I was reading SEAJ's story about Keke - here and also on your The Wrong Girl, The Wrong Time thread.
I couldn't help but compare it to my first Macau punt - Tough Story which was over two months ago. (Bro's please don't bump the thread - I'm not karma whoring, just giving context)
In that post I mentioned that we had exchanged instant message info and I wondered if we would stay in touch or not.
Well we have. Initially daily, but now maybe once or twice a week. She IM's on her phone while waiting for customers. Every one a while mid-chat she says gotta work, and she's gone for a couple of hours or so. She's never asked for money - just online company and support. Well, she did ask me to send her a US two-dollar bill, but I haven't been able to locate one yet.
Over the past few months I have got to know her quite well. Some days she is bright and cheerful, but lately she has become quite depressed. She is thinking of the future - she plans not to renew her contract when it ends next year. But what to do next. There are two options, find work, or find a rich guy. But with both options she has to explain what she has been doing for the last three years and she realizes that her chances of finding a good job, or a good rich guy are not that good. She's also not that interested in the rich guy route. She feels that given a random rich guy and poor guy, the rich guy is more likely to be an asshole. She'd rather a happy poor life, than a miserable rich one.
I suggested school, but that requires time and money, and I'm not sure what her odds are at getting into a school.
So she's thinking of opening a stall in the market and selling stuff to tourists. I know that she can't realistically aspire to be a nuclear physicist, but she's attractive, smart, speaks three or four languages, - I'm just think there has to be a better way to go civvie. She's saving as much as she can right now, but as I mentioned in my first post, her paycheque gets sent home. Any suggestions I can send her way? Are there gov't programs or NGO's in Macau that help? I would help her if I could -- I'm 99.9% sure that she's for real. | |
