Judging A Book By Its Cover

'aiya, its part of friendship. the more u give the more u receive. hehe. give and take lor. sometimes u treat sometimes i treat. hehe. im very easy going'

i was surprised to receive that text as a reply to mine asking on the taxi fare i owed her. and to think this came from a local.
ever since moving here 8 years ago and learning on how calculative the locals can be i have learned to live with no expectation. things that we did back home might not happen with your local friends/colleagues here.
i started to retrace past events and i think i can't ignore the fact that not all locals are calculative though. i have an ex-colleague who sometimes made me feel overwhelmed for all the nice things she did for me. there are 2 nice colleagues at present as well, one who always get a morning paper for me to no avail and the other one who's going to lend me a book she rented without expecting me to pay part of the rental fee.
guess what i'm trying to say is there's still hope in finding those nice people in this tiny red dot island.