*Sigh*

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.