What’s your favourite social interaction with strangers?

I came across this question and thought this would be a good blog idea. First of all, considering how often I travel/walk/explore or basically do anything by myself, I have been really grateful that I have had more positive experiences than bad ones. And as much as I like to make as little contact/interaction with strangers as possible, we are social creatures that need interaction. In this post, I want to share my personal stories and how I think we can show kindness to the people we meet.

Awareness and Alertness of My Surroundings

I don’t know whether this is something that I can be proud of or not, but I think I have the gist of analysing my surroundings – including the people. No, not for something grand or major, but to ask for simple help like watching over my stuff at a coffee shop or to take photos of me when I solo travel.

The ultimate discomfort of working alone in a cafe is that I can’t easily go to the bathroom when I need to. I have to calculate and assess whom I can ask to watch over my stuff. Sometimes I’ll ask the person next table, or even the staff when the cafe is not that busy. And I think oftentimes, I can trust my gut, leaving my stuff behind. I am definitely not encouraging you to leave your stuff and just trust it to strangers, but this works most of the time with me. On certain occasions when I don’t feel like trusting my belongings to other people, I will pack my stuff (laptop and everything into my bag and bring it with me to the toilet.

Photo-taking Session

Other than my asking to take photos of me, I like offering to take photos of others, especially if I see a group of people taking a selfie or if one of them needs to take it.

I realise that older people tend to accept help and are happy with the offer, but younger generations are okay taking selfies on their own – so some of them rejected my offer. But anyway, I am always happy to help, especially when it’s a family.

Complimenting

I saw many videos of people complimenting strangers, and those videos bring such a positive vibe. So, pushing through my introvert-ness (is that even a word? hahaha), I try to be more expressive and compliment others.

I know it might seem suspicious since it can be seen as an unusual approach to deceive someone, hahaha. On a few occasions, I complimented staff at the cafe or a convenience store on their flawless makeup and nice eyebrows. But the bare minimum is making sure that I put my smile and communicate clearly with them. Working in retail can be rough on most days because you never know what kind of customer you’ll meet, so I want to make sure I’m not someone’s nightmare at work.

I also learnt that staff at convenience stores have targets to meet with discounted goods or promotions. So they’ll offer the bundle promotion, and sometimes they even include it at checkout, but we didn’t really have to pay for the item. Most of the time, I try to buy the items they offer or the promotions that come with the items I initially want to buy. One time, the cashier definitely had a raspy voice, and the stuff that was offered was a ‘larutan penyegar’ that is usually consumed for sore throat and stuff. So I did say okay to buy one, but just give it to the cashier and hope her throat gets better.

Unexisting Tipping Culture, but Let’s Make it A Sharing Culture

Being on the road all day, especially working as an online driver, is hard. My heart broke seeing many of them are in their older years and not equipped with the proper gear like gloves and shoes. I don’t use online transportation as much as I used to, but nowadays, with the rising cost of gas and everything, I want to make sure to leave an extra tip for the driver.

A little empathy always goes a long way. I believe in seeing goodness in every person I meet, so that’s what I believe has protected me so far. But I know I have to be aware and cautious, especially if I’m in a new place, a new city. I have another story that taught me the hard way to be cautious in being kind to strangers. We’ll meet in another post!