Thursday, December 7, 2006

Richard Lee is coming to town ( to the tune of Santa Claus is coming to town )

I can't remember if I've written this before, my friend Richard is coming to town for a few days end of January 07. Finally! After I was utterly disappointed of his boss asking another guy to come in his place early this year.

It won't be his first trip here, since I've played his tour guide many years back. And the next time was during my wedding.

The story goes on how I met him :
It was the year 1999, when he was my passenger on way to Melbourne. Was working in Business Class and I did the stupidest thing by mixing up his surname with another. I mean, if I mixed up his surname with the passenger sitting next to him is still excusable. But I got mixed up with the passenger sitting across him. He was in 15C and in the passenger manifest list was reflected as Mr Lee, the other was in a Mr Young in 15H. I don't know somehow I usually have to find ways to memorize all the passengers' names in Business Class. So in that instance, I popped my head out from the galley and saw a Mr Lee - angmoh guy? Across him Mr Young - a chinese guy? He did correct me twice "I'm Mr Lee", thankfully he wasn't annoyed with this idiot stewardess who kept calling him wrong name but was very polite with it. Then, the more he corrected me. The more I kept reminding myself 'angmoh is Lee, chee-nah is Young' but dunno why, I think the more I think about not confusing myself, got me confused further. And I greeted another one time. Phew! He didn't ask to see my Inflight Supervisor(IFS) at that time to complaint against me.
I didn't bother much with him during the first half of the flight, coz' we were basically busy and he was busy with his work. After some time, went out to do some PR with the passengers and apologised to him. Well, Lee is also an Irish surname which I then found out. We talked and then I moved on to do PR with others. But somehow that cabin is so small, that when I do my patrolling he stops me and chats with me. My Chief Steward (CS) got worried, asked me "he trying to gao-sua you huh?" "Chey! I never want to romantize with any of my passengers or cabin crew." In my years of flying, I do get the "can I have your number" from my passengers (just like any other crew) but I didn't like the idea of giving out my numbers freely to passengers. If I felt comfortable, I would (still) only give my email address. So far, I've gained a few friends out of the 'passenger list.'

After that trip and the bloopies, we met when I was in London (he's English). And kept contact by emails. He's such a friendly chap that he made friend with another New Zealander lady, whom he later introduced to me (and I'm still in contact with her).
During my wedding, he met my other English friends and he became their friends too! I was pretty surprised when he invited them to the US for his wedding. He re-located to US one year after I got to know him.

His wedding was in 2002, and the next time I met my friends was in early Jan 05 when I made a trip to Europea. In October the same year, we dropped by his place in Princeton. That's the time when Athena finally met him. She immediately took a liking to him. It's quite strange coz' she normally needs some warming up. Maybe she thinks he's Santa Claus.
Athena remembers the black cat - Kiki in his place. And when I told her he is coming to Singapore, her reply was "ohh...........that uncle with the nuts nuts?" I thought she meant "nuts"as in crazy. But she kept telling me "got alot of nuts on the floor? in the garden? you remember?'' Then i remembered it's the acorns we saw on the big patch of land outside his home

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