While on the topic of my work stint in the state college, (this was written right after one of the intern blogs but not typed and published until much later) I should tell you about the housing estate around it. It just so happened that there was a mosque next to the area. Having been born and brought up in a Moslem country, I should be well versed in related laws. Yet I was surprised that there was a rule that within x metres from a mosque, no one could sell pork or pork products. The result is no Chinese eatery could exist there. I would say that half the shops in that area are empty. It is a half dead place.
We will call this area Pumpkin Spice Garden. When I first worked there, I brought extra breakfast as lunch. Then I went to the only pork free Chinese restaurant. There I quickly got tired of eating the mix rice cooked by a native cook. Soon I was hunting for a new place to eat on foot or by car.
There was one alley that I walked past that was foul smelling. I mentioned about that in the college office and my colleague, Jackson, laughed. Apparently there were land lords who partitioned both upstairs and down stairs into cubicles for foreign workers. It was not only fire traps, it was slum housing. Since the rental was at rock bottom, stopped-up toilets were not repaired. Urine flowed into the drains behind and around the shops that were meant for bath and rain water. The poor workers had to resort to using the toilets at work.
When I was a child, I have never heard nor seen a worker from any foreign country. It was in the roaring eighties that every rich Mary, Jane and Margaret hired Indonesian maids. Little do I know how badly foreign workers were being exploited in many places.
No comments:
Post a Comment