A Really Cool Book 'Shop' and an Awkward Near-Encounter

Today, I met up with my friend Min-Hwee in the west end. We had lunch in Chinatown at Jen Café and then had tea at Camellia's Tea House on Carnaby Street. When we were walking around on Carnaby Street we came across a book exchange: the Carnaby Book Exchange.

Totally free, you can come in, choose a book and sit down for a good read, or you can bring in an old book of yours to leave and take another away.

You're also encouraged to leave a note for another reader to find. So Min-Hwee and I went in on a mini-quest to find a book with a note.

Min-Hwee found one on her first try- a really old book (can't remember what it was) with the message 'Take care of yourself'' pencilled in on the inside of the front cover. It took me a while to find a book with a message, but when I did it was a good one.

This was the book I picked up:

I actually have this book too: it's an amazing bit of non-fiction.

I was surprised someone had left this, because it really is a very powerful book- Min-Hwee was too (she also has the book at home). When I turned the front cover, I found out why.

Both Min-Hwee and I are Chinese (well, I'm half-Chinese, to be exact), so we found it pretty funny.

Now to the awkward near-encounter... at the time, ironically, my friend and I were talking about who we still kept in contact with from our old school, and who we'd bumped into recently. We were in a shop when she suddenly pointed and said,

"Look, that girl was from our school! Wasn't she in your year?"

I looked around, and noticed the girl- two of them together in fact- were indeed from my year, if not from my class.

"Should we go say hello to them?" Min-Hwee asked.

"No!!" I suddenly felt a bit panicked: I'd never really been on speaking terms with these two at school so I felt like it would be a bit fake to go over and be all friendly and 'hiiii I haven't seen you in aaaaages' etc. etc. And to my further horror, I realised that I'd also forgotten their names.

I'll tell you now: I'm really, really appalling with names. As soon as I meet someone I warn them of this. Lots of people claim they're bad with names, but really, they're not too bad and just putting a polite disclaimer in, just in case. No, my brain forcibly ejects names from my mind like a pilot from a failing aircraft, often within a matter of seconds of being told someone's name, and then I have to be told several times over and over again afterwards. I try really, really hard, I honestly do, and it's certainly nothing personal- but I've always been like this. I used to dread being made to give out everyone's workbooks at school after the teacher had marked them because I couldn't remember which named book belonged to which classmate (particularly when our classes were 'disbanded' and we started mixing with other people from our year).

I explained this in hushed tones to my friend after she asked me if I was sure, and we hung back a bit to allow my former school peers to get a head start once they left the shop. After a few minutes passed, we (cautiously) emerged.

"Did you see which way they went?" I asked nervously.

"Yes, I think they went in that direction." And Min-Hwee unwittingly pointed straight at my two former schoolmates, who were only a few yards away.

"Agh, they're right there!" We both spun around and started to walk in the other direction, to find it was a dead end. We faced another two directions: more dead ends! By now I was giggling almost hysterically at this ridiculous situation, and pretty sure they could now hear the nervous ruckus I was making.

Eventually my two former school peers headed off.

"Did you think they saw me?" I asked.

"Well... one of them actually looked straight at you at one point- I'm pretty sure they did."

This calmed me down a bit. Surely if they saw me, recognised me and actually wanted to come over and say hi, they would, right? But they didn't- just like me. Maybe because they were in the same predicament and didn't remember my name and knew we weren't really close at school. Or, more embarrassingly, they sensed my unease and felt put off by my perhaps-obvious awkwardness.

I actually remember one of their names now- but I won't write it down, just in case they ever read this blog. Yes, I'm that freaking awkward.

~Fin~