ABSTRACT
Waking up. Getting dressed and having breakfast. Waiting to get through to Tan because I said I should call before I go over to his house. Can't get through the first three times I tried to call but eventually the line is clear and I reach Tan.
It is around 8.00 am and I am riding my scooter from my apartment outside Georgetown down to Jelutong five minutes away to meet Tan, a car mechanic in his early forties. I do find my way to his house, since I have been here a number of times before; it is the third block closest to the busy mainroad outside the gates. The medium-cost blocks that were constructed over ten years ago (1988) are now looking a bit run down from the outside. The formerly white walls have taken the colour of grey, but to my surprise, the inside is well kept and seems to be well built. The apartments are over 800 sq ft, which is quite big in comparison to other high-rise apartments, flats and condominiums in Penang. At the time Tan bought the apartment for 66,000 RM. (Malaysian Ringgits), which should definitely be considered a good deal since prices have both doubled and tripled since the late 1980s. When I enter the apartment, Tans mother who stays with the family, his ten-year old daughter and their Indonesian maid are home. His fifteen-year older daughter is at a friends house and his wife is at work in a Bayan Lepas factory as a line leader in a multinational semiconductor company in the Free Industrial Zone (FIZ) of Penang. Her normal shifts start early (6.30 am), which means that she leaves the house before everybody else in the family.
