First Banglas. Now PRCs.
WTF are our poodles doing? Chasing stupid Dr. Chee and monitoring the www?
Even loansharks also cannot solve?
<table id="msgUN" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="3" width="100%"><tbody><tr><td id="msgUNsubj" valign="top"> Sad story of human trafficking in SGP!!</td><td id="msgunetc" align="right" nowrap="nowrap">
Subscribe </td></tr></tbody></table> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tbody><tr class="msghead"><td class="msgbfr1" width="1%"> </td><td> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr class="msghead"> <td class="msgF" align="right" width="1%" nowrap="nowrap">From: </td><td class="msgFname" width="68%" nowrap="nowrap">pylae <nobr></nobr> </td><td class="msgDate" align="right" width="30%" nowrap="nowrap">2:51 pm </td></tr> <tr class="msghead"><td class="msgT" align="right" width="1%" height="20" nowrap="nowrap">To: </td><td class="msgTname" width="68%" nowrap="nowrap">ALL <nobr></nobr></td> <td class="msgNum" align="right" nowrap="nowrap"> (1 of 4) </td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr><tr><td rowspan="4" class="msgleft" width="1%"> </td><td class="wintiny" align="right" nowrap="nowrap">19463.1 </td></tr><tr><td height="8">
</td></tr> <tr><td class="msgtxt">Saturday, June 27, 2009
April 2, 2009. Thursday: Out of innocence
Shortly after midnight, a young Chinese lady flagged down my taxi on Balestier Road. After I stopped, she lowered her head and peered through the window for a second before opened the door. She came in, sat in the front seat, and told me in Chinese to take her to “You Chi”.
“You mean Yew Tee, the oil pond?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “You Chi, the KTV.”
But I had no knowledge of a KTV in that name. I asked her if she knew where it is and she took out a phone and got somebody on line. “Let my landlord speak to you,” she said as she passed the phone to me.
A man with a hoarse voice at the other end of the line said in English, “take the girl to Orchard KTV in Orchard Tower quickly as you can, and tell her I am waiting here.” The tone was bossy and loaded with impatience. I could also hear some noisy music in the background.
“Okay,” I replied.
I gave the phone back to the girl, and started heading towards Orchard Tower.
The girl appeared to be in her early twenties. She was dressed in jeans and a T shirt, and looked nice and endearing in an innocent kind of way. The fact that she pronounced “Orchard” as “You Chi” indicated to me that she was new to the town and could not speak English, which also explained why she checked upon the driver before she got into the taxi. She had to make sure he or she speaks Chinese.
On the way, the girl confirmed that she just arrived here three days ago from Fujian, China. She came to Singapore because she believed what she was told by middle agents that she could make money here. “They told me that I can work here in Singapore earning equivalent to at least eight thousands of RMB a month,” she said.
But it first cost her and her family 60,000 RMB to come. And after she came, she was very much disappointed to know there was no job of 8000 RMB waiting for her. No job at all, in fact.
I asked, “why don’t you just go back?”
“I am stuck,” she said moodily. “My family, my parents, are in deep debt now. I have to stay here to find a job to repay the money they borrowed for me.”
I had heard similar stories before. I sighed privately.
But then, her eyes lit up. “Luckily, my landlord is a kind man and he’s helping me find a job,” she smiled at me. “He has arranged an interview for me tonight. That’s where I am going to now. If they like me, I will be working in a KTV as a waitress, as soon as today.”
“I am sure they will like you,” I murmured. I started to have a bad feeling about this.
"It is not something I had in mind, but it will buy me some time.” She added, her smile still visible.
After a short period of silence, I asked, “how did you know your landlord? I mean, how did you find him?”
“Oh, he was introduced to me by the middle agent,” she replied glibly.
That surely made sense. I nodded to myself.
I was again quiet for a while, not sure what to say to her. Towards the end of the trip, I decided to say something which I was certain if I kept to myself I would feel bad for the rest of the night.
I told her that during the month of my taxi driving, I drove young and good-looking girls like her from China on several occasions. Some of them, also like her, paid hefty prices, some 50 or 60 thousand RMB, to the middle agents to come to Singapore with the belief that they could work here and make more money than they could in China, only to wake up to the reality that there was no such thing in Singapore, especially the Singapore in its worst economic crisis, after they stepped on this island. The girls I met all ended up selling themselves to Chinese-speaking men, because they, like her, cannot speak any English. “You shouldn’t trust your landlord,” I cautioned, “as you shouldn’t have trusted your agents, because I think they are in this together. Melons of the same vine.”
“I don’t want to sound overly negative,” I added in the end. “But just think about it. What’s the odd of getting a normal job in Singapore without being able to speak a single word of English?”
She had kept her lips compressed into a thin line while she listened. After I was finished, she took a deep breath and said, “thanks for telling me all this. I appreciate it. I know how to protect myself.”
“You’ll need to. It is a jungle out there.” I said in earnest.
Orchard Tower was aside us now. The huge neon sign board hung on the wall of the building shone on the street below which was still crowded with partygoers at this hour. As the girl handed me with the taxi fare, I noticed that her hand trembled slightly. I knew she was still excited or nervous about the coming “interview”. I wished her luck as she stepped out of the car.
Perhaps she had also stepped out of her innocence. I hoped.
</td></tr></tbody></table>
WTF are our poodles doing? Chasing stupid Dr. Chee and monitoring the www?
Even loansharks also cannot solve?
<table id="msgUN" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="3" width="100%"><tbody><tr><td id="msgUNsubj" valign="top"> Sad story of human trafficking in SGP!!</td><td id="msgunetc" align="right" nowrap="nowrap">
</td></tr> <tr><td class="msgtxt">Saturday, June 27, 2009
April 2, 2009. Thursday: Out of innocence
Shortly after midnight, a young Chinese lady flagged down my taxi on Balestier Road. After I stopped, she lowered her head and peered through the window for a second before opened the door. She came in, sat in the front seat, and told me in Chinese to take her to “You Chi”.
“You mean Yew Tee, the oil pond?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “You Chi, the KTV.”
But I had no knowledge of a KTV in that name. I asked her if she knew where it is and she took out a phone and got somebody on line. “Let my landlord speak to you,” she said as she passed the phone to me.
A man with a hoarse voice at the other end of the line said in English, “take the girl to Orchard KTV in Orchard Tower quickly as you can, and tell her I am waiting here.” The tone was bossy and loaded with impatience. I could also hear some noisy music in the background.
“Okay,” I replied.
I gave the phone back to the girl, and started heading towards Orchard Tower.
The girl appeared to be in her early twenties. She was dressed in jeans and a T shirt, and looked nice and endearing in an innocent kind of way. The fact that she pronounced “Orchard” as “You Chi” indicated to me that she was new to the town and could not speak English, which also explained why she checked upon the driver before she got into the taxi. She had to make sure he or she speaks Chinese.
On the way, the girl confirmed that she just arrived here three days ago from Fujian, China. She came to Singapore because she believed what she was told by middle agents that she could make money here. “They told me that I can work here in Singapore earning equivalent to at least eight thousands of RMB a month,” she said.
But it first cost her and her family 60,000 RMB to come. And after she came, she was very much disappointed to know there was no job of 8000 RMB waiting for her. No job at all, in fact.
I asked, “why don’t you just go back?”
“I am stuck,” she said moodily. “My family, my parents, are in deep debt now. I have to stay here to find a job to repay the money they borrowed for me.”
I had heard similar stories before. I sighed privately.
But then, her eyes lit up. “Luckily, my landlord is a kind man and he’s helping me find a job,” she smiled at me. “He has arranged an interview for me tonight. That’s where I am going to now. If they like me, I will be working in a KTV as a waitress, as soon as today.”
“I am sure they will like you,” I murmured. I started to have a bad feeling about this.
"It is not something I had in mind, but it will buy me some time.” She added, her smile still visible.
After a short period of silence, I asked, “how did you know your landlord? I mean, how did you find him?”
“Oh, he was introduced to me by the middle agent,” she replied glibly.
That surely made sense. I nodded to myself.
I was again quiet for a while, not sure what to say to her. Towards the end of the trip, I decided to say something which I was certain if I kept to myself I would feel bad for the rest of the night.
I told her that during the month of my taxi driving, I drove young and good-looking girls like her from China on several occasions. Some of them, also like her, paid hefty prices, some 50 or 60 thousand RMB, to the middle agents to come to Singapore with the belief that they could work here and make more money than they could in China, only to wake up to the reality that there was no such thing in Singapore, especially the Singapore in its worst economic crisis, after they stepped on this island. The girls I met all ended up selling themselves to Chinese-speaking men, because they, like her, cannot speak any English. “You shouldn’t trust your landlord,” I cautioned, “as you shouldn’t have trusted your agents, because I think they are in this together. Melons of the same vine.”
“I don’t want to sound overly negative,” I added in the end. “But just think about it. What’s the odd of getting a normal job in Singapore without being able to speak a single word of English?”
She had kept her lips compressed into a thin line while she listened. After I was finished, she took a deep breath and said, “thanks for telling me all this. I appreciate it. I know how to protect myself.”
“You’ll need to. It is a jungle out there.” I said in earnest.
Orchard Tower was aside us now. The huge neon sign board hung on the wall of the building shone on the street below which was still crowded with partygoers at this hour. As the girl handed me with the taxi fare, I noticed that her hand trembled slightly. I knew she was still excited or nervous about the coming “interview”. I wished her luck as she stepped out of the car.
Perhaps she had also stepped out of her innocence. I hoped.
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