Life is never that easy. Challenges keep coming, hurdles keep blocking and obstacles keep appearing. That’s part of life and we all are going through it. But, how do we survive all these? How do others survive these hard time? How do businesses operate as usual and how do they maintain their profit during the time when people hardly spend?

The frequency of us opening our wallets has reduced. This is to make sure that the day that our wallet is filled with cards, only cards, doesn’t come. That’s what most of us are doing, i.e. to reduce our spending as well as our luxury, comfort and lust towards food. No matter how hard people try, there are always ways for the papers to escape the wallet.

Everyone eats somewhere besides eating at home. The only thing differs is the frequency of dining outside. Here in Malaysia, we do consider the cleanliness of an outlet before sitting there to dine. Maybe when there is a dilemma between taste and hygiene, maybe hygiene is given the priority. But when an outlet, a restaurant especially is very well-maintained, it comes with a price.

In certain cases, where food is affordable by the majority of people, quality, hygiene as well as the healthiness of food is compromised. In some places, the meat is recycled! For instance, if there are two (2) dishes made of the same kind of meat and only one gains popularity on that day, the meat from the least popular dish is recycled the next day. We cannot deny this as most of us would have experienced it. Something would have been suspicious through the smell of the dish.

But, what happens to those eating the food? Possible food poisoning, diarrhoea, and other short- and long-term health effects. Imagine a person who relies on shop food throughout the year. His or her health would be a disaster even though he or she exercises and takes all kind of supplements.

Many already have their own cars. Some have more than one, actually, very nice and expensive cars, whereas others could just afford the ones which could just serve the purpose. Let’s talk about those driving the normal cars. Normally, when the cars fall sick, we get the parts from somewhere and get it done by an experienced mechanic somewhere else just to make sure we “tak pokai”.

But what’s actually going on here is that the market has been flooded with imitation, lousy quality, unreliable spare parts. So, our cars break down quite frequently. How can a 1960s car still run with its original factory-installed engine in some other countries and not here? It’s not the manufacturer or the mechanic’s fault of course. It’s the buyer’s fault.

Wait, but how do the buyers know about the quality of the products sold before they even experience it? Many of us spend a lot on cars just to keep it running and it is quite a big burden to our community. So, if people’s satisfaction, safety, quality of goods as well as the reliability isn’t considered? What else is considered then? $$$$$$$$$ - quantity, not quality - $$$$$$$$$

Next is a very popular activity where if one never experience it, he/she doesn’t belong here. Missing drain covers. That’s everywhere. The global price for metal, even though fluctuating at times, still produces some ‘creative’ people to steal it. One of the popular activities in new housing area is to ‘sapu’ all the drain covers, man-hole covers, electrical cables and simply any heavy metals that is obviously placed.

While many of us choose to jog around the housing area or around the township, some are just sitting at home because of injuries during jogging. It’s not safe any more. Just because somebody wants to make money by selling the stolen metal parts to the scrapped metal dealer, some innocent people are being put at risk. How cruel and uncivilised.

Besides all these techniques, there’s another way of being rich, during emergency. When a car breaks down in the middle of the journey, we tend to depend on tow-trucks to take the car to a workshop. The distance might be very short but the price tag is made of gold. Try a different towing service? Same price, boss!

Price fixing is practised during emergency to get a maximum profit. But, does the victim full-heartedly pays the amount? Most of the time, no. Besides this examples, most emergency related issues comes with a pricey tag. After sunset especially.

Five common phenomena

The five common phenomena that we frequently experience or hear (where someone easily makes money) could be:

1. Thefts, robbery and snatch thefts.

2. Sales of smuggled items (we can see the ‘dilarang menjual atau membeli rokok seludup’ banner at restaurants and sundry shops.

3. Scams through the Internet - gaining in popularity.

4. Prostitution - against all religions’ teachings.

5. Overcharging by hidden costs - improper information from service providers.

Well, these are the few common way of earning which I personally don’t agree with. I intend to just spread the news so that my fellow Malaysians open their eyes wider when going through their everyday life beginning now. Let’s hope that all these activities come to an end soon by not being their preys.

Let’s take precautions, let’s be more alert, let’s share the experiences and news with our loved ones, let’s educate people, let’s guide the society to learn to think for themselves and earn a proper living the proper way, let’s reject greed and fear.