Dear whoever is reading this,
Today's been a kind of sad day. First, a second-time customer comes-in to buy some things and she started talking to me about her problems. She has A LOT of family problems. Not her immediate family. They're fine. She has lovely children and a hard-working husband. It's one of her siblings. He's been gambling and owes a lot of money to loan sharks. This lady has been trying to help him repay his loans by selling-off her jewellery. Now all she has left is a simple thin white-gold necklace with a semi-precious stone pendant. She cries.
Her sibling is still having it good and continues to gamble. When he has the money, he takes his wife and children on holiday and comes home, boasting of what they have feasted on. His aged mother is working in a coffee shop to earn extra money. Another of his sisters is also servicing his loans. His sibling's spouses have forked out money too.
Why then does this lady continue to help him? I tell her that they are actually ruining him further by paying his loans. He is not going to change. Why bother? When he can get away with gambling, losing and borrowing when there are people to bail him out over and over again?
I told her that she now should only be responsible for and to her very own spouse and children. It should be them she should slog for. It should be them that she should be sad for. Her kids are in their pre-teens. She tells me they are fine kids. She should sell her jewellery for them if they needed the money for their education or if her husband needed the cash to finance his business, not to pay off loan sharks for an irresponsible brother.
Whoever said that when a Chinese woman marries, it's like throwing-out a basin of water that cannot be recovered? That when your daughter marries, thereafter, she belongs to her husband's family and not part of her own family anymore.
*Sigh* I am sad. I am sad when people are so upset over something that has such an obvious solution. I am sad that people who are sad cannot think straight. Even in a peaceful country like Malaysia, we have so many sad people in trouble. So many people with not enough to live on. So many people struggling to make ends meet. So peaceful and yet so unhappy. What more in a country that is constantly at war?
I have become an Agony Aunt.
Then, in the afternoon, another second-time customer comes in to buy something to wear to enhance for love. They call this in Chinese 'Peach Blossom Luck' 'Toe Far Wan'. He read somewhere that Roosters have love luck this year and he wanted in. Never mind that he is already married. He told me himself! He has a girlfriend as well but he wanted more and he wanted a second-wife!!!
I told him it is not our place to judge him but he must be very unsatisfied with his wife to want all that. He replied, no, he is not dissatisfied with her. He did not elaborate and I did not want to ask more.
I sold him what he wanted but I was not happy. I was actually quite upset but did not show it. I can't stuff my ideals down everyone's throat can I?
And this has been the saddest, most upsetting post I have ever written.
Think I'll go drink insecticide now or hold my breath till I turn purple or something.
Monday, May 14, 2007
Sunday, May 6, 2007
My feet are killin' me!
La da di dum di le la da da dum di le.....I am singing 'cos my feet are killing me!
Today is the first day of the new Chinese Hsiah (Solar) month and thank you, yes, I've had a wonderful wonderful April. Though May is not expected to be as good a month, I'm off to a good start. Had to stay back for an hour at my shop tonight because a customer came in to shop just as we were closing. The air conditioner in the mall was, of course, off by then; and by the time I left for home, I was weary, sweaty and smelly.
Aching calves and heavy feet are a good sign when you sell things. May I drag me feet more and even grow a few small varicose veins in the next few months! Tee hee!
The bad news is that the mall where my shop is, has leased out a giant 'kiosk' space to a bakery. That's fine except that the bakery has decided to move its entire baking operations to this kiosk space. All heavy duty machinery, giant mixers, freezers, commercial refrigerators, the whole works! It's so ugly! That's cos they've decided to enclose all this with clear glass. It's worst at the back, it's just the railings of the first floor and the first thing you see if you look up when you enter the main entrance is the back of this bakery! Can you imagine the aluminium pots (The type you would see in a food stall at the hawkers centre), pink plastic bags, multi-tiered trolleys! To top all that, (pun not intended)there is no top to the place. Anyone from the second floor can *patooi* down. Actually, all anyone needs to do to sabotage the baking, is to shuffle their feet hard on the edge of the floor upstairs and all the dust will fall in! Yucks!
I don't know who the &*^&%$#@!! is who approved this but I have visions of the whole place collapsing onto the ground floor just like the pink department store in the Korean disaster we saw on Discovery channel. The floor may not be strong enough to hold all that stainless steel equipment all in one space. The poor fellas selling gym and exercise equipment below them would be squashed in an instant! What's the point of being so fit when chances are, they become 'sekeping orangs'! Sometimes I wonder if these people know that there is a maximum weight for floor space. Definitely not on a first floor of a shopping mall.I beg your pardon, I forgot to add that the heavy machinery goes right up to the edge of the first floor overlooking the ground floor.
I am about to sign a three year lease with the mall. Now I will have to reconsider this and conduct due dilligence again before I commit myself till 2010. You see, that spot the bakery occupies is in the exact South East of the mall. The South East is the universal wealth sector and the element there is wood. So. All them giant ovens will burn the wood which interprets as incinerating wealth for this mall! And if the wealth is killed off for the landlord, then, us tenants had better move to greener pastures. Wait! I have more - the bakery's ovens are also located directly over all the ATMs - TRULY BAD FENG SHUI! I don't even know how they obtained their operations permit as the town council here defines 'kiosk' space as public areas or that other colonial term - five foot ways.
These past 3 days, we have discovered we now have a pet mouse. Yes, a mouse that comes out at night to make sure we clean every single item in the shop the next day because it leaves 1 tiny piece of s**t on every shelf amongst all the displayed merchandise. One would need to remove everything to clean it. Yes, I think this mouse must have been sent by the god of cleanliness to make sure we dust, wipe and clean everyday. I don't want to sound bias but I am sure the mouse came compliments of the bakery since the whole damn first concourse now smells of baking cakes and bread all day every day! Oh, and the mouse has a pet too. There is also one cockroach. And the cockroach has many pets too - flies - indoors - in an air conditioned mall. And no, they don't s**t but they lay eggs. Tinier than full-stop white eggs ON ALL MY MERCHADISE!!! Maybe if I am lucky, my pet's pet will leave 1 piece of even smaller s**t beside the slightly bigger piece to make up a set.
Grrrrr........think I will stay off bread and cakes for a while in silent protest! Maybe I should stop going to the mall too :)P
Today is the first day of the new Chinese Hsiah (Solar) month and thank you, yes, I've had a wonderful wonderful April. Though May is not expected to be as good a month, I'm off to a good start. Had to stay back for an hour at my shop tonight because a customer came in to shop just as we were closing. The air conditioner in the mall was, of course, off by then; and by the time I left for home, I was weary, sweaty and smelly.
Aching calves and heavy feet are a good sign when you sell things. May I drag me feet more and even grow a few small varicose veins in the next few months! Tee hee!
The bad news is that the mall where my shop is, has leased out a giant 'kiosk' space to a bakery. That's fine except that the bakery has decided to move its entire baking operations to this kiosk space. All heavy duty machinery, giant mixers, freezers, commercial refrigerators, the whole works! It's so ugly! That's cos they've decided to enclose all this with clear glass. It's worst at the back, it's just the railings of the first floor and the first thing you see if you look up when you enter the main entrance is the back of this bakery! Can you imagine the aluminium pots (The type you would see in a food stall at the hawkers centre), pink plastic bags, multi-tiered trolleys! To top all that, (pun not intended)there is no top to the place. Anyone from the second floor can *patooi* down. Actually, all anyone needs to do to sabotage the baking, is to shuffle their feet hard on the edge of the floor upstairs and all the dust will fall in! Yucks!
I don't know who the &*^&%$#@!! is who approved this but I have visions of the whole place collapsing onto the ground floor just like the pink department store in the Korean disaster we saw on Discovery channel. The floor may not be strong enough to hold all that stainless steel equipment all in one space. The poor fellas selling gym and exercise equipment below them would be squashed in an instant! What's the point of being so fit when chances are, they become 'sekeping orangs'! Sometimes I wonder if these people know that there is a maximum weight for floor space. Definitely not on a first floor of a shopping mall.I beg your pardon, I forgot to add that the heavy machinery goes right up to the edge of the first floor overlooking the ground floor.
I am about to sign a three year lease with the mall. Now I will have to reconsider this and conduct due dilligence again before I commit myself till 2010. You see, that spot the bakery occupies is in the exact South East of the mall. The South East is the universal wealth sector and the element there is wood. So. All them giant ovens will burn the wood which interprets as incinerating wealth for this mall! And if the wealth is killed off for the landlord, then, us tenants had better move to greener pastures. Wait! I have more - the bakery's ovens are also located directly over all the ATMs - TRULY BAD FENG SHUI! I don't even know how they obtained their operations permit as the town council here defines 'kiosk' space as public areas or that other colonial term - five foot ways.
These past 3 days, we have discovered we now have a pet mouse. Yes, a mouse that comes out at night to make sure we clean every single item in the shop the next day because it leaves 1 tiny piece of s**t on every shelf amongst all the displayed merchandise. One would need to remove everything to clean it. Yes, I think this mouse must have been sent by the god of cleanliness to make sure we dust, wipe and clean everyday. I don't want to sound bias but I am sure the mouse came compliments of the bakery since the whole damn first concourse now smells of baking cakes and bread all day every day! Oh, and the mouse has a pet too. There is also one cockroach. And the cockroach has many pets too - flies - indoors - in an air conditioned mall. And no, they don't s**t but they lay eggs. Tinier than full-stop white eggs ON ALL MY MERCHADISE!!! Maybe if I am lucky, my pet's pet will leave 1 piece of even smaller s**t beside the slightly bigger piece to make up a set.
Grrrrr........think I will stay off bread and cakes for a while in silent protest! Maybe I should stop going to the mall too :)P
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