Girls

Whilst having a quiet lunch at a neighborhood restaurant at the corner of Cochrane Street in Central, a little distance from my office, certain thoughts occurred to me. I was seated at a seat close to the middle of the restaurant which was divided into a front and rear portion separated by a shoulder height wooden partition. My seat was next to the wooden partition. Facing me against a side wall of the restaurant was a computer into which the waitresses would have to key in the code name of the relevant dishes and the amount of the bill. As it was nearly  2 p.m., there were not really that many customers both on the outside and the inside.

What set my mind working was a girl. She was constantly walking to and fro in front of me, sometimes going to that computer but frequently for no apparent reason: not either carrying anything in her hands to any customer or removing stuff from the other tables or answering any any call for her service and would cast her eyes towards my direction to see what I was doing. And as she walked, she would unconsciously run her fingers through her hair in the kind of way that Chinese people would describe as "lotus-hand" and would at the same time lift her head in a kind of almost abrupt jerk to emphasize the movement, I suppose, to present what she probably thought her beautiful profile. Originally, whilst eating, my mind was occupied with reflecting on what I should be writing about in my blog on Monday: whether I should write something on Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Valéry, Apollinaire or some other French poets, or on Neruda, Machado, Borges, Lorca or other Spanish poets or just another one on Chiang Hsun or on Matthieu Ricard or something on science etc. I already knew I had to write about tonight's HKPO's concert at Cityhall. But my attention was distracted twice. Twice, the girl approached another older waitress who was engaged in serving several customers at my next table and put both her hands on her shoulders and giggled, again for no apparent reason, right beside me, just like a silly schoolgirl. Maybe she was laughing at her own silliness in thus suddenly putting her hands on the shoulders of the older waitress and leaning the weight of  her body against her back. Maybe, she was hyperactive, just like my mother, my elder brother, my elder daughter and me. Maybe she was just bored at having nothing to do and simply wanted to relieve the kind of tension which boredom may build up in her body and walked to and fro to relieve the nervous tension thus building up inside her.

I felt sorry for the girl. She looked remarkably like one of our young trainees E. Like E, she was about five feet six, has very good features, a longish face, fair skin, a petite straight nose with a tiny tiny cherry like bulb at its tip, delicate nostrils, long moon-shaped eyebrows, long false eye lashes, well shaped mouth with thin lips, intelligent eyes, medium long straight hair flowing over the middle of the nave of her neck and curved slightly inwards. She had a loose fitting grey cotton knitted T-shirt with a wide neck which descended obliquely to about two or three inches below the bottom of her neck, thus exposing part of her white shoulders and the upper part of her back, over a black, hot pant style short skirt over some fish-net stocking with thick black floral threads over her slim shapely legs, the front of which were covered by her purple colored waitress apron. What caught my attention was her face. She looked almost the twin sister of our trainee! The only difference I could see was that there was more of a sparkle and a little fire to the eyes of our trainee which I did not find in those of the waitress. Yet how different their fates.

Our trainee is the daughter of a doctor and a final year student of the London School of Economics. She has a really quick mind which is constantly trying to anticipate what you want. Unless the document is likely to run to more than 10 pages, I would seldom sit down in front of the computer to compose it. I would simply stand beside whoever is helping me with my eyes on the computer screen looking at whatever appeared on the screen as and when the words I dictated to my assistant appeared there, suggesting instant amendments and corrections to whatever I found wrong. Sometimes, I would have to check out the date, the names of the type of documents or the relevant parties or I wanted to put certain words extracted from the relevant documents in quotes or to check out some other factual details I needed in my arguments in my letters or pleadings to the opposite parties or to our clients. On such occasions, the difference between an intelligent and a stupid assistant becomes immediately obvious. E would invariably ask me whether this or that document was what I was looking for and where the kind of information suggested by the context of the sentence I was then dictating could be found in the relevant pile or where within  the relevant document I could find the passage I appeared to be looking for. The stupid assistant would simply stay her fingers over the keyboard and wait for me to dig out the relevant document from the pile of which that document formed part and ran my eyes over it to locate the kind of information I was then looking for. Whenever I pronounced the sound of a word which could refer to a number of possible words, she would invariably pick the right one according to the context so that I needed not spell out the word that I had in mind when I first dictated that word.

It was a joy to work with an intelligent assistant. I suppose that the difference between stupid and intelligent people may be that intelligent people's minds are always ticking and are sensitive to every changes in the context or the external environment and would anticipate what might be needed in the specific circumstances of the case. But in addition, they got another psychological quality which may be lacking in the dim witted: they are not afraid of being found wrong in their guesses. Stupid people on the other hand are either too dull or too lazy to do the anticipation or both dull and lazy and if not, they are too immobilized by their fear of being wrong to make such guesses of what may be needed. They have no confidence in their own judgement. That in turn may be related to their past success or failure in making guesses. Of course, if one's history shows that one is more often right than wrong, one's self confidence would thereby inevitably be boosted such that one will be more encouraged to risk future mistakes than would otherwise be the case. So in a sense, that may be the cumulative result of one's past conduct. Of course, negatively, if one never makes any guesses, one will never be wrong. However, by the same token, one will seldom be right. Those who make an intelligent quess may be wrong but then they may be right too.  If one never starts to anticipate, then although one may not be found wrong, there is not even a possibility that one may be right!

Of course, I have no way of finding out what was the real cause or causes of the one being a waitress in a Central neighborhood restaurant and the other being a trainee which may in a few years become either a solicitor or a barrister. The reason may not be connected to the personal qualities of the waitress at all. It could simply be that one was born into the wrong family. The Buddhists of course might explain it in terms of what the waitress did or failed to do in her previous life or lives. But then one can never be certain, notwithstanding the claim of some monks or Buddhists of being able to see into what one was in one's past life/lives and what one did or failed to do in such past life(ves). To me, that is a realm which bears further exploration. I would not say that in principle that is never possible but I suppose I will have to do further meditations to quieten my own mind, to lessen the interfering noises and to let such noises settle down so that my mind or consciousness becomes completely silent and clear and hence more sensitive to the subtle movements of the various waves of energy vibrating at various frequencies or ultra high frequencies at extremely low energy levels to feel or otherwise enabled to pick up the various waveforms at such frequency and energy levels. If we do not subscribe to the Buddhist belief of the relentless operation of the laws of cause and effect governing what they call the karma of each individual person, then one could attribute the differences in the fates of two young ladies of almost the same age, height, weight, build and appearances to the mysterious and completely random operation of chance! I could not think of any other reason. Or maybe, one needed not try to find any reasons at all!