melanie's blog

cash

It was quite an interesting day for me... at least something different enough and worth a mention amidst my boring routine. I went to the bank this afternoon to get my bank draft. Just as I walked upstairs, I was shocked by the amount of people standing around in wait to be served. I wondered why! I didn't bother much about the people around as I needed to fill in the form in order to get my draft. Found a seat and started filling it up. When I had finished with my form, I looked up and to I found half of those people gone. Hmmm.. how strange.

1276, 1277, 1278, and those were the number shown on the screen. Mine was 2208, a different category all together. I wondered how long i have to wait. After a good 10 minutes, they started to call for number beginning with 2. Good sign for me. 2198, the screeen flashed... No one responsed. 2199, no one responded. 2200, no one responded again... This went on all the way till 2208 as I had hoped. Hehe.. not complaining!! (and i found a park right outside the bank too!!!)

Submitted the form and the cash to the lady at the teller and found out she was my senior at secondary school. She recognised me at once and knew i was one year her junior. Hmmm. Put me to shame only... i only vaguely remember her.

That was not the interesting part though. What happened was while i was waiting for the draft to be issued, this old uncle was being served by the same lady. He was just an ordinary frail-looking old man in his 60s, but what i found out about this old man surprised me. I wasn't paying much attention to him and what his transaction was until the lady told her 'semua ialah lapan puluh satu ribu enam ratus ringgit', with the intention of helping to translate if he doesn't understand malay well. You know, he's got this chinese-old-uncle look. By the way, that bunch of words meant 'this sums up to RM81,600 in total'.

"That is a lot of money" I thought to myself. What i did not anticipate was that this uncle started to take out stacks and stacks of cash from his DHL-sort-of-bag , counting and passing them to the lady. By the time we got to 60,000, his bag was already empty. He further surpised me when he lift up his shirt and started to take out more cash that was tuck all around his pants. I was taken aback and amazed by what i saw.

After passing the right amount of cash to the lady, he started to talk to me. "A lot of money ah!!!' he told me in Mandarin. He also told me how relieved he felt after handing the money over. "It was for business", he added. This uncle is quite a brave man. He said that he often had to carry a lot of money like this and he had been robbed twice. He was robbed of more than RM100,000 in cash the previous time and the two big scars on his left arm are what is left to tell the story. My heart sank as i listened to the story of this frail-looking man. I felt so sorry for what he had gone through but at the same time very proud of him. He did not give up on life. He may look old, weak and frail on the outside, he is strong inside.

At the end of our short conversation, i said "Bye uncle" and told him to be careful. Felt like giving him a hug but thought it wasn't appropriate. =) Oh well, God bless him.

registered mail

i received a pink card from the post office this morning, and that means that i have a registered mail to be collected. For a moment i was pretty excited for i am expecting 2 mails and it could be either. But before i got too excited, i saw the name written on the pink card and immediately my excitement diminished. My chinese name was written on the card and i just know it couldn't be any of the mail i am expecting. So boring...

Anyway, i drove out to pick it up hoping it would be something good at least. Sigh... To my great disappointment and dismay, it was a 'saman' for traffic offense. What the!!! and the offense was dated 9 Nov 2005. My goodness... that 's a good 3 months for them to process it... what did i do that day? and the offense was something i couldn;t understand either... something about '30 foot from something something...' oh well. speechless. as what the singaporean would say, it is so 'potong steam'.