hello can be the beginning of a new friendship

I first met Yang on a chilly Friday morning outside Lecture Hall 5.3.1.

It was my first class for Professional Writing.

Remember the time I attended the wrong lecture (Let's call this Class 1)? And, remember the time I begged the lecturer to take me in (Let's call this Class 2)?

Well, after two weeks of attending lectures and tutorials for Class 2, I decided the course which I've so desperately begged the lecturer to take me in wasn't right for me, and choose to drop it, and take the pre-requisite course for the wrong lecture (Class 1) that I have attended. Isn't it funny how fate has its way of twisting through our lives in delightful ways?

Yang was standing all by herself outside the lecture room, looking very very lost. After class, I approached her and introduced myself. We started conversing, but it quickly became evident that Yang had trouble speaking in English. She had difficulty understanding what I was saying, sometimes I had to repeat myself twice, thrice, even. Other times, the meaning of my words just flew right past her head.

Yang is an exchange student from South China Normal University. She arrived in Melbourne the day before yesterday, and admitted that she had trouble acclimating herself to the foreign culture here. She didn't say much, or at least she tried to say as much as she could manage, but it became quite clear that language was a serious barrier in our conversation.

So, finally, I decided to break my silence, and after five long months of not conversing in my Mother Tongue, I spoke my very first sentence of Mandarin since I've arrived in Melbourne. (Well, okay, not really, remember that time I had to interview a China girl for my hard news story?)

Yang's entire face lit up, her eyes immediately shone and she exclaimed in her own native language, "You know how to speak Chinese?!" From that moment on, everything else is history. Yang started leaping around with joy, and clutching my arm several times while speaking to me. She gestured me to the nearest table in the school cafeteria.

A waterfall of words started pouring out of her mouth rapidly, and she confessed that she felt so very very very lost in Melbourne, and how glad she was to meet me. And, when I just offered my simple and polite help by asking, "Do you need help with anything, getting around, etc?" Yang looked as if I've just told her that she had struck the million-dollar lottery. She replied that there was a million things she needed help with, everything, and then she repeated how very lost she felt, how she had trouble adapting to the culture over here and how very thankful she was to bump into me, and also how glad she was to bump into someone who could offer her help and a sense of familiarity by speaking Chinese.

Yang said that Thursday (the day before) was her first day of classes, and she couldn't understand a word the lecturers were saying. I laughed, and said it was normal, even up till this date, I have trouble understanding the Aussie accent. Since she is only required to take four modules, and she has five under her belt, she is obliged to drop one. She said that she was considering dropping one of the Thursday classes, since she couldn't understand a thing the lecturers were saying.

So, I brought Yang to the computer labs and after some checking, her timetable showed that she had a class at that very time, and she was half an hour late. Hurriedly I brought her to the class since she still wasn't familiar with the buildings and all. After class, we met each other up again, and after much administrative sorting out and all, I brought her to my favourite dumplings store, which I introduced to her as the "cheapest and nicest dumplings in Melbourne!"

After that, we went for Professional Writing class together. My tutor approached me in the middle of the tutorial with a very concerned expression and asked, "Cheryl, are you sure you are in the right class?"

And, when I insisted I was, she continued, "I just wanted to make sure because I never ever had any journalism students in my class before."

Well, I just like to write, and so I told her, "I think the reason why is because journalism students do so much writing in their course already (not true at all), and they just want to select a module that has nothing to do with writing." (Entirely quoted from my friend, Amanda)

After class, I brought Yang to the school bookshop to buy all her academic notes. And, then we said our goodbyes.

The next morning, I woke up and checked my handphone. There was an sms waiting for me. It said,

"Dear Cheryl, this is Ying. I really appreciate what you have done for me yesterday, you just can't imagine how much convenience and happiness you have brought to me! What I can do is to say 'thank you' again and again! Hope you have a nice weekend!!! ^-^"

This is something I've learnt ever since I came to Melbourne. I've learnt to take the initiative to get to know more people and make more new friends. I've learnt that either you can keep the silence and the both of you shall remain 'familiar strangers' during the entire course or you take the first step and it might be the beginning of a brand new friendship.

Once, I bumped into an old friend of mine, Deepak, and he took the initiative to say hello to me. I couldn't even remember his name, or what he looked like, and I didn't even recognize him, but he did. And, so he said hello and introduced himself again, after a couple of minutes of me staring blankly at him. Look, I've only met him at an informal gathering once, and I couldn't even remember anything about him, and it wouldn't have been awkward if we've just walked past each other without saying a greeting even. But, because he made the effort to say hello, we ended up chatting for three hours while walking around aimlessly!

And, something he said to me then was, "If I hadn't approached you to say hello, imagine what would have happened? We would both have gone on to our separate ways, you, maybe you would have gone home or somewhere else, and we wouldn't even be standing here talking to each other!"