A shop was being renovated. Day by day the noise level escalated. Lo and behold, the workers were making tables by hand from scratch. Some metallic lengths were being cut to exacting lengths and welded together to form the frames of tables. Then these frames were painted black. After that a piece of wooden board was fixed as table top. Last of all a zinc sheet was hammered to cover the top and the sides. There were at least five tables at first. In my heart, I was guessing: tutoring place? Eatery? Massage place? Charity feeding station?
A local dropped by and told my son that the shop was being let at $1,800 monthly rental. It is to be a restaurant with private rooms. The owner of the building suspected that the source of the capital is black money. The party concerned looked at the empty shop one day, then the next day the necessary two plus one deposit was handed to the landlord. It was no mean sum: 3x1800 plus electricity and water deposits. It was the speed that surprised the landlord. The exact amount came as cash before 12pm.
The locals believe that various people who have more cash than good for them were afraid of being caught red-handed. Hence the hurry to convert the cash into an enterprise. Why not purchase furniture? No, the business person has to avoid the paper trail. Renovators are not above receiving x amount as fee but give a bill of x-y dollars.
It will be interesting to note how a genuine business differs from a fake business. Along the same row there is a Malay eatery that works 6 and a half day. Not too far away there is a Chinese sea food restaurant that rests only on Mondays.
Long ago when my children were still young, we lived in Silver City. We used to patronise a bakery which supplied us with delicious buns at reasonable prices. Somehow it seemed like a fake business. It was a place of high rental returns. The bakery sells a low volume of limited range of products. It rests on all Wednesdays and every public holidays. Surprisingly it is still there today, 14 years after we left town.
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2.9.2019
update
It turned out the business is more like a catering establishment. Sometimes they take off and rest on no definite days. Other times I see full activity after the usual closing time. Once I saw a young man opening the shop at 6:15am. Most of the helpers are in their teens. Sometimes when the chefs turned up, I saw toddlers and young children running about. From a safety point of view, it is almost criminal to allow children to run among boiling pots and plenty of fire whether from gas stoves or open charcoal barbeque stand.
No wonder a friend of mine who worked in the government hospital talked about three-year olds who swallowed insecticide, then the next year his sister came in with an over dose of multi vitamins. Two years later another younger sibling from the same family came with water burns that required skin grafting. Part of the trouble is the culture encouraged unlimited children. Should children die because of crime, drowning, accident or being kidnapped, the parents cried, accepted it fatalistically as God's will and move on to have a few more kids.
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