Searchlight

Today i travelled halfway round Singapore to help thomas, my tennis coach cum tutor, in a small tennis tournament. I was to be ballkid co-ordinator and basically, a helping hand. So it was just a quadrangular round robin tournament and the inactive players and a few other people were to be the ballkids. Ive had minimal ballkid training when they were seacrching for some for the Austailian Open back in 2006. I didnt make it though but I still remember a bit. It was fun. Earned me $20 too. This $20 was used to top-up my EZlink and donated the other 10 to the drug abuse thing. Just came back actually.

Halloween is also on the way. I will find it very hard to get home now since the whole entrance is blocked off by purple glow-in-the-dark "cobwebs" bought from toys-r-us. I wonder how that ties in with me being the phantom of the opera though... haha. Other things happening are the PLTC next week and... well nothing much else. The school robbed us off 1 week of school holiday, making us come back for remedial classes and having to sit for an Amaths retest... damn.

Earlier today I was on the MRT and I saw something quite... thought-provoking. There was this reasonably young chinese family stuck in the crowded car with a pram and a baby with an older child about 3 years old. The baby in the pram was making quite a lot of noise and there were mixed reactions from the crowd. Some of the older people wanted the baby to shut up by the expression on their faces. Some purposely looked in that "tch" manner. Majority of the train tried to keep their cool. Some of the youth had that "awwwww" expression on their faces too. But that wasnt the point.

Now the family was quite a happy family and the dad was trying to keep the baby silent, giving both children a biscuit in a wrapper. the Mum was on the seat and seeing her husband trying to take care of her 2 offspring, held out her hand for the older child. This is the part. The young one probably thought that her mother wanted the biscuit but Mum just wanted her alone.


Sometimes we spend so much time searching for something to help another person feel happier, feel better. We spend so much time on it that sometimes, we forget what we are really doing. The drug guy did ask for a donation but probably, what he really needed was probably, just my attention. The donation might have been a plus. Its like we're carrying these huge searchlights, looking for something but that something, might just be what we already have, what we already can do. What some people really want, is us. Not our money. I learnt that giving, is not being generous in gifts and money, but to be generous in our heart. What we really need, is already here with us to give. So, I turn off my searchlight.

~Markyc