Expats and Foreign Workers

I was fumbling over youtube with my friend (he is in UK) the whole Sunday.
This is usually how I spent my weekends -- chatting with my friend.

There was a video we saw, showing the other side of Singapore, with poor and homeless people.
It reminded me of some experiences I had when supervising some constructions in Singapore.

We were constructing on top of one of the finance buildings in Singapore. That place is flooded with rich whites, bright brains and pretty gals. I would sit in front of the building, with my dirty boots, working pants, safety helmet and a huge backpack every morning with the rest of the construction workers, waiting for the building maintenance team to open the door for us to enter.

I looked at those pretty ladies, wearing high heels walking quick, following behind their white bosses, smiling away, chatting away on their mobile phones, punching away on the Blackberry keypads.... I also seen those guys, dressing smart, with suit and tie, shinny black leather shoes and bag, waxed hair and their sleek phones dashing across the crowd waiting eagerly in front of the shinny elevators... I felt so out of place.

When I got to know this group of contruction workers, they are mainly legal migrant workers, who most of them completed their tertiary educations. Some are even masters holder, with proper engineering and science degrees. But they came all the way to Singapore, to be a construction worker, and live like a beggar.

I remember the site supervisor told me that a little bar of soap from the hotel would bring a lot of happiness among the workers, as they can't even afford a bar of soap.

It was such an irony to me, those people who sit in the finance center, are called expats, they are legal foreign workers, who owned university degrees. They live in huge houses, have nice car and driver to send them to work...Their comfort in the building relies on these other batch of foreign workers, who are also legal migrant workers, who owned university degree, live in an apartment room that squeezed 9-10 fellas, fetched by a van driver every morning to work... at the same place.

Same qualifications, same human being, such different lives...