Puzzling behaviour (London)

 

This blog is prompted by a WhatsApp text conversation with someone (let's call her Cindy) who was commenting on someone she'd met through her friend.

    Cindy said that she'd send this woman greetings for the various festive occasions, or advertised freebies, or short texts asking if she was from a particular Chinese dialect group (like Cindy herself), but she'd get silence to all her texts.  Cindy asked what I thought of this person's behaviour.

    I'm at a loss to answer Cindy's question, as I've had people do it to me -- people I've helped extensively, people I've given my time and effort to free of charge, then they just go silent.  What had I said??

    At the advanced healing course in September, held in London, I met someone who'd come down from Manchester for it.  Let's call her Meiling.

    Before the teaching started, she was being given an energy adjustment (similar to, but not the same as, reiki, for those of you who have heard of reiki) by a male volunteer, so I joined him.  He soon left, so I was alone with Meiling.

    Meiling started to tell me, in Cantonese (I don't know if she's from Hong Kong or not), about her aches and pains.  I told her that massage is quicker for such muscular issues.

    She was full of awe, "Wow, you do massage!  You must teach me.  Come to Manchester.  You'll be most welcome."

    She said it over and over and over again, enthusing, sounding warm and welcoming.  I took down her number.

    After the course, I texted her on WhatsApp, saying, "Hi, it's xx (from the London group, the one who can do massage) making contact."

    She came back with, "Nice to see you and your wife."

    I texted back, saying, "My wife?  I'm not a lesbian."  (The second bit was a joke.)

    In case she'd read my name as a man's name, I sent another text with, "xx is a woman's name."

    Total silence from her since then (September).  Nothing to try and find out what it was all about.

    I thought I'd identified myself well enough (that I was from the London healing group [vs her Manchester healing group]; that I was the one who could do massage).

    Well, obviously not, but then common courtesy would mean that one would get back to the sender and say something like, "Sorry, I've got you mixed up with someone else.  Can you remind me who you are."

    If her English is not good enough, there's google translate these days, among other things, so there's no excuse really.

    So, all that gushing and repeated "You must come to Manchester.  You're most welcome to come to Manchester.  You must teach me how to do massage" was empty talk then.

    Well, at least I've found out right at the beginning.

(London, 2025)