We never stop learning. My firmest beliefs in one matter or another comes from lessons in life imparted by people, events and literature who’ve made a big impression on me through the years. So, here’s a new series of posts that I’ll write about these lessons.:)
The first in this series is about something we were discussing about during bible study last Friday on the topic of how love grows and matures in a marriage. At one point we were reflecting on how each of our spouses have changed from courtship to marriage, and Ling shared that I’m less patient than I used to be before marriage.
Truth to tell though, I don’t think that’s entirely accurate. It’s not that I’m impatient. Rather, I just absolutely hate wasting time. Not that I can guarantee always being punctual for every thing I attend to, but in my consciousness not being on time is a huge thing to me.
OK, so what’s the story behind this belief? Well it came from my Godmother. 17 years ago I was in NTU and in debating. Now, students being students, some of us routinely came late for our training sessions. My Godmother was a much-loved teacher among students in the faculty, and usually soft-spoken. She never yelled at the late comers, but there was no mistaking her immense displeasure.
She said in a very steady tone of voice that if the latecomers felt other things were more important for them when training sessions were scheduled, she was fine with it. However, it was a entirely different matter to keep others waiting. It certainly wasn’t fair to waste other people’s time when they were punctual only to wait for others who weren’t, and entirely disrespectful if it became a regular occurrence.
Not that what she said changed the team entirely of course. But after I became Captain of the faculty team from my second year, I insisted on punctuality from my debaters and no hesitation “cracking the whip” (as my Godmother said jokingly of me) at the latecomers.
That belief has sustained from that point in 1992 to 2009. Heck, when we were making arrangements for our wedding banquet at Carlton Hotel in 2006, I told Ling that I wanted to start the banquet at 7:45 pm sharp, regardless if all our guests had arrived.
To contextualize things a bit, Singaporeans have a terrifically bad habit of arriving fashionably late for wedding banquets, and it’s not uncommon for banquets to start an hour after stated time and end past 11 pm.
I was determined to do my bit. So, the message was passed to relatives and guests via parents and in-laws, politely, that we were going to start our banquet on time.
As it happened, the message got through. Our banquet started at 8 pm, which wasn’t too bad all things considered. Could had been worse LOL. And thanks to a relatively punctual start time, the banquet was a wrap just before 10 pm.
Nowadays, every semester I get students writing in their feedback forms that they wished I’d let up on this punctuality thing. But the real issue isn’t about starting late. It’s about getting everyone synced so that no one wastes time. 0915 class too early? That’s OK. We’ll start at 0915 then. Everyone arrives then at 0915, but everyone has to come by then so no one waits.
That’s really just it.
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