Judged because I am Singaporean


 I got judged by an Australian (Vietnamnese) farmer today - because I am Singaporean.

A few weeks ago, prior to coming over to Perth, I put myself out there on a Facebook post - basically marketing my services to anyone who could be bothered. I had asked if there were any farms out there willing to take a chance with an inexperienced worker who essentially spent the last 8 years not doing any form of manual labour. A lady pm-ed me over Facebook messenger saying they were looking for a male worker and if I was still looking for work after I arrived, to hit them up. She gave me an address. There were others who responded to my post but a number of them were actually agents rather than actual farms.

After we had settled most of our smaller admin tasks (1. Setting up a bank account, 2. Getting an Australian number and data, 3. Applying for a Tax File Number (TFN) which allows me to look for work legally) yesterday, it was time to get cracking on the more major admin tasks. And so today, we took a 40min drive to a location just outside Perth city arriving at a relatively ulu strawberry farm. 

Found myself at a shed where there were trays and trays of strawberries. There was a lady there, the lady that pm-ed me on facebook. "You the Singaporean?" she asked. "Wait, I'll call the boss, here, have some strawberries and wait here." With that, we scored a box of strawberries which would have costed $6 at Woolworths. Side-note, the strawberries were amazing - huge and sweet.

I had tried to dress up in a more rabakz manner today - essentially an inner t-shirt, an outer long sleeve shirt unbuttoned, a pair of jeans (admittedly, not as worn out as I had hoped it'd be) and a pair of boots (Black Friday Timberlands). The boss came over on a tractor, shifting trays of strawberries from the fields to the shed. He cut the engine and hopped off the tractor - I didn't get the response I had hoped for. He was silent for a while as he came forward, I could sense his pupils giving me a look over. Honestly, I felt the silent judging was a bit longer than necessary, but this fella could be my new boss, so I subtly flexed a bit and gave a little pose.

He asked a few perfunctory questions and then not-so-deftly went with "you know, this is dirty work, hard work. Hard on the back, hard on the knees." He gave me a knowing smile. I was not to be intimidated. "I'll try my best, I did 2 years in the Army in Singapore."

"Why not you come, take a look at what you will be doing." 

He led us through the strawberry fields. "There was an Indian couple last week, they came, like you, I brought them to see what they had to do, they said it was not for them and went away."

"When ___ (the fb lady) told me there was a Singaporean guy coming, I was surprised. Singaporeans don't do this kind of work, no no. I have a Malaysian here, she is very good. Used to have Indonesians. They work very hard you know, because they need to send the money home, so they work hard. I'm bringing over a few Vietnamnese in a few weeks (peak season). Not sure if their visa will be approved. But Singaporeans, no. Never had a Singaporean. You sure you don't want to work in a factory or something? There are a lot of jobs there."

"No, no, yea I want to do this."

"Oh, you WANT to do this?"

"Yea, this isn't something I can do in Singapore, haha (awkward laughter)"

We arrived at the lot where all his pickers were at the moment. "See, this is what you'd be doing. You ok? Hahahaha. Will be dirty, need to wear the plastic pants (rain pants), especially in the morning when its wet."

I wasn't going to be intimidated, even though perhaps, that was not really what he intended to do. "Yea, no worries. I can show you that Singaporean workers can be good workers too." More awkward laughter.

We started to walk back to the shed we came from

"Yea, ok, when you settle all your things, you can call ___ (the fb lady), she'll let you know when you can come down yea. Take your time, no rush, can be next week, week after."

I think I found my first job.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Celebrating Christmas and crossing the new year in Melbourne

CNY in Melbourne