bad metaphor

Traffic
One day, Twinkles and I had decided to take it easy, sleep in and relax in the morning. By the time we’d gotten ready to go out, the daily downpour in Kuala Lumpur had begun; nothing to do but wait until the outdoor shower was over. We sat at the entrance to the hostel, debating about purchasing an umbrella, when two gentlemen from Singapore, who were maybe in their late thirties / early forties, introduced themselves. They weren’t dressed in suits, but we could tell from their demeanor that they were businessmen. We chatted about music and various things. They were very nice, and at the same time they also seemed to be relentlessly networking. I’m not sure what branches Twinkles and I could provide to these people, being twenty-something English teachers in Korea and all, but we went and had lunch with them anyway.

I had been curious about this fragrant Thai place right next to the hostel, but the businessmen – one of whom was Indian, I believe, and the other Bengali – took one look at the place and politely suggested, “how about another place?” We ended up going to an Indian restaurant across the street. Had various curries on a banana leaf, which were all right, but the ordering process was so confusing that I didn’t quite end up with what I had wanted, and what I did end up getting wasn’t that impressive. Still, the businessmen footed the bill, so that bit was nice.

They asked us what we did, and we said we were English teachers in Korea (just like any other American they would encounter in Southeast Asia, basically). Then I asked what they did, and the Indian guy paused a bit before he said, “We’re headhunters.” That rang a bell in my head dimly, somewhere, but conscious me didn’t really quite understand until he elaborated further, with business jargon and such. “We’re in the business of importing a labor force from other countries, principally the Philippines, to supply Malaysian companies with a much-needed work force. You see, there’s a labor shortage here, especially in construction and domestic household care…” and so on and so forth. Huh.

I tried to figure out how to phrase good questions, but sadly I’m no journalist. At one point, the Bengali guy chimed in, maybe because he saw the worried look on my face, and said, “of course we’re not wanting any of these workers to be exploited or anything.”

“Oh, so do you have any mechanisms in place to check that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, do you follow up with the companies and make sure the workers are being treated fairly?”

“Oh, no, we don’t do any of that.” They simply recruit in the home country, do the paperwork and bring the workers over, and hand them off to the company. After that, the workers aren’t their responsibility anymore. I thought back to all the articles I’ve read on human trafficking, and wondered, “is this how it really happens?” I’m usually a realist, but I guess for some reason I always just assumed that there was always some kind of Bond villain involved in such cases, cackling to himself about the gullible poors he’d duped and enslaved, while petting a fluffy white cat or something. Even so, I’m reluctant to stick these dudes with the potential label of “traffickers,” purely for this dumb reason: they were so nice. I couldn’t see these guys seizing people’s passports and telling them they owed billions of US dollars in contractual fees that they needed to pay off. But of course they wouldn’t be doing that, if it even happened. It would be somebody at the company who hired these guys to bring the workers over. Maybe not even the company itself, but a third party whose specialization is processing foreign workers.

That’s the key, I’m starting to think – exploitation occurs when you get lots of people together from different transnational companies, whose principal goal is to make profit, and who are strongly incentivized to pass the responsibility of human care and rights to someone else. It’s not any one person’s actions, perhaps, so much as an entire habitat of shit.

Anyway, these guys really were very pleasant to talk to, and we got a free lunch out of it. And something to think about.

The High Maintenance Spaniards

Twinkles and I were in the crazed mess that is the Kuala Lumpur Chinatown, weaving through streams of people and stalls full of knockoff handbags, sunglasses, stupid T-shirts, etc. I stopped at a stall to pick up a stupid T-shirt for Eli, and engaged in the haggling process.

So I’m haggling for this T-shirt, while a Spanish couple comes up, admiring my haggling technique. I buy the shirt, and we chat for a bit. They seemed pleasant and friendly, and as always when traveling, I am excited to meet new people – we’d parted ways with the Irish couple earlier, and were looking for replacements, I suppose.

Though these Spaniards weren’t exactly as pleasant as the Irish couple had been. We started to see signs of this at the beginning, and as the night went on it became increasingly apparent that they would not be good replacements for the Irish. I’ll call them Daniel and Graciela. Daniel asked me where we were from, and when I replied “we’re Americans,” he said, “oh, then I bet you can’t find Spain on a map.” What the hell, dude. Spain is like the easiest European country, barring Italy, to find. I protested as such, and then of course Twinkles chimed in and admitted that she didn’t know where Spain was. “Is it near France?” Dammit, Twinkles! Keep your geography deficiencies under wraps around judgy Europeans!

We kept chatting, and I proposed we sit down – instead of blocking the busy thoroughfare with our chitchat – and grab a beer. We went over to one of the food stalls and grabbed a beer, and immediately they complained about how expensive it is. “Well, it is a Muslim country,” I pointed out. We learned more of their story. They had just taken jobs in China, which meant that they were more accustomed to Chinese prices. As I mentioned before, Malaysia is quite expensive compared to places like China and other Southeast Asian countries. They seemed pretty friendly and interesting, and we talked for about about the different places we’d been, life in China vs. life in Korea, etc. We discussed travel plans, and mentioned that we were headed down to the town of Melaka the next day. They talked about maybe joining us.

A woman came up to check and see if we needed anything, and Graciela began to try and converse with her in Chinese. The woman was having problems understanding; she might not even have been Chinese, but a Malay or a Nepalese person who happened to be on staff there. Anyway, the Spaniards were getting frustrated, and though their Spanish was way too fast and accented for me to pick up, my having retained so little of the six years of Spanish classes I’d taken (yes, that is pretty sad), I did hear Daniel refer to the lady as a “puta china.” I blinked and said nothing, but maybe had a little bit of stinkface, and so Daniel noticed that I had caught what he’d said.

“Why’d you call her that?”

“Oh, I just said that because I didn’t think anyone here would understand.”

O…kay. He then proceeded to explain that he likes to use lots of vulgar language, which is all very well and fine (I have friends who can’t go more than a sentence without cursing), but it seems a lot more mean-spirited if you’re cursing someone in a language they don’t understand. At least have the balls to straight up say, “look, lady, you’re being a total twat-waffle,” in terms she could understand.

I guess that was the second big warning flag. It’s hard to say why, but despite previous weirdness, we decided to go out with them to a Second Location. Another travel tip: never go with a grouchy Spaniard to a Second Location. We split a cab to our area of town, which is full of clubs and bars and things (it’s a tourist area, so it caters to non-Muslims). They grumbled about the cab fare, which split four-ways ended up being less than $2 USD each, and then, when we walked into the club, Daniel grumbled about the fact that nobody appeared to be dancing at, like, 10:30.

Twinkles went to the restroom. I ordered a drink, which was quite expensive – again, Muslim country, don’t come here for the booze! After I ordered, I accidentally returned the menu to the waiter instead of giving it to Daniel, which he then grumbled about. Oops. He walked over to the bar, and then proceeded to get in an argument with the bartender, because apparently they were trying to charge him more than what was listed in the menu. Yes, that was a shitty thing to do, but the way he reacted just seemed so heated (these Spanish tempers!) He yelled at the bartender, who offered him another drink, which was refused – “I’m leaving.” I dashed into the bathroom to gather Twinkles, and we left.

Walked over to another club – again, nobody was dancing, as it was still a little early. Daniel seemed strangely bothered by this, even though from what I’ve heard of going out in Spain, don’t people typically start late and go dancing till the wee hours of the morning? Maybe my Spain info is inaccurate. “Why don’t we just grab a beer, chill out and wait?” I suggested, so we walked over to a nearby restaurant – oddly enough, the same restaurant we’d eaten at with the maybe-traffickers. Graciela noticed a promotional poster for a sale on the wall: get three beers for the price of one. We double checked with the wait staff, and that particular promotional was not in effect. “Then why you put the poster on the wall?” demanded Graciela, and soon she got in a verbal scrap with the waiter, and we had to leave that place.

Oh, boy. These guys were not chill at all – they were both high-maintenance AND cheap, which is truly the worst combination. High-maintenance people with expensive tastes at least want to do something, instead of shooting down every possible avenue of action. The Spaniards wanted to drink but were grumbling at the prices (which, by European and U.S. standards, were still on the cheap end), they wanted to dance but were grumbling at having to wait for the people to show up, and they ruled out every other possibility including just sitting and chatting, which is free.

I looked over at Twinkles, who, to my horror, was bringing up the Melaka trip again. “Only if you guys want to!” I said, waving my hands, looking a little maniacal and maybe a little too obviously hinting that they should not in fact go, but I was no mood to have my trip ruined by these Negativos.

We walked by another club, which unlike the other two was packed, and both Graciela and Twinkles still seemed to want to try and party. But Daniel was still fed up about the bait-and-switch drink prices – “I hate Kuala Lumpur!”, and I finally realized just how genuinely taxing it was to be around them, so we parted ways.

After they left, I turned to Twinkles and said, “You know what? I’d rather go with human traffickers to a Second Location, instead of traveling with those guys. Yikes.”

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