Jin Cham.

It was a familiar voice and a familiar face.

“Xiao Mei ah ( little sister), Hao jiu mei you jian dao ni ah. Qu na li leh?”

Little sister, it’s been a long time since I last saw you, where have you been?

“Aunty ah, wo zai gong zuo ah, jin cham ah.”

Aunty, I replied in mandarin, I’ve started working. It’s really hard work, I haven’t had time to come!

Jin Cham. In our Hokkien dialect, Jin means extremely, to the maximum, while Cham means terrible, carrying a certain sense of mock tragedy to it.

“Xiao Mei ah, bu yao jiang Jin Cham leh, you gong zuo zuo Yi Jing hen hao le!”

My dear girl, don’t complain that it’s really hard work/so terrible, its a good thing you even have a job!

I looked at her, stunned. She was an elderly lady who has been selling rojak along the famous Peranakan streets of Katong for years, decades even. It’s a good thing I even have a job. How true.

 “Ni yao chi shen me?” What would you like to have?

“One rojak, Aunty. Medium sized, takeaway. For my parents. Your Rojak is the best, Aunty, my folks won’t have it from any other stall.” 

Rojak, it’s a local delicacy of mixed vegetables and fried dough fritters mixed in chilli prawn paste. 

It’s a good thing I even have a job. She would know.

Since I started work, I’ve started to appreciate these lovely people on a level far deeper than I ever have before: the waiters and waitresses, cashiers behind counters, taxi drivers, cleaners who clean toilets, salespeople who sell products, smiling faces behind ice-cream stands and food counters, even telemarketers who call and ask, “Hi good morning mdm, would you be interested to sign up for our membership?” all have something in common. They do the same thing, day in day out, for a livelihood. They put their hand to the plough. Most do their work with integrity and diligence. They may not even have an off-day. Day in day out, they slog. For mouths to feed at home, educations to fund, for something called pride.

But we, the new generation who has everything, take our work for granted.

I have been guilty. Behind tired faces, we complain about our 80-hour work weeks, bemoaning our sad plights while boasting. But we forget, this is not reality.

On Tuesday this week, a writer from Singapore magazine asked for an interview with me. One of her questions was, what I find so fulfilling about visiting developing countries, over and over. And I remember saying, that many of us live in such a sanitized, artificial world. We live in a world that is not reality. And the poor, the underprivileged and the marginalized constantly remind me of what is real, what is true, what is worth fighting for.

Becasue Reality is not 80-hour work weeks. It’s not slogging weekends and complaining about having no off-days. Reality is that millions around the world live on less than a dollar a day.  Reality is that most people around us, if you really look around, are working for people that don’t care about their welfare, don’t adhere to labour laws, and certainly pay no attention to their personal growth and well-being, unless it profits the company directly.

Reality is visiting Grandpa Zhou last weekend, and learning that his fingernails were a dirty algae green because he had spent the day scrubbing off algae and rust from a bag of coins that he had collected over the months from sitting by the train station, but had got soaked by rainwater when he store them away near an open window.

  

Reality is most people not even having the privilege of taking extended leave, much less have the opportunity to be troubled about where to go on holiday.

Reality is that even in a land as affluent as Singapore, there are plenty of marginalized people who would flock to community events to catch a free or cheap dinner. Yesterday, when I attended the Lantern Festival dinner that Grandpa Zhou invited me to (an event organised by the church near his home), most of the people there were likely from low income families.

 

Reality is coming home today and (finally, after months of waiting for an email reply from Mozambique) finding out that for the children I saw in Mozambique, Africa to have milk and fruit on a daily basis, instead of merely rice and beans, it would cost $3380 a month to fund their feeding programmes.

My dear girl, don’t complain, its a good thing you even have a job!

Her words rang in my ears like a tower bell. So what if I have to work 80 hours a week. So what if I have three 31-hour shifts to work in 6 days (golly, though I’m really not sure how I’m going to survive that). So what if we’re “underpaid”?

Food. Shelter. Love. Is there anything more we need?

The truth is, our tiny, myopic, self-centred worlds are anything but reality. Our worlds are light years away from being jin cham.

So I am learning, to learn to live each day with a heart of deeper gratitude and greater thanksgiving. And to realize, that I have more than I need. Far more than I really need.

 

“Give thanks to God, for he is good;

his love endures forever.”

-Psalm 107:1