Conversations

With the Laundry Man - Tue 6 Dec
It’s been only three days that I’ve been back, and I have not lost the Perugian ‘’sociable-ness’’.

In Perugia, people make time for one another, and chat casually.

Today I had a pleasant conversation with John, the dry-clean delivery man. I enquired about his wife’s health, and he asked about my trip. I learnt about their impending trip to Egypt with his whole extended family, a ‘’gift’’ paid for by their son, and about how his wife would enjoy it and should go, despite the advanced state of cancer that she is in now.

To think that I used to be mad with John’s long-windedness and slowness in handling the form-filling when he picked up my clothes at the office. I am the busy executive always in a hurry and have little time.

To think that I was once mad with him for not showing up at the appointed time, and was pretty inflexible as he tried to ask for half an hour’s extension. It was only later when he showed up that he explained the reason – he had been stuck at the hospital as he had to accompany his wife who was going through her cancer ‘’relapse’’.

With the Captain - Fri 9 Dec
Anu and I wanted to watch the sunrise at Four Friends, Captain Blake’s boat. He invited us to breakfast. We started talking about Shakespeare, Kipling and Emily Bronte.

Anu said that somehow Shakespeare lost relevance for her, that other authors have written about the same themes in a ‘’better’’ way. Captain differed. I suggested that Shakespeare’s themes are still relevant today, except perhaps he has not written about the sense of alienation in the modern world.

He liked my comment. And we went further… the modern world can be so ‘’uniform’’ and ‘’boring’’. Every where you go you see ‘’standardisation’’ [‘’globalisation’’ is the ‘’better word’’ here – in signages, in transport system, in currency (eg Euro), etc] - so much so that a great chunk of history is lost (esp. trashing certain currencies to adopt the Euro) and you can get ‘’disappointed’’ when you visit another country and see the same things. I was at a mall in Jakarta this July and it felt like I was in one of Singapore’s non-descript malls – there was BreadTalk, Mphosis, Guardian…We talked about ‘’quality and pace of life’’, about how Singapore can afford to slow down and be less materialistic and still be happy….

Anu argued that Singapore cannot afford to slow down – that though we work very hard, we have a good life, and a good, sound system. Compare us with other countries – developed ones, or poor ones – whose systems do not even encourage people to work, because of the dole system, for example.

Captain clarified – no we are not saying we don’t continually improve, but don’t ignore the human expect – the balance that New Zealanders seem to be able to find.

I explained – we are trapped. We work in companies that tell us we are never good enough. We slaved for the company, we clinched big contracts, we made huge profits. But shareholders say this is not enough. They say it’s good but it’s not enough. More can be made – either through more sales, more profit, cutting costs, acquiring another company or merging with another. That’s the only way to increase the value of your company and share price. (And fatten shareholders’ bank accounts, I guess.)

Captain Blake kept telling us to ‘’take our time to enjoy the sea, no hurry’’. Yet we had our habit – of time-keeping, of rushing, of keeping to our ‘’goal’’. The leader of the MIS team building session could not help reminding us about time keeping and the time to meet – for our obstacles/ team challenges.