A New Found Respect for Manual Labour ....

In Singapore, we have this strange phenomenon of typecasting people by
the work that they do.

Road sweepers, Rubbish collectors, delivery men, couriers ... all these
jobs command very little respect in our society.

It's no wonder that nobody wants to do this kind of work! The Ministry
of Manpower is trying its darndest to reinvent this kind of jobs but
if Singaporeans in general, continue to look down on these types
of work, it won't help, no matter what you name them.

I am not a delivery man per se, but sometimes I make deliveries myself
to save on costs. So I bring along my trustee trolley and do my
delivery runs with my colleague.

One such day was yesterday, when I had to deliver some diaries to a
client of mine. It was in the heart of the city, so parking was not
easy to find. I managed to get a lot along the road and proceeded to
unload the goods onto the trolley. Making my way to my client's office,
I decided to do some site recce before trying to bring all the cartons
in, mind you there were 25 of them.

I asked one of the staff downstairs for the person in charge and was
directed upstairs. When I went up, I asked the bloke if there was a
lift I could use as it would be a daunting task to lug each carton,
weighing 20 kg, one by one up the staircase. To my dismay, he said that
there wasn't one and I just sighed and proceeded to bring each carton
up the stairs, one by one. I was with one of my colleagues and
therefore thought that it would not be so bad.

Being branded as delivery men by then, I noticed
that we suddenly became 'transparent' the staff in the office. They
literally look past you as if you don't exist. I am not being paranoid
as when I'm in my client's office as a Business Development
Manager, I realize that the treatment is very different, hence I could
feel the vast difference in the treatment in this instance.

Anyway, after lugging 18 cartons up the stairs, one of the girls, who
obviously had not noticed us 18 times earlier, asked my colleague in
Mandarin, " Next time you should bring a trolley, then you can use the
lift behind."

I was dumbfounded and asked out loud just to clarify, "You mean there
IS a lift?", and glanced at the bloke that said that there wasn't
initially. He sheepishly grinned and said that there was one, but they
never really use it!

I then looked at the girl and told her that we DID have a trolley and
that she should have told us earlier. She said, "I did not know how
many cartons you had, mah!" With her accompanying Ah Lian grin.

I took the balance 7 cartons and brought them up using the lift and up
to that point, because of the look on my face, I think they felt a
little bad.

They felt bad for several reasons, I reckoned. They felt bad because
they could not care enough for one minute to make another human being's
life easier by pointing him to the lift in the first place. The felt
bad because they believed that we were just delivery men, the lowest of
the low in society ... so who cares if they have to walk up the stairs
25 times! Only when they saw the sweat and the toil that we had to go
through, did they realize .. hey, they're human too!!!

So I have a new found respect for manual labour because I know how hard
it is to do their jobs, having worn their shoes for a moment. I admire
them because they still can do their jobs with dignity and pride even
though the rest of the world doesn't acknowledge them. I admire them
because they simply have to put up with a discriminating society like
ours.

Being old and lonely

I have a grand uncle that lives in a nursing home. If I'm not mistaken,
he's probably about 88 years old. he is related to my mother as he is
her aunt's husband. My aunt is long gone and without any children, we
are basically all he has.

Unfortunately, he had a reputation of being a unreasonable and stingy
with his money in his younger days and now that he is old, a little
senile, none of us wants to look after him.

He does have one other nephew, my mum's cousin, who currently lives in
France. He treats him like a son and has willed all his earthly
belongings to him. But seeing as he lives in France, he is unable to
look after him either!

After selling off his private property and other non-essential assets,
my uncle has a reasonable sum of cash in the bank plus a miserable
pension that the government pays to him every month. The silver lining
for us is that the cash that he has, is probably enough to see him
through till the end and being a pensionable, all major medical bills
are taken care of by the government.

My mother was given the arduous task of looking after his affairs and
long story short, because of his progressing dementia, his obnoxious
side surfaces sometimes and had pissed her off some months back. She
does not want to have anything to do with him and neither does my
sister.

Since my brother said that he was ill-treated by him when he was young,
that pretty much leaves him out as well. So the responsibility now
falls in my lap.

My role now is essentially to collect his bank statements from time to
time to check the balances and make sure that he has enough in the
current account to pay for the home charges and if it runs low, I have
to bring him to the bank and transfer funds from one account to
another.

This is what I had to do today as his current account was running low.
I was dreading this task and called the home in advance to have him
ready to go by the time I got there.

My plan was to get him to the bank, do the deed and get him back as
soon as humanly possible. After picking him up, I realized he was
indeed excited to leave the home although he had no idea where he was
going to and with whom. We were at the bank and in no time, our task
was completed.

My instincts were to rush him back to the home and be proud that my
duties were successfully executed. However during the drive there, it
dawned on me that it had been sometime since this bloke had actually
been outside the home premises. "Aiyah, nobody brings him out one!" -
The nurses words were still ringing clearly in my ear when I approached
her to sign him out. She could not find his file that had all the
people sign him out - because ... there wasn't one! The last time he
was outside the home was when my sister signed him out 2 birthdays ago
to do the exact same deed that we were doing today.

My conscience pricked me and I felt ashamed that we had left him there
for so long .. no visits, no outings.

So I asked him if he wanted to eat something and immediately saw his
eyes light up. I knew that being an Ang Moh bloke, he wouldn't have had
much of his "own kind of food" often as the majority of the residents
in the home were Chinese and they would have had mostly Chinese meals
on a daily basis.

I decided to bring him to Jack's Place and ordered Fish and Chips
complete with the full set meal of soup and dessert.

I actually thought that being as old as he is, he would have probably
only finished a quarter of what I ordered for him but no matter, I was
just happy to give him a taste of his Western food.

But when the soup came, he finished every drop of it and went through a
fair bit of the fish and chips, not forgetting that he lapped up every
possible spoonful of the caramel dessert that came with it.

I could see contentment in his eyes as he exclaimed that he was "full"!
I asked him if he enjoyed it and he responded with a big yes.

I brought him back to the home and brought him up. Before turning to
leave, he grabbed my arm and thanked me for "bringing out and treating
him to the meal". Normally I would shrug it off as everyone whom I had
bought lunch for, normally said the same. But this was different, I
could see sincere gratitude in his eyes and I knew then, that my small
gesture had meant the world to him.

I felt a mixed sense of guilt, happiness and satisfaction all at the
same time. Guilt, because I had not done this nearly as often enough
and really am unsure if I will continue to do so. Happy because I knew
that I had made a difference in someone's life that day and satisfied
with myself that I had made the conscious decision to go outside my
comfort zone and do something for someone that day.

Today .. was a good day.

Here goes nothing ...

It's been at least 2 months and I've been procrastinating following up
on design project left behind by my ex-designer.

Being a born Freehand and Photoshop guy, I wasn't too thrilled getting
into Adobe Illustrator as it looked really complicated to use.

It didn't help that I tried to call at least 5 freelancers and about 3
agencies to see if they could take this off my hands and when I
mentioned the bad word ... Illustrator, they all cringed and whimpered
apologetically that they could not help me ...

With my deadline looming, I took the bull by the horns and opened up
the file after a few encouraging words from my ex-designer, who is now
working for another design agency.

Voila! After about 30 minutes, and really getting into the swing of
things, I found that it wasn't so difficult and managed to get around
the navigation tools and buttons.

Lesson to be learnt, never, I say, never think that anything is too
difficult for you until you give it a go yourself!!!

Cheers!