Ma Yu Yu is one of the most extraordinary people I know.
She is brilliant at work, but never an asshole. She has seen a lot of the world and met a lot of people but remains empathetic to people whose voices are rarely heard. She always has a million hobbies at any given time but will always drop everything if I need to buy a pen, rant over a drink or eat Thai food.
I am usually guarded at work and it takes a lot for me to trust anyone. Yu Yu, however, has this unique gift of making you feel unapologetic about yourself. I always edit in my head what I'm about to say, but with Yu Yu, I'm never worried she will judge me if I give her my raw, unadulterated point of view. And if I'm missing the point, she will gently call it out and teach me a lesson.
One of the best business trips I've taken was to Yangon in 2019, Ma Yu's hometown, and my last overseas trip before the world shut down because of Covid. I've been to Yangon before, about four years earlier but it was my first time with someone who genuinely knows the city.
We had lunch at a place called Rangoon Tea House, one of the best meals of my entire life. The next day, Ma Yu asked what I'd like to have for lunch and I asked, a little nervously, if we could go to Rangoon Tea House again because there's so much more I wanted to try. She didn't argue or offer an alternative, she just said yes. Back then, it didn't even occur to me she might be tired of Burmese food. But now I know she'll never tire of it.
As much as I didn't like the Covid era, a bunch of great things came out of it.
One of them is that Ma Yu and I became good friends. We went on a lot of walks, played a lot of badminton, and got ourselves an izakaya auntie. When I moved apartments in 2021, I hosted a housewarming get-together with friends and she offered to roast a chicken in my oven. When I shared this story to new friends a year later, most of them asked, "How could you let a guest cook dinner for a party you're hosting?"
I guess that's just one of the many testaments to how extraordinary Ma Yu is.