What are Friends for? (Part 1)

A few years, ago my friend Ann applied for a job that required her to sign a contract. Very unfortunately (for her as well as for a number of other people), Ann was dismissed. I must add that it came as a shock to me because it was quite a rare occurence in that particular profession. Ann had to pay damages of over $30K - she was given a month to make the 1st payment of $15K (the rest to be paid in installments). So, that's where friends come in:

Lend you Money and then Help you borrow more Money

Ann couldn't afford the 1st payment. Not even $1K. She asked me for help. I wasn't able to cough up the full $15K at 1 go (yes, Paradoxical Mind is very poor). Mistake 1: I asked her if she had sought help from my 2 of our friends Colin and David. She said she hadn't and asked me if I could approach them on her behalf since I was closer to them. Mistake 2: yours truly actually agreed. Yah I know. Unwise move. So I found myself having to ask friends if they mind lending money to another friend. Colin and David being the nice fellows they are agreed to help. So, 3 of us managed to settle the 1st $15K for her. (As for the rest of the damages she had to pay, read my next post)

Help you collect money you borrowed

Colin was overseas at that time. So he asked his mum to write a cheque on his behalf. On the day Ann was supposed to collect the cheque, she called me, saying that she couldn't take time off from work (she had a new job by then) and asked me to collect the cheque for her. I agreed to (yah I'm a pushover). I did tell her that it might appear rather rude that she didn't collect the cheque herself. I don't know how Colin's mum would feel but I wouldn't blame her if she's not too happy. After all, if I'm generous enough to lend you a sizeable sum of money, I won't expect you to grovel and whine about how you are indebted to me (in fact all these would make me uncomfortable), but the least you can do is turn up and collect it personally. Ann insisted that she really couldn't make it. So yours truly, Paradoxical Mind, had to go collect money from a stranger. Ann did call Colin to thank him and promised to return the money within a year. That was however 1 of the last calls Colin would receive from Ann in a long long time...

Double up as loanshark willingly

Colin never pushed Ann to pay back the long-overdue loan, at least not until his mother became critically ill and he needed cash urgently. He called Ann - no response. He sms-ed - no response. He e-mailed - no response. Colin enlisted me to be his personal loanshark / debt collector of sorts. I was feeling bad because I was the one who helped Ann ask Colin for help in the 1st place. So I called her mobile, I sms-ed, called her home - basically did what I could short of going to her house to hang a bloody pig's head on the gate or splash paint on the doors (what loansharks traditionally do).

It was about 2 weeks later that I finally received an sms from her - she claimed that she didn't know I had changed my handphone number and so couldn't get back to me earlier. Uh I can find loopholes in that excuse but I didn't say anything. I don't know why. Ah well, maybe I know... I've never been the confrontational sort. Anyway, I told her that Colin needed cash urgently and reminded her that she had actually promised to pay Colin 2 years ago. She promised to write Colin a cheque. She did. But, the cheque bounced and left Colin fuming. Colin had to wait for more than a week for another cheque to be written. I suspect that she had borrowed the money from her boyfriend in order to pay Colin...

And oh, if you remember, other than Colin, another fellow David also contributed to Ann's $15K. Yah he seems to be pretty much forgotten in this post. That's because he's pretty much forgotten by Ann. She hasn't returned him the money yet. Has she returned me the money? I'll leave it to another post...

* Note: all names have been changed to protect the identities of individuals involved in this scandal uh story