The hotel is in the same complex as our office and a huge shopping mall with a multitude of restaurants, so the full work week in Jakarta turned into a hotel-office-mall-hotel-office-mall-hotel routine and I did not get to take in a breath of fresh air in 5 days.
One evening, all three of us set off on a hunt for a large suitcase. We were cruising around the mall in search of a Samsonite and eventually started turning to shop assistants for directions. Some did not understand or speak English well enough, but were very open, smiley and willing to assist. They seemed sincerely upset if unable to help and would normally start looking for a colleague who might know better. Nor did they seem irritated when my friend was explaining his very complicated size demands: the girl immediately produced a tape measure and started diligently checking the height and diagonal of the largest available suitcases, so pleased to be assisting us that a smile never left her face throughout this time-consuming and fastidious exercise.
“I’m having a déjà vu for Istanbul again”, I said, wondering what the feeling was. My colleague caught the essence of it, beaming: “It’s such a pleasure to see people here smile so generously. They don’t smile in Hong Kong. I was so thirsty for a smile, back there they are all just so serious, almost solemn!”
No comments:
Post a Comment