they gasp,in awe, when the said person does well,
and they pretend to be sympathetic,and say nice fake things like ''it's alright dear,academics is nothing,people still do well in their career life even without straight A's''...
.
being brought up by parents that dropped out of school in their early teens,
i'm thinking, education is sort of a bargain in Malaysia, with subsidies and all...so i should make use of this privilege while i can and see how far i go...
plus,if i don't help myself to achieve bigger things,who will?
.
but then, i realized that, the more i study, the less i know,or care about other things...
the less i know,the more i shut off from the outside world.
it's something that you don't realize it's happening until one day you snapped and thought,
"gosh..is this my life?am i my one and only best friend?"
.
yesterday,
i saw this construction worker (doing his job making my house pretty and nice-looking)...
he looked 90% like my Middle-Eastern (middle-'eastern'??? :s) calculus tutor from last semester..
of course,he isn't..but they have the same thick bush of Osama beard,hairy,and have fair skin...
not your average construction worker eyh?
turns out, he's a university graduate from some other country(we don't know)...
couldn't find a job back home,he came to Malaysia..
and found out that his certificate,isn't recognized here..
what was a guy,fresh out of campus going to do in a foreign land,with no qualifications whatsoever?
construction work.
hammering off old,unwanted cement surfaces,
carrying bricks, mixing cement paste,
labor work under the harsh weather we have today...
.
心酸,
is this the word?
i feel bad for him...
for working so hard and graduating,and leaving home with a dream of a brighter future.
only to settle for a rm50 a day job that any illiterate-juvenile-delinquent-punk can get effortlessly..
it breaks my heart when we all see him works a lot harder than everyone else in the team..
his perseverance in completing his tasks so he can move on to other things and get the construction going(even with an empty stomach)...
.
on the first day of construction,
when everything is to be torn down before rebuilding,
there was another guy..
Burmese...
he ran away from his country,'cause it's unbearable living there,
with the military(aka government officials) tormenting the citizens..
taking things from them..torture...sending them to jail as easy as buying a cup of coffee in kopitiams...
tar roads, brick houses, high-rise buildings,
these things can only be seen in areas where government officials and politicians live..
the rest of the country? atap houses...
he came here,determined to find a job and live a better life..
he even sends the money he earned back home to his parents in Burma...
but don't expect him to be able to walk right in to his country ever again..
they have a law in Burma for those who ran away..
Death if found/sent back to the country..
to escape death sentence will cost the perpetrator RM500,000...
he's stranded here alone..
but thank goodness our Malaysian government helped these bunch of stranded people.
they gave them the permission to stay here..
he said, if he was given a second chance to redo everything, he wouldn't ran away no matter how hard life is back home..at least the family is together.
.
it's hard to not feel anything,knowing how he lives today, even if it's better than life in Burma...
if he's boss isn't here on time to pick him up,he has to wait,rain or shine, call the guy then wait till he arrives...
meals? he bought one big packet of rice,with only curry(the gravy) on it...
that's the only thing my parents saw him eat throughout the whole day..
asked my dad for some water,so dad went out to get him a bottle of mineral water :)(because we have no empty plastic bottles at home :s)
clothes? he take the opportunity to ask around for anyone that has unwanted clothes...
.
that day, the rain never stopped.
still,diligently he does his job taking out the pieces of our roof that he could, cleaning up things,
all the way till night time,in the rain.
and even though his shift ends after 6pm..his boss wasn't there.
he called a few times.
still not here...
so he waited at the bus stop nearby,all wet from the rain..
the last we've heard about him was 8.30pm or so..
i guess that's the time his boss finally has the cheek to come pick up his employee.
.
is life, planned out for us to live it?
what have these people done in the past to earn such karma?
.
everyday,
i see the barrier,separating our lives.
the better life, and the worse.
separated merely by a sliding door and metal gates..
.
we're all human,
living in the same world,
same piece of land.
how can we have such different qualities of life?
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