Chinatown Life

-
I happened to be in Chinatown today, an area pulsating, resonating with the rhythm of life, street life in particular.
What was amazing was that the pasar malam stalls next to Outram MRT station, a yearly fixture for the Chinese New Years have already been set up! Christmas is not even here yet!
Anyway, it has been quite a while since I set foot on Chinatown. I love the buzz of the street life in Chinatown, there are just so much things to see and behold: the cultural and religious charm and that of the busy street life.
However, today's visit was unlike those of my earlier visits. As I was walking along the street in busy Chinatown, I saw a very old woman, pushing a cart laden with flattened cardboxes along the traffic-heavy street in the very hot sun. She was pushing at a very slow pace, inevitably due to her very old age, her small frame and slow tempo of pushing, juxataposed against the heavy flow of traffic which was just inching past her! How dangerous that was! No doubt, she is doing this everyday just to earn a living.
The old woman is familar to me, as I have saw her face in a Channel 8 documentary. She is 90+ years old already, and still have to work long hours a day, salvaging scrap cardboxes and selling them for mere few dollars, ekeing out a living, staking out her little existence in bustling Chinatown with her little frail body struggling everyday to make ends meet... she probably have to struggle this way till the day she passes on... sad isn't it?
The people around and Singaporeans, in general, may be too busy in their daily work to have actually noticed her.. the rugged and strong old lady who is almost a centenarian in age but a lion in strength, fortitude as she soldiers on everyday in life, just to earn a simple living.
Singapore may be rich, but our country still have a portion of those in need of financial help. The income gap between the rich and poor continues to widen... while the little old woman struggles to earn a few dollars each day, I have seen some the very rich simply spending lots of money on luxury items.
Life is as such... there can be no equality, there would always be the rich and the poor.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Start a project : "Adopt a grandma or grandpa" !! All it takes is a little time (weekend visits) n a little help in the finance (bring foodstuff during visits like we do with our parents or relatives anyway). A small gesture to bring some joy to these "forgotten" senior citizens.
Wed Dec 03, 02:51:00 AM GMT+8
Singapore Short Stories said…
hi Dutchie, good idea but may not work well here cos even the teens nowadays are not really that close to their grand parents, not to mention to adopt another grand parents.
Thu Dec 04, 10:35:00 PM GMT+8
Anonymous said…
Ulitiarilism theory does not apply in the real world... Inequality of income distribution is inevitable.

Angel is beside you
Sat Dec 20, 12:18:00 AM GMT+8
Post a Comment

Singapore Stocks Investing

Loading...

SG STOCKS INVESTING: Your Money & Lifestyle Magazine!

Loading...

Popular posts from this blog

How to win 4D ?

-
Image
Every employee has an income to sustain him and his family as well as the monthly mortages when one buy a house . However, who does not want to be rich? To augment one’s income beside the monthly income he earns from his employer, there are many ways people have explored. Some people have secondary professions or part time jobs after their office hours. However, this secondary profession is acceptable legally only if the main employer gives the nod else it will be called ‘moonlighting’. People who ‘moonlights’ do it quietly and stealthily behind their bosses and colleagues. Such secondary professions can include multi-level marketing, part-time tutoring, part-time real estate and part-time insurance, just to list a few popular choices. Other than these, to earn extra income , some would turn to making some few bucks online or adopting a good investment strategy to beat the inflation rates. Having discussed these methods, we should turn to the number 1 method that Singaporeans u...
Read more

Lee Wei Ling: “Why I choose to remain Single”?

-
An article written by Dr Lee Wei Ling, Director and Senior Consultant of the National Neurology Institute, who is better known to Singaporeans as the daughter of Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew appeared in “The Sunday Times” today. The article was titled “Why I choose to remain Single?” in which Dr Lee shared with readers the reasons for her choosing to remain single. Dr Lee began her article describing the great love, care and bonding between her parents, especially during this period when her mother’s health is not as good as before. Few paragraphs later, she brought readers back to her reasons for choosing to remain single, though it was mentioned Dr Lee has suitors and dated before. As gleaned from the article, the two reasons Dr Lee gave for choosing to remain single are: “Firstly, my mother set the bar too high for me. I could not envisage being the kind of mother and mother she has been” … Statement 1 “Secondly, I am temperamentally similar to my father. Indeed, he once sa...
Read more

Performance Bonus

-
It is the time of the year civil servants receive their performance bonuses (PBs). In the coming two weeks, civil servants will not only receive their performance bonuses, special ‘growth bonuses’, would also await them for the very first time. These PBs and growth bonuses are only applicable to performers, defined as officers with assessed performance gradings above the ‘D’ grade. Typically, civil servants receive their performance bonuses in March, a 0.5 month of bonus in July and a 13th month plus AVC in December. Are all the bonuses good? To be frank, the bonuses dished out in Civil Service are averages at best. With the various bonuses being given out in these months: July, December and March, a civil servant who would like to quit would most likely try to find a ‘suitable’ month to quit so as not to forfeit his bonuses. The December bonus is generally the most generous portion. To quantify for this bonus, an officer would have to be in service till the end of January ne...
Read more