In Continuum.

Strangers In A Strange Land

Another summer day
Has come and gone away
In Paris and Rome,
I want to go home

Sitting by the side of the road and idling in the afternoon sun, sat the foreign workers downstairs. Their hands covered in dirt and their faces plastered with chalk. The clothes they wore were worn out, the colors faded and tattered at the ends. Staring at me as I walked by them day by day, gave me a sense of guilt for some reason. I felt dirtier than they were somehow, being looked upon with such curiosity. They sat in a neat row on the side of the road, their backs leaning on the metal fences that lined the construction site. Despite the muddy puddles all around after the short afternoon rain, they sat with their knees tucked into their chests, the yellow helmets strewn on the ground like cracked coconut shells. As the journey on the bus home marked the end of the day for me, their daily observations of people passing by the front gate of the construction site was theirs.

I see them day by day, the way they would sit on the grassy patch, all exhausted and worn out. They cared little about the people passing by, some of them passing around plastic water bottles to freshen themselves up. But for the most part, they just stared at the patch of ground between their feet, probably staring at ants crawling by or the way the grass would sway to the soft evening breeze. Having worked their heads off under the sun for the whole day must have took the toll on them, and sometimes you wonder how these people can take it - despite the responsibilities and dreams that they have for a better life and future.

May be surrounded by
A million people I
Still feel all alone
Just wanna go home

Oh, I miss you. You know?

So many foreign workers come to Singapore each year, and they vary from office workers to home-based maids. From company directors to construction workers. So many people come to Singapore to seek a better future, or new opportunities for themselves or even the people they love back home. So many of them have children and a wife to feed back home. Or even if they are single, they must have parents, or brothers and sister? Whoever that they left behind in their homeland, it must have been hard to move over to Singapore, no matter how advanced this country may be, or how great it claims itself to be. Being away from home is still something hard to deal with, no matter how you see it. And these people are here, not to go to holiday resorts or to have their educations furthered, but to help build this country from scratch.

The hands of these construction workers, the way the skin at the tips of their fingers were peeled off day by day, and the roughed palms backed by the sun-baked skin at the back. These are the hands that built Singapore from the very scratch, and I am constantly amazed at the amount of sacrifice these men are willing to make for a country that doesn't belong to them at all. The wage is attractive in relative to the type they'd get back home, but it is still quite a vast difference between their pay and our own. You start to wonder if all the complaining and all the whining about the prices of a shirt or a pair of shoes you gave were justifiable, when there are so many foreign workers in Singapore, living just above or right on top of the local poverty line.

I've been keeping all the letters that I wrote to you
Each one a line or two," I'm fine baby, how are you?"
Well I would send them but I know that it's just not enough
My words were cold and flat, and you deserve more than that

There is a maid whom my mother hired a few months back to wash the family cars. My mother pays her well, and she does her duty every week with a bucket of water and her giant yellow sponge. Though she doesn't do a perfect job at it - admittedly - she does it punctually and on time. She's twenty-one this year, the same age as myself. She came to Singapore alone from Indonesia a few months back looking for a job, because her family needs her back home. She has two children and a husband left back then, with a mother to take care of somehow. So she packed up her clothes one day and decided to head to Singapore for a new life, to send money back home to her family and hopefully make their lives and her own better.

But it must be hard to be here alone, isn't it? They do make friends here of course, I see her in the void deck on Sundays talking to maids from other levels of the block. But they are not family, they are not people back home. And the amount of emotional stress that they go through alone here can only be imagined and not experienced. There are so many things to worry about here, being a stranger in a strange land. You have to worry if your family got the money you sent back, or if you husband is running off with somebody else and neglecting your children. You have to worry if your children are getting their proper educations, and you have to wonder if somebody is taking good care of your mother. All of those, at the tender age of twenty-one. Already, you are out there in the harshness of the real world, tasting the bitterness of reality, and all the worries coming down on your like an avalanche.

Another aeroplane,
Another sunny place
I'm lucky I know
But I wanna go home

I got to go home.

There was an Indian cleaner that my father hired at his factory down in the Jurong industrial area. It's not a big factory really, but more like a warehouse to store oil barrels that he imports from overseas, before they are being shipped out again to another buyer. He hired an Indian worker a few years ago called Apu to take care of the general cleanliness of the place, and he lives in a little shed next to the main building itself.

I remember seeing him stuffed up in the room, with a little radio positioned on a stool and his legs propped up high on the bed. It was the afternoon and he wasn't supposed to start cleaning until everybody leaves the office building. But when he saw me standing at the front of his door, he jumped up from his bed and asked in his broken English if I needed anything. I smiled at him then, telling him that I was merely there to check him out. He confirmed my words, and I assured him that I didn't vomit on the carefully wiped floors upstairs, or anything that might have dirtied the premises.

Let me go home
I'm just too far
From where you are
I wanna come home

Apu was a hard worker, probably the hardest my parents have ever seen. Like I said, he lives in the warehouse alone, and in a way he becomes the security guard of sorts at the same time. Before anybody gets to the office, he'd clean up the whole place in the morning, waking up at five in the morning and wiping the tiles with his mop. Then he'd proceed downstairs to check up on the garden as well as the dead leaves that might have fallen from the tree-lined road. Everyday for nearly a year, he repeated the same things over and over, and never challenged my father or his right hand man who was in charge of him most of the time. He never complained about anything, and always spoke of his family back home in India - as always, in his broken English.

A stray dog wandered through the gates of my father's office once, and it was taken in by Apu. He fed the dog with his own food - which wasn't a lot - and they became the best of friends. Finally, out in a strange land there was somebody to accompany him in the lonely hours of the night. It was a brown dog I still remember, and constantly had a thick layer of dust on its fur because of all the rolling around on the ground and the lack of cleaning. Still, it was a happy dog being with Apu. That was of course, until the dog got ran over by a passing truck just outside the gate. It was then, when Apu lost his one and only companion, and was alone all over again.

And I feel just like I'm living someone else's life
It's like I just stepped outside when everything was going right
And I know just why you could not come along with me
'Cause this was not your dream, but you always believed in me

It was Christmas last year when the employees of my father's company was gathered for a lucky draw of sorts. There were attractive prizes likes cellphones, televisions, vouchers and stuff like that, all stacked up on the table like a tiny pyramid. The employees were all excited, wishing desperately that they would get the big prize at the very end, and boast to their friends and family just how luck they were at the annual lucky draw at the office. My father's right hand man was in charge at that time, and had the people gathered around lunch time to have the winners announced.

However, there was a wave of disapproval when Apu was asked to join in the lucky draw as well. The employers said it wasn't fair, that only local employees should be allowed to join the lucky draw. Because Apu wasn't a citizen, the employees strongly went against the idea of having their rewards be snatched away by this foreign worker. But my father and everybody else strongly urged Apu to join, but in the end he refused the offer, saying that he was happy with what he had. My father - despite the disapprovals - gave him the television. So it was then, when he found himself a new friend - a friend that sings Bollywood music and has his favorite Bollywood celebrities.

Another winter day
Has come and gone away
In even Paris and Rome
And I wanna go home

Let me go home

Seeing the construction workers from the window of my old bedroom, I see their yellow construction hats and their yellow vests glistering in the scorching afternoon sun day by day. Their tiny figures worked endless amidst the steel and the concrete, next to heavy machineries and risking their lives everyday just to have their wages earned and their jobs done. My sister constantly abused them with words from the comfort of her room, shouting words like," Shut up! It's too noisy!" But I guess she never realized that it is probably a hundred times worse when you are one of the workers down in ground zero, tolerating the sound of the drilling and the banging, complaining little and working even harder. I guess we take so many things in our lives for granted, so much so that we do not appreciate little efforts done by these foreign workers, who can just pack up and leave anytime they want.

But they are still here, crammed into the back of lorries and vans to be transported to their next site. To toil under the hot sun, to spread cement over steel columns. To work heavy machineries, to be one more minute away from their homes. They must miss their homes really badly, and sometimes you wonder if there are people taking care of their mental welfare at all. Because seriously, from the eyes of the construction workers that stare at me everyday as I come home from school, I see nothing but the urge to pack up and go home. It's just sad that before the MRT line is done in another three years' time, they are going to be stuck here. For the benefit of whom? Us, the very people who are taking them for granted now.

Don't we just love ourselves now.

Let me go home
I’ve had my run
Baby, I’m done
I gotta go home

Let me go home
It will all be all right
I’ll be home tonight
I’m coming back home