Met a driver with quite a life story and practiced my English the entire ride. We went from Malaysia to the rest of the world, from school and work to the future global order, from AI to universal morality. (Honestly more useful than my last English class, hehe.)

He works for an international environmental organization—or something involving wildlife, anyway—and has traveled all over the world through his work. My own experience rather paled beside his… We agreed that “a truly good job should be something you love.” Oh, and all three of his children went into the arts: the eldest directs films, the second teaches music in Singapore, and the youngest works in 3D animation! He said he normally drives only private clients; today he happened to be going to the airport to pick someone up and took me along on the way. Win-win!

He asked me to guess his age. I guessed 50, but to my surprise, he was already over 60! You really couldn’t tell at all! He also mentioned that he is currently collecting material for a TV show he is producing, and one of his methods is chatting with different people. Turns out I inadvertently became part of his material.

Even after chatting with him for so long, I didn’t feel tired at all. Though I occasionally ran out of words and had to pull out Google Translate, he was very understanding. Ah, I really should interact with more people (to practice my spoken English) in the future!

PS: On another funny note, when having McDonald’s at the airport, I found that not only was there no Grilled Chicken Burger, but the McCrispy Chicken was only available in spicy… For reasons well known to all, I went to ask the staff for water, but they ended up refilling my cup with Sprite! Both mouth-warming and heart-warming.