When Andrew met Sophia, it was like love at first sight. That’s what he says now, with the luxury of hindsight. He didn’t know it was love then, all those years ago in college. “It wasn’t like when you look at girls, it was different.” So he says. His friends often said Andrew was not good at expressing himself.
Sophia was a level-headed and friendly girl who, unlike Andrew, seemed to have no difficulty talking to people. She had a gift for chatting with strangers easily as though they had always been friends. Perhaps it was this that attracted him in the first place, although she was no slacker when it came to looks. Perhaps this was merely his perception of her through his rose-tinted glasses – some people said she was arrogant. The truth was that Sophia was neither here nor there – the glasses were indeed tinted, but it did not change the image all that much.
Andrew was rather outgoing and friendly himself, but for some reason, whenever she was around, he became an awkward mess. But through it all, he was sure of one thing: whenever this strange girl was around, his heart would fill up with a fullness that made him grin like an idiot, whether he noticed it or not.
How the cards came to fall as they did is anyone’s guess. A mathematical certainty, a whim of some higher authority, a game played between Lord Fortune and Lady Luck – Andrew would often wonder if it was a blessing or a curse that they met under the circumstances in which they met.
The facts were these.
Andrew and Sophia were to work together in the same group on a project. They were joined by two other group members, Allan and Lily. The 4 had never met before. Relations were cool in the beginning: attempts were made at breaking the ice, but the ice melted slowly. Slowly but surely, Andrew managed to get to know Sophia more, using the project as an excuse. However, Sophia was more concerned with where the project was headed. In private, she confessed to Andrew that she was unhappy with Allan and Lily.
Allan was a very active boy. Andrew wondered how one single person could juggle so many commitments and projects simultaneously. He did not have to wonder very much. The compromise Allan made was to give higher priority to certain projects, and the project these 4 were working on was not one of the prioritised projects. While Allan did his best to attend each meeting and do his job, the other three found his work sub-par.
Lily proved difficult to work with. She was a very driven and highly motivated person, and had rather high expectations of herself. This spilled over into her expectations of everyone else. In her eyes, she seemed to be the only one who really cared about the project at all. The others were slackers who needed to do a whole lot better. However, she did not conceal her dissatisfaction. She did not say outright what she felt, but was moody and morose. While she did do her job rather well, Sophia complained to Andrew that she was unyielding at times, and just quite simply difficult to work with.
Andrew wondered about himself. What did the others think of him, then? In the end, he decided it was a waste of time to worry about such things, and that it would be best to just focus on making the project a success.
The project was a failure. In the wake of the smouldering dust of the burning corpse of the project, Andrew couldn’t help but feel less than happy. This was not the ideal ending to working with Sophia he had envisioned. Had he not worked hard enough? Was he too distracted by Sophia?
He asked himself, how could he have done better?
(to be continued...................?????)
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