Overheard in Boston

Guy A: So she's always going on about herself
Guy B: Yea, I know. There's this one time at the end of the year when she kept on talking about how this hot dog vendor was in love with her and wanted to marry her. And she just kept on going on and on about it. And I told her, and this is only because it was the end of the year, "What does it say about you that even a hot dog vendor can get you?"
Guy A: Hahahahahhaa. That is AWESOME.

I think I have issues with people being elitist.

Lots of traveling

Just realized that my blog is been way too serious recently. So here's a pretty sunset from Kuching and a list of travels:

From Kuching

5/23-24: Kuching

5/31-6/7: Tokyo / Hakone

6/20-21: Bintan

7/3-7/5: Boston

7/6-7/10: San Francisco

7/10-7/12: San Francisco or Vegas. Convince me of one of them if you care

Feminism Here I Come...

But only in the more needed and productive ways.
Went to see No Day Off by Eric Khoo on Friday. It was a film about a 23 year old girl from Sulawesi Indonesia who is in Singapore to earn money to buy a house in Indonesia. She's married and has a kid and doesn't speak English. The camera focused only on Siti (the girl's name) and almost no other faces were shown in the entire movie. Everyone talked at her in 3 different languages in 3 different households. It was a screening done by UNIFEM, TWC2, Aidha, and HOME so obviously meant to show the hardships for domestic workers here. Obviously, it was decently biased. While the work might be correct, the loneliness it aimed to portray I thought was a little too exaggerated. Throughout the entire movie, we only saw her have conversations with another human being at the very end.

A Q&A ensued that blew my mind. Keep in mind that I haven't looked up any facts yet and all this information was gotten from various movements working to have domestic workers be able to take a day off.

1) Domestic workers (live-in maids) make about $250/month. It costs ~$600/month to hire a live-in maid. Where does the difference go? I had assumed the maid agency but no, it's the Singaporean government. The government's argument is since most maids come from Indonesia and they don't want to encourage unnecessary immigration to the country, they're imposing levies on domestic workers to be paid by their employers so that hiring a maid from Indonesia will be almost comparable to hiring a Singaporean. In addition to this, they have to pay a $5000 bond for immigration fees and if the domestic worker is "lost" they lose this deposit. Maids are also tied to their employers and forced to go back almost immediately after they're terminated.

WHAT? So instead of creating a minimum wage that would create the same effect on unnecessary immigration, the Singaporean government is taking the difference between a respectable minimum wage and what domestic workers are paid? Their argument for not creating a minimum wage is that they don't want to discourage competition. In what why are they not limiting competition in this case??

2) The current goal of the organizations is that allow domestic workers to have one day off per week. We suggested maybe having relief workers help out or having 7 maids work for 6 families. We were immediately shot down. 1 maid working for > 1 family is illegal and part time work in Singapore is illegal unless performed by Singaporeans and Singaporeans won't want to. Ok...

3) Employment pass provides certain basic benefits but domestic workers do not have employment passes and are excluded from these rights

4) Indonesia recently pass regulation stating that no more domestic workers will be sent to Malaysia because one domestic worker was assaulted in Malaysia. NGOs seemed to play a large part in bringing this about.

5) Human rights is associated with communism. WTF.

I'm working on getting more involved with UNIFEM and Aidha so hopefully I'll have an answer to all these questions... but for the time being... if you do any research that will shed any light, please comment.

Reflections from Saigon

HCM was awesome, mainly because of its abundance of cafes and what always happens when sasha and I are in a cafe.

The best part I believe was when we were wondering around saigon, looking for nothing in particular, but heading towards the independence palace. We stopped for some coffee "take away" and ended up having bubble coffee over the next hour. We both remembered that it was an awesome time but my recollection of our conversation was that it was about identity and her recollection was that it was about sex. The identity conversation went something like this: If we split your actions into things that you work for and things you fall into, what's more essentially you?
My argument is that people are constantly changing and shaping themselves to be how they would like to see themselves. In that case, is your nature defined more by things that you work hard to achieve or things that come naturally? And if it's the former, are your goals and aspirations what define you rather than your current state and current actions?

But more on this later...

The other conversation occurred over a $10 buffet breakfast at an ahotel near ours. We were discussing our reactions to seeing the Vietnamese countryside and meeting a girl who obviously had her share of emotional problems. The girl was anorexic, bulimic, asthmatic and had an uncanny way of redirecting the conversation to focus in on only one topic, which was usually either herself or hermit crabs. She had just graduated from university and was spending some time traveling SE Asia before entering law school in the fall. I found her to be a fascinating person. She was almost the exact opposite of me and was extremely open about personal details, making it a prime opportunity to understand someone fundamentally different. The difficulty for me is understanding why someone would choose to focus on the bad and have complete strangers feel sorry for me. But I suppose that's another topic altogether.
Meanwhile, traveling through the Vietnamese countryside had a much more profound effect on me. Our bus from Saigon to the Mekong Delta had a lot of random stops and at one of these stops, our driver got out of the bus and got out a canister of gas (for cooking, what are these things called?) and placed it by the roadside. As we drove away, I saw an old lady appear from an abandoned shop and drag the canister slowly towards the shop.

okay, bedtime. TBC...

random thoughts bf i forget

I LOVE shakshuka. It's how I take my eggs now. not poached, not scrambled, but shakshuka'd. I love Isreali food I think in general

Massages cause amazing realizations...and the sensation that you are a hot coconut cookie.

FMP = largest, hottest frat party in the world. All the "coolest" kids assemble there. prime example here:

From SashaSGFMP

aren't they just so cool with their partial nudity and smooth moves?

I miss twitter when I'm out of the country now...

Mambo Jambo night at zouk = square room... rain falling...miming dance project

oops..

lots of things going on... but i feel uncomfortable writing abt it in a blog. ironic right?

in other news...I'm going to try to get my diving certification! dunno when or where but seems like Jek might know what we need to do.

I've given up on my secret sprint triathlon in Bintan aspirations. Good thing they were secret so no one knows I failed...

mmmm...pizza

nom nom nom