Picture source: http://lukecaseyphotography.com/2013/03/12/stop-in-at-the-street-cafe-for-a-cup-of-bokeh/

During my 3 months university semester break, I was working as a waitress at a high class café. I’m a Malaysian Chinese, but because I had tanned skin, I was very often overlooked by customers as an Indonesian, or a Myanmar worker. Having foreign workers in a café is very common in Malaysia especially in the food and beverage industry.


One day, a man and his wife dined in our café. The man and his wife look like they were in their mid-40’s. I took their order. The man had already made up his mind and ordered some Western dish, while on the other hand, his wife was still looking at the menu. While I was waiting for his wife, the man suddenly spoke up to me.


“Where are you studying?” he asked.


I was puzzled. “Hmm? You mean me?” I asked.


“Yes. You.”


I was taken aback by his questions because it was the first time a customer, a stranger, had asked me this question.


“Sunway University, sir,” I replied.


“I see,” he replied.


He didn’t continue the conversation and there was a little silence, but something inside me got curious enough to continue the conversation.


“Why did you ask, sir?” I asked, curiously.


He looked up to me and said, “’coz you look like a person who is studying in university.”


Deep inside, those words were pleasure to my ears. My heart leaped with joy and glee. From our short conversation, I found out that the man was a senior lecturer at a local university. I was happy because, for the first time in my entire life, someone saw some potential in me instead of asking common questions like, “Are you local?”, “Are you a Malay?”, or even “Are you an Indonesian?”


From his words, I realized that it is so important to look the good in others and see their deepest potentiality, and to motivate them. Because since then, the man’s words became my internal motivator to motivate myself to finish my degree studies. Now, that the incident was 2 years ago, at this moment, I’m currently studying for my last final examination paper.


I still remember his exact words since that day.