SNIPPETS from the MIDDLE-EAST (Part III) : All Is Not Bed of Roses

Walking around in this region has forced me to grapple with stinking body odour of foreigners from certain countries of the South Asian sub-continent. Even the locals have to hold their breath when those dark-complexioned people are passing by them. Who cares to tell them that they need to do something about their extremely repulsive body odour ?

Housemaids here are simply treated almost like 'no thing'. The maid would tag along with the family she works for on a shopping trip either pushing a trolley or baby-stroller. When comes the time for meal in the foodcourt or restaurant, the maid would be allowed to sit together at the same table with the family, but never would she be offered to eat something with them nor a cup of plain water for her to sip. She would just sit there watching until they finish eating. Such is a respect for humanity ! Is it a cross-cultural thing ?

In the hypermarkets or huge departmental stores in town, racial discrimination is conspicuously rampant. I wanted to buy some fresh fish from an international hypermaket at a famous shopping mall but felt somewhat ignored by the store assistants manning the fish section. I waved at them for attention as they would still need to pick the fish for you anyway. They looked at you fleetingly and didn't care a hoot. They instead attended to their own kind who was in fact behind me in the queue. When shopping for a unique straw hat at a store, I was already ahead in the queue to make payment at the cashier when a local just jumped the queue to my absolute astonishment. You wouldn't see that happening in Kuala Lumpur !

I had a chance to visit a compatriot who worked in one of the airlines on the occassion of the Eid. He was one of the most senior pilots who had grown with the airline until what it had become today. He was working under contract with the airline and had his contract revised or amended 3 times unilaterally by the so-called 'first-world management' expatriates who hailed from either the UK or Australia. They were pure racists to the core as they would choose only those of their skin-colour to fill expatriate job vacancies at the expense of other more qualified and experienced candidates. Even post-Apartheid Afrikaaners were more amicable. First-world managers practising third-world management standards, huh... !! And these #$^&*+% racists were fully aware that the same standards would be wrong and illegal when applied back in their home countries. It was a blatant hypocrisy against Asians, plain and pure. But there was nothing that he could do about it. He could not complain through his pilots' union because unionism was non-existent in this part of the world.