An Interesting Encounter, Part 2

I was lounging at the patio of the Coffee Bean at Pavilion last night, using their wifi from an inconspicuous table/hideout around the corner from the front door. I'd already just had a coffee from the Estana Curry House, and a Coffee Bean one would surely set me over my goal budget of RM 20 per day. In short, I was using their wifi without buying anything and feeling very sneaky about it. Dangerous even. As an integral part of most my plans that somehow go awry, I put on my headphones and absorbed myself in my computer so as to seem too busy to disturb over trivial matters like buying something. Well, this worked for awhile - I even got a phone call in before things took a strange turn.
This strange turn went something like this: I was listening to iTunes loud enough to drown out most noise from the real world when I saw someone in my peripherals. An older chubby white fellow saying something in my general direction that got lost in the chaos of the new Of Montreal album I was listening to. I pulled out my earbuds,

"Sorry?" I asked
"are you... finding you way around all right...?"

Now that I was looking in his direction, I could see that the man was quite drunk and a little unsteady in his treads. The man looked to be in his 60s and this wasn't entirely a conversation I was wanting to get into; after all, I was immersed in MSN and Facebook (important daily activities). I quickly made up my mind to escape,

"Yup. Thanks" I answered and stuck my face in my computer. My peripherals were strangely busy that day, and I saw the mat selleh still standing there. "Are you?" I feebly asked, feeling escape slip through my fingers.

"What?" responded the unsteady man.

"Are you finding your way around? Are you looking for somewhere?"

"What? No... I am ... just making conversssation. I enjjoy confusing people." And with that, he sat down at my table and I knew I was trapped. I glanced around in panic, looking for a way out of what was surely to be an irritating encounter, but was without help. I was alone and without any excuses that wouldn't cut me off from the warm network of faces on my computer.

To be honest, I decided to give in - I knew then that it would most likely be more irritating to continue replying in short sentences than to have a real conversation. As such, I learned many things over the next ten minutes or so. Here was a man from Norway who now lives in Australia and is currently a visiting professor in KL that teaches engineering. When he was young, he joined the french legion in Algeria and saw the world "as it was in biblical times" and received ... eight medals. He even directed me to the website where some photos from the war were. After that, he was a sailor and maybe at some point saw Toronto, but is unsure because at that point he was smack dab in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis - he never quite elaborated on this point, but it was intense. At this point, things took a deep turn as he lamented on how different the world is today - he raised some important questions, such as "what good is all of this experiences when I die? I can't take them with me." There was a moment of silence and then the fellow took off... never to be seen again.

I returned to my MSNing and thought deeply about how I was going to blog about the encounter. In conclusion, the convo itself did not turn out to be irritating - it was actually quite interesting and full of existential questions. In fact, I felt strangely enlightened by the end of it...