I finally found the time. I bought the tongs a few months ago from Shopee, and today I stepped outside to fix the plants across my place. One thing led to another and I cleaned up the space outside and the neighbouring park a bit.
As I was picking up rubbish from the bottom of a small bush, I hear a man’s voice call out from the back of the row of houses across a small lane from the edge of the park.
“Hey, don’t pick that!” he said in Cantonese.
“It’s alright”, I replied.
“I put it there, so don’t pick that up.“
He sounded vaguely embarrassed, and I knew why. I was picking up used sanitary napkins - several were openly dumped beneath the bush instead of his rubbish bin. For what reason, I don’t know.
“It’s alright, no worries, I’m just picking them up and throwing them away” I said. .“Don’t worry, I’m not going to use them for black magic” I joked. There was no reply, and he kept quiet.
So I went on, covered the small park, and as I was heading back, one of the neighbours said thank you to me. I laughed and said “it’s good exercise for me”. Especially since I don’t think running again is a good idea just yet.
Ask I walked towards my front gate I see my other neighbours - two sisters living on their own who have always been kind to me - pushing a long DIY’d pole against the tree across their house.
“Hello! What are you doing?” I asked. “Can I help?”
The younger sister said “yes, hahaha”. They were trying to pick papayas from the tall papaya tree. “I’m not tall enough” the sister with the pole said as she unsuccessfully tried to reach the fruits with the pole.
So I walked over (with my mask on of course), took the pole from her and started poking at the fruits. They came down one by one, and I handed the pole back to them. They wanted to give me some but I said thanks but no, I’m not a big fan of papayas and I said my goodbye. They seemed happy.
It’s little things like these that make a good day for me, and it has been a good Sunday so far.
Yeah. :)
