Actions speaks louder than words.

It's in times of difficulty that we discover who our true friends are. There have been such times in my life and one of them happened more than ten years ago.

I once got to know a man and since he seemed to be always friendly, I treated him as one of my friends. We used to get together, exchanged news and jokes and sat down to drinks every now and then whenever fate put us together.

Then, one day, I lost my identity card which I had kept in a small plastic plastic bag together with some money. This is a tiny piece of plastic which I take everywhere together with my wallet. However, in the mornings, when I go up the hill for my daily exercise, I would take this plastic bag along so that should anything happen and the police were to ask for my identity, I would have the card to show them. As for the money, it comes in useful whenever there is need to buy some food or drinks. And I used a plastic bag as if it ever rains when I am up the hill, which does happen, my document and money would be dry even when I am drenched to the skin.

I believed that the plastic bag with my identity card must have dropped when I checked its contents just outside my gate. However, after its loss, I could not find it although I searched everywhere.

Then, the next day, two young men came to my gate and told me somebody has found my identity card and the person who found it wanted fifty ringgit. I agreed to it and told the two men to tell the person to give it back to me.

After about an hour,the person who turned up to return the identity card was the friend i mentioned at the beginning of this true story. According to him, the people who found it wanted fifty ringgit and they had asked this man to get it for them.

As it was so ridiculous that they would not dare to turn up to claim the money that I had agreed to but got another person to involved to claim the money, I was suspicious of this friend's non involvement in the monetary claim. An idea came to mind.

I told him I have changed my mind and would only give twenty ringgit as there were already more than fifty ringgit in the plastic bag and it was no longer there. I wanted to see his reaction to my decision. When I told him that he told me it would alright if I were to give thirty ringgit. From this I immediately saw through his involvement, for if he were to be only an intermediary, certainly he could not make his own decision to negotiate and accept anything already agreed to.

After I had taken my identity card, I waited for him to return, perhaps to convey the dissatisfaction of the people who had sent him but he did not come back. In fact, if he had returned, I would have been willing to give another twenty ringgit and that would have proved that he was not involved to getting financial gain for the return of my identity card. Not only that, to this day, he avoids me and I have had no chance to find out more about the incident.

Sometimes, it is only though incidents like this where money is involved that the true nature of a person is known.