Idiots

I am no angel. That's the first point I must make clear.

When other people make mistakes I rarely get angry. That's because I make a lot of mistakes myself and expect the same patience to be granted to me.

I've never been more vocal than now since living in the UK. Everyone in this country is entitled to their opinions.

Freedom of speech and democracy thrive in this country. I guess this very attribute has built my confidence to agree as well as to disagree. People agree to disagree in this country and that's what I love about living in the UK.

However, recent events have compelled me to scream out in anger about how frustratingly idiotic people can be.

I respect it when people disagree with me as much as people respect me when I do the same. However, I find it difficult to accept when a disagreement is loosely argued with no convincing fact whatsoever.

Take for example, when I was pushing my bike to the bike rack two days ago, a lady knocked onto me from behind. She screamed, "F***!" I looked behind and there was this pair of eyes from hell staring at me. You could see there was so much anger in them they could've burnt me alive!

I kept quiet and continued pushing the bike forward. The lady raised her voice, "Not even a f**king apology?!"

I stopped, turned around and asked, "Excuse me, how can I knock you if you're behind me? And I was pushing my bike forward!"

The lady stood dumbfounded for a while trying to make sense of what I said (and probably never expected a Chinese fella to retort) and then went away mumbling profanities. Out of a sudden, she blurted, "Let God judge!"

I shrugged my shoulder and was like, okay, whatever.

In Brighton, there was a mother and a toddler. The toddler was probably 3 years old. We were in a bus and seated near each other. I have been observing the toddler throwing food at a passenger in front and screaming in excitement. She was doing that for five minutes but the old lady in front couldn't be bothered. The mother didn't apprehend the child too.

When the toddler bent in front and started screaming down at the old lady, the lady turned back and put the index finger at her lips and did a "shhh" at the toddler. You would think, alright, nothing wrong with that. I would have done the same and maybe done it much earlier.

Suddenly the mother screamed out, "Excuse me!", she repeated to get the old lady's attention, "Excuse me! How dare you!" The lady was trying to explain to the mother that the child was disturbing her and pointed at the fragments of food she threw at her. The old lady apologised nonetheless.

Even though it was none of my business, other passengers and I who saw the incident shook our heads in disbelief. I was probably looking at the most idiotic mother and spoilt child in the world!

At work I delegated a task via email to a person and as usual with a deadline. Three hours later, the person came to my workstation and told me that it was rude to put a deadline to her task. The argument was that a deadline would put unnecessary stress onto her and that I should've believed that she would deliver the work for me on time.

Thinking that the issue was resolved, she escalated the matter to the manager without my knowing. The manager spoke to me and concurred that I've done the right thing. In a joking manner, the manager assuaged the situation with a banter to her, "Of course a deadline is important! Especially in this project! Without a deadline, nobody will have a bloody clue when to deliver the games!"

In Malaysia, a conversation was recorded between a rude customer and a customer service officer of a paid TV company. My thoughts in a nutshell of what I mean by dealing with idiots:



**There are two more parts if you're interested.**