After-thoughts

Watched an episode of 年过半百 on channel 8 earlier. It is about elderly persons whom despite having lived to over half a century old, are still earning their own keeps. The uncle they featured prompted me to pen down this entry.

Uncle is 68 years old and he works as a HDB cleaner. Although he officially starts work at 5am, he is often on his job by 330 to 4am. He lives in Hougang and wakes up at 3am everyday and he cycles to work at Seng Kang.

He prefers to start work early so that he can sweep the area outside the shops before the shops open for business. Such is his being considerate and dutiful in carrying out his duties.

However, he only sweeps the flats' corridor floor by floor after 9am. He does not want to disturb the people sleeping. He also notices that early in the morning, there will be young children sitting at their doorsteps eating their breakfast; he is afraid that the dust will get into their food when he sweeps the floor. He is mindful about households who have babies and he carries out his chores outside their houses quietly so that he does not scare the babies with loud noises. Such is beyond being considerate, meticulous and dutiful.

Most admirable is he is NOT getting any paycheck for this job. He is merely helping his wife who is the one officially employed under HDB as a cleaner. He does not want to see his wife slogging alone. 2 persons doing the job, 1 paycheck. Without any complains, carrying out his duties more than people who receive paycheck would.

Some quotes from uncle:

'You can blame fate, but you cannot blame heaven'
'Some people say my job is without prospects, but I do my job well and this is what I am good at'
'There is no job that it too low'
'If I do my job with a sob face, then I should just stay at home'

Uncle I salute you.

During the course of my work, I have come across many people from different walks of life. This includes adults who are able bodied yet not working because of their sorry/crappy reasons. I cannot bring myself to sympathise nor empathise with them. I only pity their children whom most likely would be entrenched in this cycle of poverty; and I wonder for how many generations to come.

I think those adults are really cowards living in their own tineey whineey miserable world and hoping for money to drop from the sky or people to feed them. They think downgrading their flats make them lose face and earning less than a $1000 per month is too lowly paid. So, they would rather have their electricity cut off and have their children dropped out prematurely from school. Tell them the government would feed them and their family for as long as they live in exchange for a limb and they would most probably agree. Ok maybe I exaggerated some bit. Anyway some of the excuses they have that really make me want to smack them right at their faces: eg -

1. I have a foul temper and I can only be my own boss.
2. The pay is so low I do not earn anything after minusing off the transport and meal expenses.
3. I have never worked that kind of job before.

Enough said.

Uncle is very much like my dad. My dad is only a year younger than uncle. Ask my dad not to work? That is more difficult than going to the moon. Just that he is taking work a little less serious now; and when he is tired he would return home to rest.