Patience

I think as I become older, my patience ran out faster.. Sometimes I do wonder why older folks tend to be more quick tempered and grumpy.. And I am beginning to wonder if I will fall into the same category in even earlier stage of my life. It is not that I am running out of patience with my 2 boys, I almost walked away from a recent gathering with my ex-school mates when we are scheduled for a weekend lunch.

What was agreed in the email was that we were supposed to meet at 12 noon for a lunch in a place which is not connected to any stores - a famous bak gu teh along havelock. Residing in the furthest end of north-east area, I made an effort to leave home on time to catch a train ( cos difficult to catch cab) in a sat morning. So happened that it began pouring heavily that I was trapped at tiong bahru station and obviously cab queue was awfully long then, I decided to play my luck by taking a bus towards Zion Rd hoping that rain would just stopped by the time I reached. And indeed it subsided substantially so I took a short walk to the gathering point.

I was just 5 mins early to 12pm and I began texting the gals informing them abt my presence and checking who's near. All of them told me that they were be late and to my horror, almost half the gang were still at home! I know it is a habitual behavior that this group of gals tend to turn up late, but I wouldn't expect them to have missed their appt by more than half an hour.

I was obviously disappointed and vexed. And thought the time spent waiting in an isolated ulu place can be better spent with the boys at home and I do treasure my weekends alot since I am caught up on most times in the weekdays with work. I didn't walk out from the lunch eventually and managed to contain my unhappiness throughout the lunch. While it is true that it's really difficult to coordinate a gathering like this since 2 out of 7 travel most of the time but I do appreciate if my friends can spare more thoughts for their own friends by making an
effort to be punctual for appointments instead of spending their time to work on full make up on their faces for a lunch catch up. As the years go by, I have learnt not to take things or people around you for granted. I don't know when this group of my friends will learn to be more sensitive but they have now led me to think twice about turning up for the next gathering. It's sad but I certainly won't want to end up wasting my time on friends who consistently turn up awfully late for each gethering.