my new year's eve~

It was a simple lunch with a mate of mine down at The Gardens, Midvalley on new year's eve. It was a great catching up session - talking, laughing, simply catching up on lost time. I even got myself The Castle Omnibus trilogy series written by Steph Swainston that was recently published.

I was all happy, ready go home, really excited to get a taste of the new book I just purchased. At the same time, I was dying to take a leak having had such a long lunch and a Starbucks session with my mate, Max. So I ran along to the nearest toilet, did what I had to do and came out set to head straight to the parking lot.

As I walked out, this guys walks up to me in a panicky state and jittery state, and starts saying, "You have to help me! I... I... lost my daughter, you have to help me find her, please."

He places his hand slightly above his knee, "She about this tall, with a blue jacket over a white dress."

I could see his hands were trembling from the panic.

I knew I had to help this man, "Calm down, let's get to the information centre counter at the lobby and we'll get security to help us locate your daughter."

"It's my first time here, so I really don't know my way around here," said the man.

So we hurriedly down to the reception counter, got hold of the authorities to assist us in locating his daughter. We left our numbers with the counter in case they found her before we did, then we back tracked to where he last remembered he was with his daughter.

Went to every shop he remembered he visited and asked the people around if anyone saw his little girl. After about 30 minutes of reconnaissance and scouting work for this lost little girl, we finally got a call from the reception guys that someone found his little girl and brought her to the reception. We still couldn't be certain if this little girl was his daughter but we had to find out.

So we ran all the way back to the reception counter. When he saw the little girl, I knew straight away that he had gotten his daughter back. When I saw him looking down at his girl, tears in his eyes, I could tell he was upset with her but the look in his face was, "Don't ever do that to daddy ever again, it'd break my heart to lose you!"

I think for a moment there, I knew how it felt to be a dad. A child to a father is probably like his everything. I really felt relieved and happy for the guy. After all, we spent a good half an hour trying to find her. There has been many cases of missing children and kidnap cases these days, and he had every reason to be worried. At the end of the day, he shook my hand and thanked me.

That was how I ended 2009, helping a dad locate his daughter in a shopping complex. We should be thankful to the young lady who brought the child to the information centre, otherwise we would have been running all over the places searching for her. I sure feels good to have done some good for someone!