Talk about something that you borrowed from your friend

You should say:

• what you borrowed

• when you borrowed it

• whom you borrowed it from

• why you borrowed it

I am an undergraduate student and studying at a local university here in LPU. I am a student of Computer Science and need to do many complicated things. So, I borrowed a laptop from my friend. He uses one of the latest devices and that operates very well. At the same time, the performance and speed were fast enough to complete my tasks within a short time.

Normally, I use my own computer for all of my academic tasks and entertainment purposes. It is armed with the latest tools and software I need and meets my purposes. Suddenly, my computer started behaving abnormally and had to send it to a repairing shop. The engineer at the shop run a diagnosis and found the motherboard was damaged and needed a repair. They also informed me that it may take around two days for them to complete the repair. I agreed to their terms and conditions. But when I remembered the project deadline, I was shocked. I needed a computer on emergency and made the phone call to my friend Sandeep. He agreed to borrow me his laptop.

It was really important to borrow a laptop. Without a laptop, it was impossible for me to complete the project on time. If I failed to submit the project within the deadline, it would have been tougher for me to pass the course. I think I had to register again for the course in the next semester. Registering for the same course again appears a disgrace to me. In my entire academic career, I have never failed in any stages. So, it was highly important for me to pass in this course to get promoted in the next semester. Fortunately, I crossed the barrier and the result has been published yesterday. I think it was a great lesson for me. I need to be more careful about things. Due to my negligence in the project, I was having a great difficulty. I will be alert next time.

Follow-ups

Q. How often you borrow something from others?

Borrowing is not in my nature but when I am in extreme need of something and I cannot manage alone getting that, I borrow. But it is a rare event for me and my surrounding people that I am borrowing something from them. However, I do not bother with lending.

Q. In which situation people usually borrow things?

When people have nothing to do with any specific issue, they are to borrow from others. For instance, you are standing in a bus queue to get the ticket for returning your home and suddenly realised that someone took your wallet (I mean you are experiencing a pickpocket) but you have to go home, what will you do? This is an emergency for you. The first thing you will do is that you will look for any familiar people who can help you in that situation by paying your ticket fare. In such a situation, you will not mind in borrowing and also will return the favour in the next day or when it is possible.

Q. Is it good to borrow apart from the emergency situations?

If you make it a habit of borrowing things in every situation it will be considered as a bad habit. Moreover, it will reduce your credibility and a help building a negative image of you among your surrounding people. You can borrow anything you need if it is an emergency for you. Besides, the people will extend their helping hand towards you without any condition or second thought when they will realise that truly you are in danger. But if you abuse their generosity, at the end of the day you will get no help from any of them. In this case, you can recall the moral story of the cowboy and tiger.

Q. Is it okay to borrow money from neighbours?

You can take anything if you truly need them. It may be money, it may be any favour or even it may be any sort of physical and mental support. But it should be necessary and you need to be unable right that moment to gather the things you are borrowing. You can borrow money from your neighbours too but you need to be honest in this case. You are to return the money within the promised returning time. If you miss the deadline, the neighbour may not say you something due to courtesy but you may not get any further help from him/ her in future.

Q. What problems can occur while collecting return money from people?

Usually, people love to forget the favours. Many people do not care about the favours once they receive those in their emergencies. As a result, they ignore to acknowledge the favours and do not refund them and even if they return, the break several deadlines. It mostly happens for money. If you loan someone an amount of money, you will never get that back in time. It happens everywhere. The beneficiaries start showing different excuses for the return. You are to run after them to collect the money and they, in fact, do not care about the importance of your favour. These are the common problems with lending money and getting that back.

Q. Why sometimes it is difficult to ask somebody to return the money they borrowed?

Sometimes people cannot ask for the money that was borrowed by someone mostly for the interpersonal relationship. Sometimes the relationships are so warm that the borrower does not return the money in time and the person who offered cannot also ask for that. It becomes difficult for him/ her to ask for the money. It may also happen that the borrower is still in distress and thus the loan provider cannot ask to return the money. Besides, it may also happen that the loan provider has become irritated by running after the borrower, and in that case, it becomes difficult as well to ask for the money return.