ABSTRACT
As discussed in the previous chapter, I am simultaneously both insider and outsider vis à vis the women I study. As co-resident of the same city, we share a common understanding of what work entails in the personal services sector and all that is involved in living in Kuching. In addition, as a wife and mother, I share some of the women’s worries. However, there is also a great divide between us. Not only am I a middle-class, university-educated West Malaysian Chinese, I am frequently a customer in the places where they work. This was particularly awkward at the stage of setting-up the interviews. As I often frequented the places where the women worked even before the research began, many regarded my request for an interview with amusement and curiosity. Until that point, they had regarded me as a customer, and in the hierarchial society where we live, customers are not generally interested in the workers who serve them. I remember that on one occasion when I was trying to fix an interview with a waitress in a restaurant, an acquiantance dressed in her dining finery stopped by to ask me what I was up to. Immediately, I was identified as belonging to the other side of the divide regardless of what I said or how I dressed. The waitress felt very uncomfortable and promptly turned me down after she left. Fortunately, this distance was frequently narrowed during the interviews when I reciprocated with stories from my personal life.
