Posts

Showing posts from January, 2020

Commitment

Image
Motivation to do something in your life is very important but I think more important than that is the commitment to work hard towards what you want to achieve. My taxi driver this morning was committed to having a conversation with me. Or it could be that he was gathering information from all his customers and compiling that into a book. He asked me where I worked, what I did, how long had I been travelling to London, if I enjoyed it, if I travelled daily etc etc. I think there's almost a sense of, ' I can ask all these things because we're both Pakistanis". That's a license to be nosy.. I'm surprised he didn't ask me what area I was from in Pakistan, as that is normally a question very commonly asked by a fellow Pakistanian who you're meeting for the first time...lol How can you not move your lips at all for almost 25 minutes. Thursday morning in my train to London, a girl wearing a long, white, thick fur coat caught my eye because she looked lik

Choose to Smile

Image
When I woke up this morning, I was a bit tired and felt a little grumpy for some reason. When I ordered my taxi in the morning, it showed it was 5 minutes away. So I waited 5 minutes, it was still not moving towards me and it kept showing 5 minutes away even then. So instead of calling the driver and having a rant, I decided to cancel it and order a different one which arrived in 3 minutes. I was picked up by the same taxi driver who picked me on 9 December 2019. I've also mentioned him in my blog for that day and I remember him because he thought he could have a go at me for not entering the correct drop off details which I had.. Lol. Then I went to the coffee shop at the train station which was pretty busy for 6.30 in the morning. Not only it had a long queue but there was only one person serving. May be it was because there was only one person serving. I queued for 10 - 12 minutes but then chose to go to the shop in the train instead of wasting anymore time. Even though I

Questions

Image
Asking questions is a skill and that's how we learn new things. The kids that ask a lot of questions turn out to be the smart ones. But turning what is a confident statement into a question right at the end is a skill in itself. This morning the girl who served me in the coffee shop, demonstrated that skill quite flawlessly. But I still feel she can't beat a pro who almost does that everyday and so perfectly and skillfully that he almost makes us believe (every single time) whatever he is saying is absolutely correct. But then at the end of the sentence he makes that sound like a question. I'm talking about someone who a couple of the readers would also know about. Going back to this morning, so the girl took my order and was repeating it very confidently, while looking at the croissants and said Almond croissaaaaannnt...? Making it sound like a question. Instead of saying we don't have the plain ones do you want the almond one instead. She saved herself from say

With The Boys

Image
This morning at the coffee shop, I was served by the same young lad who's been mentioned in my previous blog, "Two types of people". He took my order and I placed my loyalty card on the counter. He was about to turn around to make my drink but stopped and said in a bit of a loud voice, "Oh you've got a loyalty card". That made me think.. "am I doing something wrong?". But there was nothing to worry about. I think he was excited to see someone use the card, so even before making the drink he grabbed the stamp and stamped it twice. I am not sure if that was due to the excitement of being able to stamp an actual customers loyalty card or if it was a gesture of good will. He then made an eye contact with me and I wasn't sure if that was a confident eye contact or just to check if I was looking that he'd stamped twice but, I gave him a nod of gratitude. I find this lads behaviours, actions and body language hard to understand because