I can’t help but think I am new to this world, you know…despite
my age. What happened yesterday really left me feeling bewildered and disappointed
in myself.
A couple of days ago, on Saturday to be exact, I had my
vaccination and later that day the numbing pain in my arm started to present
itself. On Sunday I felt the numbing pain getting more painful and intense and
a slight fever ensued and for some reason almost resulted into a panic attack.
Fast forward to Monday morning when I was feeling better an
old acquaintance from the surau, messaged me around 8 in the morning. He should
be at least 65 years of age and is a millionaire, I am pretty sure.
Anyways, since I resigned from my present job, I asked him if
he had any openings. I had asked him some years back too but as usual it went
ignored. He owns a company which is pretty successful.
Most of my rich, successful acquaintances, when asked for
help with a job either ignored me or just gave some sort of lips service. This I
learned from years of experience though at times I can be too much of an
optimist.
It is true the saying, ‘laugh and the world laughs with you,
cry and you cry alone.’
Back to the old man, he asked if I was free and if I could
accompany him to his office. His exact words were, “hari ni saya nak pergi ofis
u nak ikut just see what u can do”. Pleasantly
surprised I of course said yes. I thought that maybe my prayers were answered.
He picked me up at home and we were on our way. As soon as
we reached the office, which was also his warehouse, he said that he had to
drop some goods off. I didn’t give it much thought, I even helped in carrying
some of the boxes out of the car.
Once we were done, we went up to his office and he asked me
to check his PC, I did the basic clean-up, and the performance of the machine seemed
better than it was before.
He then asked me if I could check some of the other machines
in his office, I said yes. During that time, a 14-foot lorry arrived in front
of his office with 8 huge pallets of energy drinks. Each pallet contained 100+ cartons
of energy drinks.
For some reason, whilst I was about to check on the PC’s, he
asked me to come down with him. I obliged. Once I was down, I saw only one guy
loading off the drinks from the lorry whereas there were two others arranging
the drinks in the warehouse. He added later that one of his staff was on leave.
I decided to help. I didn’t realize what I had gotten myself
into. The weather was really hot and It was now 2 hours since I started lending
a hand. It was physically draining, and I was worried about my arm. It was some
months since I last exercised, so this was quite the ‘workout’.
I reached the office at 9.45 in the morning and left the
office around 3 in the afternoon. Exactly when all the drinks were offloaded. I
was paid with lunch.
As I reached home, I was already drained. I washed up and
just feeling a little cheated, but I didn’t give much thought of it.
Today, I felt like this was all probably planned by the old
man. I went there thinking that I was going to be interviewed but what I did
was hard labour. It wasn’t just exhausting, but free of charge. When we talked,
he kept speaking about his children and professing on how much he loved them
but am I also not someone’s child?
Today, I couldn’t lift up my hands, my back hurts, my leg
hurts, my prayers obviously weren’t answered, and I feel like I am really new
to this world. I can see why millionaires are millionaires.
