[YourExcellency]

Liz
A little visual on Liz – She looked about 28 then, with flawless porcelain skin on her face, long jet black hair and strangely, even though she wasn’t drop dead gorgeous, she looked immaculate in everyway. Have you ever met someone like that? From her long smooth silky hair to her manicured fingernails, down to her well-cut clothes and expensive looking patent leather slip-ons, she looked like

1). She has a rich father
2). A movie star
3). A kept woman

I offered to help her get somewhere where she could rest her ankle more comfortably, and so, I half-supported her, getting heavenly whiffs of her perfume (Chanel, I later found out) and she slowly hobbled over to the shade where there was another bench she could put her feet up to reduce the blood congestion. Unfortunately for her, she was wearing a skirt and she tried to fold her legs to avoid sitting in an unladylike manner. Trying to be a gentleman, I took off my blazer and covered her feet with it. We decided to just let her ankle rest and I told her if she wanted, I could just sit with her and keep her company till she felt confident of walking.

Me: “你好， 我叫Leo， 我是新加坡來的遊客”
Liz: “你好！很感謝你那麼好， 真不好意思還要麻煩你！”
Me: “小姐， 別那麼說， 如果不幫你， 我會很過意不去！聽你的普通話不像是本地人！（Switching to Cantonese) "你系唔系廣東人？”
Liz: "嗨, 我叫Liz, 我系香港人！ 無該逝你幫我！”

With that, we had found a common language, and started chatting heartily. After about 30 minutes of resting, I got up and went to buy her a bottle of water, as I too was getting thirsty.

*Note that though I consider myself to be a good entertainer, I am usually reserved and only open myself up when I am with close friends, and do not usually like meaningless conversations as I find them too tiring to keep up (or the truth be told, I have a tendency to constantly yawn during boring meaningless chitchat) And just so you get some background on this story, I was happily attached with a kid and had no intentions of being unfaithful*


It turned out that she was staying in the same hotel as myself, so we slowly made our way back to the hotel when she felt good enough to hobble along. We made plans to meet the following day if her ankle got better and do some sightseeing together since we were both free. The next morning, I received a call in the room and sure enough it was her, and she said the swelling had gone down and she felt good enough to explore the city once again. We agreed to meet up at the hotel lobby as soon as we were ready. Just before going down, I called the hotel concierge and asked if we could hire a van and a driver, and the hotel concierge was nice enough to arrange transportation for us at a cost of RMB1200 a day.

City Tour
We had a great day touring the city and the outskirts, and enjoyed ourselves in the van, chatting among ourselves and the driver, absorbing all the little nitty gritty details about the history and the culture that our driver had to share with us. Time passed quickly and before we knew it, it was lunchtime... The driver took us to a restaurant and allowed us to alight, and told us that he would pick us up after our lunch.

A waiter showed us to a table for two, and we ordered a nice but inexpensive lunch. Liz was a easy person to eat with, not too fussy and had really good social etiquette. Lunch was nothing to shout about, but I was greatly enjoying my conversation with Liz.

Without sounding like I was trying to intrude into her personal life, I found out that she was single, and lived in Hong Kong. She asked me about myself and though I did not like revealing too much about myself I tried to answer as many of her questions as possible. Like myself, she was also visiting some friends and would only stay till the following day. Turns out that she was into stocks and was a frequent visitor to Singapore, 3-4 times a year for business but did not know anybody other than her Singapore business associates. I also let her know I was single and worked on special projects and traveled alone frequently, so my work schedule was rather free and easy. In fact my project often took me to Hong Kong for 2 weeks to a month at a time. She asked if she could call me if ever she was in Singapore and of course, if I was in Hong Kong I could always give her a call. Out of courtesy, I gave her my number and of course took her number with no intention of ever calling.

We spent the rest of the day finishing up our tour of the city and when we arrived back at the hotel, we were dead beat. We bade each other goodbye (and of course, the usual niceties like promising to keep in touch) and went back to our respective rooms.