Are we not human beings too

Most youth today are crude, ill-mannered and badly brought up. This is the way they are being taught in schools, by their parents and friends. These youth are self-centred and selfish.

Like most senior citizen I encounter, I am saddened when told of torture, hunger, desperation and given cold-treatment when they ask their own children to take care and feed them. I understand if these children are married. To have a family of their own involved money expenditure that they can ill-afford what more to feed their old and sickly parents. But one cannot and should not forget the many past sacrifices parents had to undergo.

Uncle Felix is 62 years old. He is staying with his 23 years old son who earns RM1,300 a month. This son can ill-afford to handle the household expenditure since he only just begun working. But Uncle Felix has an older boy aged 29 years old, working with Air Asia and earning RM5,000 excluding allowances which can come up to RM2,000 per month. This bachelor older son has a stubborn stack and policy that what he earns is his own and should not be given to his old aged parents.

Knowing his eldest son character Uncle Felix continue working till April 2010 when a sweet young Malay girl who is only a payroll clerk at Lake Club told him “you can now rest forever.” Now after working for Lake Club for 35 years one would think the Lake Club Management or HR Department could at least given him a letter to say they no longer needed his service. But to be told off by just a clerk verbally does piss and anger any person in his situation. When Uncle Felix approached the Managers, everyone denied knowing anything. So rather working without salary since everyone pretends to be in the dark Uncle Felix left but he wrote letters to demand to know the reason and why he was not given a letter of termination. After two months leaving Lake Club, Uncle Felix got a letter to say his service is not needed.

Lake Club was once a prestige club in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor. Patronize by the rich and famous, today is well known as the gigolo den for the frustrated wives, mistresses and business women who needed a quickie. Operafest founder Mrs Kam Sun Yoke’s only son is one of the many gigolos servicing there.

Since Uncle Felix was jobless for the past five months, he had to force himself to look for his eldest son who had refused to come home or see his family for the past nine months. When approached, the surprised eldest son, shouted and verbally abuse Uncle Felix and told him to stand in the middle of the road and get himself killed instead of asking for money.

For the past one month Uncle Felix and his wife Bernie had been surviving on a loaf of bread and curry kosong.