Compliments

Once upon a time two gals set out to a festival in the market square of their city. More specifically Blisters (pre-blisters) and Cleavage (standard performance night style) made their way to the Vrijtof for Preventment (a wine and food sampling event with live entertainment and games). At one point they stopped in the crowd to watch one of the stage performances. As an older gentleman made his way through the crowd he stopped and spoke to Cleavage in Dutch (pre-semi-understanding) and then kissed her check and went on his way before she had anytime to register anything more than his warm eyes and comforting smile.

It was a sweet bewildering moment.

Fast forward: Cleavage sans Blisters in downtown Gwang-Ju (with no cleavage showing as it was cold outside) an older gentleman comes up to her and begins talking. She notices that he is smiling and waving a “good job” thumb in her face with one hand and is touching her chin and then her earring with another before walking away. (the earring was black and white three-tiered dice) The new Korean acquaintance she was talking to when it happened said he complimented my earrings and laugh.

This more recent happening reminded me of the first one.

Speaking of this new Korean acquaintance, though, his name is David and I meet him at the foreigner dinner a couple of weeks ago. He kept telling me how much he loved my laugh and smile and that they were contagious. He was very sweet, but we parted ways post sharing a dinner table; only all night after that I continued to hear compliments on my laugh and smile from different people. David recognized me when downtown this last weekend and came over to say hi. He complimented my earrings at some point and within minutes the old gentleman was doing the same thing. For some reason a Co-worker noticed and then I thought about it and it sticks out to me too: that he compliments something and someone else unrelated to the original event does the same thing. We are waiting to see what happened next time. Hmmmm……..