Exhausted from a 2 hour-flight from Jakarta, plus a 2 hour-ride from Bandar Seri Begawan with a chatty driver, I was glad to finally able to check in. I knew that there are a large number of TKI (Indonesian Labour Force) working in Brunei, but I was not prepared to encounter so many of them on my first night in Brunei. After filling out the check-in form, I handed it back to the receptionist, and then she surprised me by asking how I would like to settle the bill in Bahasa Indonesia. Okay...that's one.
Because I was carrying with me a box containing the training material for the training I was to conduct, I asked the receptionist to have it sent to my room. And of course, the bell boy who carried the box to my room was also Indonesian.
I was hungry enough to eat a horse, so as instructed on the menu catalog, I dialed the number for Room Service. Sure enough, the girl who answered my phone was also Indonesian. She mentioned that actually she knew I was Indonesian before I told her (she asked me, of course)because the receptionist and the bell boy had told her so. Hmm...I guess I was already famous among the staff of the hotel. I then had the weirdest room service conversation with her, in which she told me a bit about how she ended up working at the hotel (she was to give me a more detailed version the next day when I went down for lunch).
It was not a pretty story. She got duped by the recruitment agency she was using. To use the service of the agency, she already had to pay a lot of money. She was told by the agency that she would be working at an office, but instead they put her at a small bakery shop where she had to work her butt off to earn money. It was not a lot of money, plus she still had to pay the agency some amount of money every month because the agency said that the amount she paid earlier was not enough to cover their expenses to bring her over.
The owner of the bakery shop was not a very nice employer as at very often occasions he would cut down her salary because of some missing coffee sachets or oranges or even breads, at the price they were sold on the menu (for example one coffee sachet could make a glass of capuccino, so she would be charged at the price of a glass of capuccino). She had no idea why these items were missing, she did not take them, but still she had to pay the price. Did not like the treatment, she then tried to find another job, and found one at the hotel where she works now. Although she had found a new job, it was not very easy to resign from the bakery shop because she had a two-year contract with the owner, and of course, she had to pay the agency again because she was breaking the contract.
When she told me her story, she said she was happy because she had just finished paying back all the money to the agency just two months before. She has been working in Brunei for two years, but she had no savings at all because of this. Finally now she could start to save money for her and her family. She said she was very grateful for this.
I was touched by her story. By placing the order through room service, not only did I get the food I wanted, but I also got a lesson. If she could be very grateful for what she had after what had happened to her, certainly I could, too.
Sometimes we take this life for granted and we always look up to have more. Sometimes we also feel that life has not been fair to us. But all we need is just to take a second to stop, to look back, and to look around us. Then we will realize that there are lots of things we have accomplished in life. Then we will realize we have been provided with so many good things in life. Then we will realize that there are people who are not as lucky as we are.
We should always be grateful for what we have.
Saturday, April 29
Be Grateful for What We Have
I would call this not a story a person's being lucky or unlucky. I see from different side; that i have to give her two tumbs up for a fight for her life, for so called happiness and wealth, or economic improvement or economic adjustment whatsoever.
Of course this story is tragic for her (or had been so tragic as it had been finished two months ago), but there is always something to learn.. sebenarnya pelajaran basi sih. that dont be trapped, or the extreme thing is that dont be poor, or dont be not educated. but who wants to be poor? who wants to be uneducated?
i was considering myself poor, but i didnt consider myself as uneducated. hehe...