It would seem that I would wake up to a usual Friday, with my days planned out accordingly, where I’m expected to have meetings and then have a home-cooked dinner with my family as usual capping the week over to the weekend.
But as it’s a long weekend for most people, I’m working due to having international clients.
However, my wife had a task to have my kids renew their passports and that’s where the odds of having a pretty-much-planned-out Friday turned topsy turvy.
The universe has its ways to flip the world upside down even if you didn’t ask for it — and maybe for a good reason.
I had no intent to leave the house, in fact that’s far from my ideal Friday plan as I’d anticipate a lot of movement, traffic and crowds. Ideally, I’d love to stay away from crowds as much as possible.
Due to some unpredictable circumstances, my wife had to make 3 trips to the National Registration Dept due to a long queue and she decided to drop the kids back off after they were done and they were getting cranky and out of control.
That decision lead to the 3rd trip which was to bring the kids back to the NRD to receive their passports due to the fact that they need to have their thumbprints stamped and printed on their signature page. Previously kids do not need to have those done or it’s stamped exempted if they are under 2 years of age.
Long story short, that move made me leave the house to send the kids over to the NRD and while waiting for my wife and kids, I had two choices.
- To stay in the car and wait for them, given that parking was limited.
- To walk into the hall and meet them in case they need help.
I chose 2.
Little did I know, I would bump into a childhood friend who’s about to get married soon and by sheer chance, I recognised the friend and greeted her. If I chose convenience, which was option 1, I’d miss out on this opportunity to say hello for another 20 years likely.
I probably haven’t met her for easily 20 years.
After catching up, exchanging numbers. I moved on with my family.
My wife being tired as she was, wanted to eat out and that’s where I decided to drive to a local mall to grab dinner before heading back home.
That decision led to another fork of decision making.
I said, let’s go to Mall 1, my wife said she’d prefer Mall 2 because she’ll be going to Mall 1 tomorrow. So I said alright sure.
So once again, with a split decision and the timing being as such, heading towards the escalator upwards, I chanced upon another long time friend of easily 16 years with his family from the USA.
To say what are the odds of bumping into two long-time friends who are no longer staying in Malaysia and are in town is mind-boggling to say the least.
But I’m writing this here so that I’ll remember that this day happened and it’s worth noting that this made the end of June pretty darn funny.
Actually on a separate note, I did bump into another person whom I also haven’t met for more than 15 years and it was on a separate occasion at the same mall that I bumped into my USA friend today.
Grateful to have met friends over the years and are still able to call them friends even though we’ve not met for years and speak from where we left off.
What a gift and what pleasure to be able to enjoy such a beautiful and simple thing of life and friendship.