Territory

Always in fervent support of student activities, my school administration ensured that the new school campus came equipped with sufficient rooms for the various clubs to hold their activities in, be it storage of equipment, holding of meetings, or breeding of foul venomous hellspawn harpies.

You see, I was on my way to a Christmas Charity meeting when my friend played a little prank on me. The Christmas Charity meeting room is right next to the Singapore Law Review (SLR) room, and he told me that the meeting venue had changed to the SLR room instead. I peeked in and didn't see anyone inside, so I thought hey, even if I walk into a prank how bad could it get?

Hur. Hur.

I took a seat at the table inside, and waited patiently for the rest to arrive. Soon I became aware that there was another person in the room with me, someone hidden behind this partition at the back of the room, apparantly so engrossed at surfing the net that my presence went unnoticed. You must understand, most of the clubs have to share rooms owing to space constraints, so I hardly found the situation worthy of further investigation.

Things got interesting 5 minutes later. Other members coming for the meeting spotted me in the SLR room, and streamed in believing themselves to be in the right place too. That's when the girl emerged from behind her partition, and confronted me.

Girl: Hey! What are you doing here?
Me: Oh, I'm here for a Christmas Charity Meeting.
Girl: Who said you could come in here?
Me: I'm sorry if I'm in the wrong place, my friend informed me that there was a meeting here.

Bad move. What counted as politeness on my part must have smelt very much like weakness to her.

Girl (morphing): What's your friend's name!?
Me: He's Kaixiang, a Year 2 who's convening the Christmas Charity Meeting today.
Harpy: Who's Kaixiang? This is the Singapore Law Review room you know! Can't you read the sign on the door?

No, I didn't know, and I can't read. I scrapped through Primary School, Secondary School, Junior College, Army and 2 years of University without knowing how to read, and managed to fool the Ministry of Education all the while into thinking I was literate. Surprise!

Me: Well, I guess there's been a mix-up, I'll take my leave now.
Harpy: You can't come in here without permission!

Really? Gosh, from everything that has transpired so far, I really couldn't tell. Lucky for me there are lots of people around who are only too enthusiastic to help blithering idiots like me.

Harpy: The SLR room is sacred ground that's off-limits to all the mediocre Law students unable to meet our qualifications! We gather here expecting nothing less than complete privacy! The school's facilities are public resources that are open to all students, so why don't you use those instead of intruding upon our birthright? No, I cannot and will not be calm about this! We may have peacefully coexisted for the last five minutes and you are now leaving after we cleared up a small misunderstanding but you have befouled the air in here and I will not tolerate it.

Ooo. Frosty.

Perhaps what puzzled me the most about the whole incident was why she had to react the way she did. I tried my best to imagine myself in her position, but try as hard as I could I still failed to empathize with her.

True, I would have been a little affronted if say, someone had barged in and created a ruckus, then refused to leave. Even then, I suspect I would still have been polite about it, and the clueless intruder would have left feeling a little embarrassed instead of wanting to declare jihad on somebody.

I couldn't help but recall a similar incident just a while ago. A friend was offended at receiving what he perceived to be junk mail, and in response he wrote back to the company involved threatening legal action if they didn't issue a full apology to him. I read the letter he drafted and I was stunned. No wonder some people perceive us cocky or pushy.

A little more love, people. Being nice doesn't mean you're a pushover. Save your bile for the ones who really deserve it.

*Note: Oh, I do know that not all SLR people are like that. =)