Another Hallmark moment - one small step for man/woman

Last Thursday, our clerk at the office, Rose, was finally reunited with her mother after 20 years of being apart. And all it took, with the grace of God, was the deceivingly small but extra efforts of a handful of people, some of whom Rose had never met before in her life. It was an almost unbelievable story, an urban legend, a Hallmark feel good movie with all the cliches of a Malay melancholy drama and all true.

Rose was not yet 2 years old when her parents split and her paternal grandmother forcibly took her away from her young timid helpless mother and raised her, feeding her untrue stories of how "heroically" her grandmother had saved her from the very bad person who was her mother. The years passed and it was not an easy life for Rose, her unemployed loserville of a father, the doted mama's boy who was the apple of his mother's eye scrounging off his daughter who had to earn her own and his living as soon as she finished school. It was only after awhile that Rose shared with us her story of not knowing where her mother was, she is a tough proud girl who didn't want anyone's pity.

We tried to search for her mother, using the old identity card particulars in Rose's birth certificate, but the last known address at the JPN registry was incomplete but we drove around with her around Taman Sri Rampai area anyway, trying to look for it in case we got lucky. We did a bankruptcy search at the official assignee's office but no results. We didn't know any banker well enough who was willing to do a CCRIS search for us. The months passed. The only other option was to appoint a private investigator but that would be costly with no guarantees of success. And here is where the miracle began.

While covering for my colleague, Sabs, who had gone on umrah [side story but important point here - Sabs had asked us at the office what we wanted her to pray for while she was on umrah. Being the shallow person that I am, I asked her to pray for me to be rich. Rose had asked Sabs to pray for her to find her mother] I thought of doing a CTOS search on her mother, but since CTOS doesn't entertain adhoc request searches other than by an accountholder, I called my old boss, whose firm has a CTOS account. She in turn instructed her company secretary J, to do the search. Since we only had the old identity card number and not the new one, J asked another staff member V for help to get the new IC number. J then asked another colleague, AK to do an informal CTOS search. Through the initial search, AK found that Rose's mum had been a guarantor to an errant borrower. He found contact details of the said borrower and tried to find out from him further details on his guarantor. AK managed to get some facts but still a dead end. Then AK did one step further, he contacted his buddies at EPF and the tax department. Death and taxes. I hadn't even thought of the tax department. Disco. His tax department buddy found Rose's mum, right down to her latest details, current workplace, direct line, etc. You want it, the tax department had it. AK told my old boss, my old boss called me. I called Rose. That evening Rose met her mother for the first time in 20 years. Tears, wonder, disbelief at the possibility of having your heart's desire coming true.

Throughout all this, all players in this search could have easily just said, this is not my problem, this is not my job scope or did the barest minimal, busy with their own tasks and duties. J could have just reported to my old boss that it was impossible to do the search without the new IC number. AK could have just done the CTOS search and stopped there. On a smaller, least important scale, I could have just listened to Rose's sad story, hugged her and not get involved otherwise.

But I guess the lesson of this miraculous reunion between Rose and her mother is, sometimes, you don't need to do grand gestures, sometimes you just have to care only a little bit more, do just a small extra bit above what you're obliged to do and the impact could be momentous to one person. Just one person. Sometimes, that's all you need to affect.

God, that sounds like a political manifesto. First dibs and full copyrights on that sound bite!

A good day. I felt like superwoman and all I did was just dial a number.

Birds of the same feather

I don't know if it's coincidence or selective perception but it sometimes seems that when you're going through something or longing for something, you keep bumping into people who are either in the same boat or have what you long for in spades.

When I was struggling to get pregnant, I kept bumping into a seemingly endless conveyor belt of pregnant friends and now as I am going through some, hmm, how can I put this delicately, non-self imposed "drought", I keep meeting old friends who surprisingly are having the same "drought" issues with their spouses. Last Friday I had a very enjoyable lunch with an old colleague who I used to work with but had lost touch for about 7 years when we both left the said firm and after exchanging stories about what had happened to us since then, we somehow found ourselves talking about relationships, first in general, and then gradually to our own and here is the thing I enjoy most about being in your 30s - you don't give a crap anymore and can be totally, embarassingly, -no-holds-barred-even-too-much-information-on-bodily-functions honest and wholly candid especially when talking with an old friend. And so our original lunch hour reunion turned longer and longer as for the first time I believe, we really talked with one another, deeply and honestly, about what's up or rather not up, in our lives. And it was so relieving and comforting to really let it all out and share with someone who knew exactly what I am going through. We didn't solve anything, we didn't resolve anything, but it felt good. Really good. And as I am beginning to learn as I head towards the inevitable path to 40, life is not about the destination (goodbye "I shall be a millionaire by the time I turned 30" which never happened) but about good moments with good friends and loved ones along the way. And you can't get more Hallmark than that.