Got hustled again

Is it my face or something? Barely a week after a kid asked me for bus fare home, I got somebody else telling me a long story of how he got stranded without his wallet and farecard and can't get home. It was barely 10am and it was in the grounds of the hospital -- I was hurrying to the hospital where Dad has been warded two weeks, to catch his doctors as they go on rounds.

This guy, an old retiree, started telling me in Mandarin how he had just taken an even older neighbour to hospital, how the 80-year-old was alone with no one to fend for him, how he rushed the guy to A&E, and was now stuck at the hospital having left his wallet and everything else at home. I was terribly rushed and answered in English (no time for mental translation): "So what do you really want?" and knowing the answer of course.

And then came the English version of the long story. Are all hustlers bilingual? He even went as far as to tell me he used to drive an ambulance before he retired. So go find his former colleagues and friends, I told him. Oh, not to this hospital, he said. Complete BS. And how did he pay for the taxi fare to take his elderly neighbour to hospital if he didn't have his wallet? Oh, he just had enough money in his pocket. So why not call the neighbour's relatives? Surely they would thank him enough to send him home. Oh, the guy's alone, remember. No one to depend on. Not even to take him to hospital.

Now I was really running late and very irritable. I opened my wallet, meaning to give him $2, the smallest note, for trainfare. Just to get the damn monkey off my back. But I didn't have any thing smaller than a $10 note. So I gave it to him. Oh sure, he thanked me very nicely but while making fast tracks away from me. I shouted after him, I want his handphone number and IC number. "No need, no need," he answered and picked up speed. So I yelled down the road -- it was busy enough at the start of the working day as the staff poured in -- "Nobody give him any money! He's fleeced enough out of me!"

I was cross because I could have handled it better if I wasn't so rushed. I know where the medical social workers' office in the hospital is, I would have brought him there and handled him over to them. If I had the time. I was also cross because I made the effort to get up early and get to the hospital by train, instead of calling a cab -- mostly because I couldn't account for traffic on the highway. And now the money I saved on a cab has gone to some con man.

But later, in retrospect, if he was so desperate for $10, he might as well have it. It's not like I can ill spare $10. And most of all, I hope that $10 will buy my Dad some good karma.