I wasn't, but that I'd been there, and asked if he was from Beijing. (That response would sound very weird if he didn't know my thinking process.)
Then he explained that I really looked like someone his friend (and he, I assume) met at a conference, someone who was from Beijing, that he'd even seen me in SoC before and had been wondering if I was that person.
Some time ago when I registered at the polyclinic, the staff put down my racial information as "Malay" (she didn't ask me about it), maybe because of my name. It would sound more Indian because of the Sanskrit root, but I suppose she took a look at me and knew it couldn't be right.
So, Indian-ish name + Chinese face = Malay? (Surprisingly this is close enough to Indonesian, and she could actually have been well informed in her deduction.) I wonder if I can make use of this nationality-ambiguous identity somehow. =D
But I digress. It so happens that these encounters are related somehow to what came to my mind this morning. I received an email gathering support for the snow-storm victims in China, so I was wondering if the friends I made while in Beijing (one of them from An Hui) and their families were all right.
As for Rimbun and Christian, both of them are my badminton-playing groupmates. The group is in hiatus now, so Rimbun (a regular) asked if we are going to resume, while Christian (a not-so-regular) asked if it was still going on. The topic had also been in my mind this morning because Denny emailed me about jogging plans and I in turn tried to recruit him into the badminton group.
Coincidences make the world go round, don't they. For the many times that my thoughts never lead to anything happening (though when in doubt I would sometimes superstitiously think of all the worst possibilities so that they won't happen) I don't think those thoughts have been strong enough to induce the above events, but I'll be my usual diplomatic self and say, who knows..
