keninabu!

Hard to explain

There are some things which are really hard to explain.

Like today, I finally gave my GMAT practice books to this acquaintance of mine. He's from Pune, India, and is doing his PhD now in Chemistry at NUS. I met him while we both attended the INSEAD tour, and we struck up a conversation; later we exchanged phone numbers and email contacts.

As I gave him the books today, he asked me how much I wanted for the books, and that kind of took me completely by surprise, because payment was never discussed, and I had never ever thought of getting payment from him. I looked at him, and told him, "nothing, I don't want money for this".

"Are you sure?"

"Yes"

"But why?"

And I was stumped.

I don't know why: it just seemed like the natural thing to do. I met him, he's a nice guy, he's studying for this exam which I just finished, and I have these books which he will probably find useful, so why don't I just help him by giving him these books?

Well, I could probably get some money from him in return, and that would have offset my initial cost of the books. Rationally, there was no reason why I could not have asked him for something in return.

But that would have been putting a price on friendship, in my opinion. So maybe that is why I did not want to accept money.

But in all honesty, I have no idea why I wanted to help him. I just did. Is it really that complicated?

posted by keninabu @ 2:57 PM