nice day.

the one about the suspicious woman

I was on my way to tuition today when I was stopped by a middle aged woman. It was raining rather heavily as I treaded along the wet pavement outside centrepoint towards Orchard Plaza. Plugged in to the sounds of Oasis, I was certainly caught by surprise when I was suddenly halted by this rather small sized woman. She was dressed rather simply and looked decent enough.

At first I thought she was doing some survey or selling some product, but on second thought, she looked too shabby to be doing so. Ever since I read some email my mum sent me about hypnotism by strangers, I have always been wary whenever any stranger comes up to talk to me.

Anyway, this is how the conversation went(mostly in english):

Woman: Hello, do you know how to speak mandarin?
Me: (feeling wary) Erm yea.
Woman: You know english and mandarin?
Me: (thinking it's some stinking survey) Erm yea.
Woman: I just came down from Malaysia..

Me thinking she probably needs a translator or something

Woman: I need to buy porridge...(yada yada yada)..grandma(blah blah).. 3 children...(talk cok)..give me money..

Me with uberfast reflexes and loads of bright ideas

Me: I don't carry cash. I only use my 'xin yong ka' to buy things.
Woman: Nevermind then.

Ok, that's about what happened. Can't really recall the entire conversation. Regarding my last line, I really meant POSB card when I said 'xin yong ka', which meant credit card. And it was really a retarded excuse. I can't possibly use my POSB card to settle all my transactions right? I didn't think anyone would buy it. Of course she did. It was probably one of the thousand excuses she heard that day.

The way she 'let me off' so easily also suggested that she was lying. If you were that desperate, you wouldn't behave that way. She was probably trying her luck on everyone she saw, heck care the plot, heck care the lousy acting, heck care if anyone really gave a heck care about her. She was probably turned down so many times that she was so bored and decided to approach everyone, hoping someone would be dumb enough to take in her story and give her 5 bucks for her 'porridge'.

I remember at one point when I glanced at her suspiciously, she actually gave me that big-eyed innocent look. I wonder if she ever looked into the mirror when she was doing that. C'mon! Even if you decided to go basking, you had to rehearse first right? Even those ah lians and ah lian wannabes who do that (look down slightly and raise eyebrows upwards) look much better than her. Whoever it is, it never fails to irritate me. Not unless you are Jun Ji Hyeon, of course.

Being a GP student, I have always been told to give 2 sides of the argument. Therefore, in the interest of fairness, I'll just have to say that the woman may actually be telling the truth (surprise surprise) and that she has put in 'considerable' effort in her attempt to make me part with my money. That's about it, I guess.

Well..in the end, I guess she just has her reasons for doing so. Of course, it would do her better if she could get a simple job with a stable income (it's easy if you aren't picky). Or maybe she is just here on a short term basis, and is really in need of money. But how would anyone know? I don't believe her, seriously. Going around asking for money isn't really nice right?

A side note: Depending too much on your POSB card/credit card for transactions instead of using money will actually cause the transactions demand for money to fall. This will in turn result in the Liquidity Preference Curve dropping a few notches, resulting in the lowering of the interest rate. I forgot what happened next.

posted by weihao @ 10:50 PM