Stephanie Chok
Looking at it makes me sick. Sick with rage, disbelief, and
sadness.
I arrived in Geylang yesterday afternoon for a mooncake
get-together with some migrant worker friends and volunteers.
Upon arrival, I was shown this receipt, issued by a phone shop
just across the road. Song (not his real name), a construction
worker from China, had walked across the road to buy a top-up
Singtel card. He asked for a receipt and was issued with one that
says on the top, ‘F**k U’. At the bottom, it says ‘F**k your
Mother’.
Song, who did not understand what it meant, brought it back and
showed it to a friend, Eric. ‘What does it say?’ Song asked, ‘I
don’t understand.’ Eric was shocked, and returned to the store. The
store clerk denied issuing it, and denied that Song had stepped
into his store.
So there we were, a team of local volunteers and a group of
Chinese nationals, grappling with the spillover of this hate
message that I now held in my hand, and which Eric just had the
unpleasant task of explaining. I felt polluted just holding on to
it.
It was an awkward moment, a moment that made me so furious I
took the receipt and promptly marched across the street, back to
the store. ‘What are you going to say?’ asked my companion. Say? To
be honest, I hardly felt like saying anything. I felt like
hammering my fist into something (or someone).
I went into the store, took out the receipt and asked the man
whom Song identified as the perpetrator, ‘Was this receipt issued
by you?’. He looked at me defiantly and said, ‘No.’ He denied that
the store issued the receipt, and refused to acknowledge that he
had such a customer. The other man in the store, stony-faced,
refused to even look me in the eye, and also denied the receipt was
issued from the store.
COWARD.
He had the bile to spew such hateful language, yet lacked the
guts to own up to it when confronted.
And the cunning! The store clerk used a ‘generic’ receipt, which
wouldn’t identify their store, despite the fact that they also had
a receipt book with the shop name printed on it.
So he thought that Song, this ‘hapless’ worker from China, would
not understand the message and would not have friends who would
alert him to what it meant. Or, at least, not so soon – and
certainly not from just across the street. Friends who would return
to confront him. The store clerk probably thought that Song would
leave with this nasty message in his pocket and give it to someone
else to read, oblivious. So, this is funny?
What mirth does one derive in insulting others without
provocation? And in such a vile and disgusting manner?
And how does one deal with hatefulness such as this? After the
rage has subsided, what is left?
A gaping emptiness, because our soul is momentarily depleted and
confused.
A quiet desperation, from not knowing how to comfort someone
whose dignity has been trampled on. And for no apparent reason
beyond the fact that he is, well, visibly ‘different’.
A bitter aftertaste lines the pit of my stomach.
Dealing with HATE is tough.
P.S. The shop’s name is SIMPANG TIGA CELLULAR and it is located
at 350 Geylang Road. It is just in front of a bus-stop and next to
a 7-11.
http://theonlinecitizen.com/2009/10/chinese-worker-issued-with-receipt-containing-vulgarities/
