Les Petits Contes

About life's little observations, which matter. About hilarious situations, which illuminate. About stories which offer immense possibilities, open endings, different interpretations and perspectives.

Name:
Location: Asia, Singapore

Melancholic but with a quirky sense of humour

Thursday, November 04, 2004

An Arresting Moment


As I bounded up the stairs to my office this morning, after an exhilarating work out and fitball session, I stopped abruptly in the middle of the staircase. Something beautiful caught my eye.

It was a leaf, stuck on one of the many glass windows next to the staircase. It brought a smile to me. It stirred my jaded heart, downcast spirit and tired mind!

Funny how something so simple and unexpected arrested me. I immediately rang a colleague to ask him to help me take a picture of it with his digital camera.

It must have been my day – he happened to have it with him and was actually using it at the time I rang him.

So we spent the next half hour or more trying to capture some nice shots of the window and my leaf. There were a few others strewn in a very nice manner at the windowsill too. Towards the end of the session a dewdrop actually trickled, ever so stealthily, out of the leaf… so pretty. I stood thinking, ‘’ have I gone mad?’’ as colleagues passed us in bemusement. Someone asked, ‘’oh what’s so special? So sorry, I can’t appreciate - not so artistic like you…’’

It was not easy to capture the shot I wanted. Our eyes see in 3D and interpret things. We cut out the background and frame the vision only we want to see. The camera however captures things in 2D and renders many things ‘’literally’’.

My very helpful colleague somehow agreed to interrupt his work to go take that picture for me. He was very conscientious in the whole exercise too. We were both really busy with so much work, but this ‘’break’’ was well worth our sanity.

Sometime back there had been several prospects for me to leave Gemplus to work elsewhere. At that time I already started to ‘’know’’ what I would miss if I left. It’s not the work, the pay or the company that I will miss.

It is small things like my runs at the Kent Ridge Park, the lovely views and feeling I get each time I am there, and ‘’arresting moments’’ like today’s leaf. And of course colleagues like Dickson, who took the picture without asking why, at all.